COMMENTARY It's easy to imagine President Trump adopting the gaslighting warfare used by Venezuela's dictator in Guyana to further his own hemispheric expansion schemes from Panama to Greenland.
We know that President Trump — according to advisers during his first presidency — admires dictators. And this week Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro reminded us why Trump considers despots to be, as those aides remember him gushing, “strong, tough and smart.”
It’s no secret that even though Maduro is a socialist, Trump secretly admires him enough that he wants to negotiate an oil deal with him in his second presidency — and would have by now if South Florida Latinos didn’t keep complaining to their U.S. Representatives about it, like a bunch of pesky pro-democracy snowflakes.
That’s why I’m betting Trump is taking strong, tough and smart inspiration from Maduro right now.
The Caracas Caudillo has shown the Mar-a-Lago Megalomaniac an ingenious way forward (Trump thinks dictators are geniuses, too) in his so far stymied crusade to seize the gobs of hemispheric real estate that mighty America deserves to possess in the freeloading Americas.
Places like Panama. Canada. Greenland. Maybe more.
READ MORE: Trump and Bad Bunny: the western hemisphere's new independence heroes
Maduro, you’ll recall, insists that some two-thirds of the territory of next-door neighbor Guyana, land known as the Essequibo, actually belongs to Venezuela. It’s a zone — oil-rich, to boot — that he says his country was screwed out of in an 1899 dispute. And for years now he’s been rattling sabers about wresting it back.
So as part of Venezuela’s regional elections last Sunday, Maduro sponsored an election on the Venezuela-Guyana border to choose the Essequibo’s Venezuelan "governor" and its "representatives" to Venezuela’s National Assembly.
The exercise was of course illegitimate. But for Maduro it was one more way of planting Venezuela’s imaginary flag there — a new salvo in the sort of gaslighting warfare that schoolyard bullies like Maduro and Trump practice morning, noon and night.
The Essequibo "election" was a new salvo in the kind of gaslighting warfare schoolyard bullies like Maduro and Trump wage morning, noon and night.
Trump, then, has to be wondering: Why didn’t I think of that? What a big, beautiful, provocative-performative way to advance his Monroe Doctrine 2.0 decrees that the U.S. should take back the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st state, acquire Greenland and, while we're at it, turn El Salvador into a penal colony.
In fact, Trump sees hope that Canadians will embrace U.S. statehood — and his "Golden Dome" offer to protect them from foreign missile strikes at a $61 billion value!
Sure, 90% of Canadians in a recent poll told Trump (politely, of course) to “get lost, eh?” But that means a tenth of Canucks like, or would at least consider, the idea of being annexed. Like car salesman Ryan Hemsley of British Columbia, who says he’d be wealthier if America First made Canada the Fifty-First.
Right there is Trump’s candidate for U.S. Governor of Canada, in an election he could stage, say, next year. Two U.S. Senators could also be chosen, and a U.S. Representative from each of Canada’s 10 provinces.
If Quebec refuses to hold the vote in English, Trump can slap a 145% tariff on poutine.
Cryptocurrency mine
Ditto Greenland.
Granted, 85% of those polled on that strategic, Danish-held island north of Canada are telling Trump “naamik” (“no” in Greenlandic).
But, hey, 15% aren't — especially bricklayer Jørgen Boassen, who likes to show visitors a painting depicting Trump in Greenland. Trump could hold his Greenland election on the U.S.’s Pituffik space base there — and he’ll have Governor Boassen setting up a hydro-powered cryptocurrency mine for $TRUMP in no time.
A U.S. election could admittedly be trickier in Panama. It's seen large, angry street protests lately against Trump’s pledge to reclaim the Panama Canal, which the U.S. handed over to Panama a quarter century ago.
But Maduro offers Trump a way around even that.
Two years ago, Maduro held a referendum asking Venezuelans if they favored annexing the Essequibo — and he claimed, anyway, that 95% voted Yes.
Trump could hold a similar plebiscite in the U.S. on grabbing the Panama Canal — with only legislators in red states as voters, to be on the safe side — and then declare it the will of the American people.
You can call these imperial schemes shams. But one democrat’s sham is another dictator’s affirmation. And that’s something the democratically elected Trump not only admires but shares with the dictatorially governing likes of Maduro: a “genius” for manufacturing lies into reality.
Which can lead to actions that are neither strong, tough or smart. Just dangerously stupid.
