"Everything Would Stop"

In the midst of his ruminations on Trump's desire to acquire Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen cut to the chase:

“If the United States decides to militarily attack another Nato country, then everything would stop – that includes Nato and therefore post-second world war security,” Frederiksen told Danish television network TV2.

He was, of course, referring to remarks from the administration earlier this week:

US President Donald Trump has been discussing "a range of options" to acquire Greenland, including use of the military, the White House said.

The White House told the BBC that acquiring Greenland - a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark – was a "national security priority".

The statement came hours after European leaders issued a joint statement rallying behind Denmark, which has been pushing back against Trump's ambitions for the Arctic island.

I've got to give the intellectual welterweights at Instapundit credit for at least linking to discussions of the US's Greenland options this morning, but they all miss the point. For instance, via this link,

Trump does not intend to “buy” GREENLAND as “buy” is used in common usage. What the administration hopes to purchase is DENMARK’s claim over GREENLAND as a matter of public international law.

Such a purchase of a public international law claim would be akin to the U.S. purchase of the LOUISIANA TERRITORY from FRANCE—as negotiated by President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, and ALASKA TERRITORY from RUSSIA—as negotiated by President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. In each case, the U.S. did not purchase the actual land at issue from a foreign power. Rather, in each case, the U.S. payment was consideration for FRANCE’s and RUSSIA’s divesting themselves of their public international law claim over the relevant territory.

I don't understand why this guy needs to render the names of countries in all caps, but leaving that aside, the point he misses is that the purchase of "public international law claims" simply wasn't the only way the US acquired territory during its 19th century expansion. Given the reaction from the European NATO countries, a much closer analogy is the Mexican War of 1846-48.

Democrat James K. Polk was elected on a platform of expanding U.S. territory to Oregon, California (also a Mexican territory), and Texas by any means, with the 1845 annexation of Texas furthering that goal. However, the boundary between Texas and Mexico was disputed, with the Republic of Texas and the U.S. asserting it to be the Rio Grande and Mexico claiming it to be the more-northern Nueces River. Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in between for $25 million (equivalent to $798 million in 2024), an offer the Mexican government refused. Polk then sent a group of 80 soldiers across the disputed territory to the Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. Mexican forces interpreted this as an attack and repelled the U.S. forces on April 25, 1846, a move that Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war.

The analogy with Louisiana and Alaska fails insofar as both France and Russia wouldn't have been in any position to defend those territories militarily if the US as the North American continental power wanted to seize them, and it was a much better strategy to monetize the situation on the ground. The situation with Mexico was actually a bit closer to the current one with Greenland: Polk began the discussion by making Mexico an offer to buy Texas, California, and the territory in between.

When Mexico refused the offer, Polk went to war, and within 18 months or so, US forces under Winfield Scott had seized Mexico City. Subsequent negotiations led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo:

Mexico recognized the cession of present-day Texas, California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of present-day Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million (equivalent to $479 million in 2024) for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico relinquished its claims on Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as its northern border with the United States.

So at the end of the war, Mexico had foregone the original offer of $25 million but settled for $15 million plus assumption of debt. As a practical matter, with colonial rebellions in both California and Texas and other vast territories in the intermountain West it could never realistically defend, Mexico had little alternative.

What we've seen in the reaction of the Danes and other NATO countries is that they're envisioning a Mexican-style military resistance in the face of what's likely to be a very generous monetary offer for Greenland from the US. Let's put this in the context it deserves -- many of the same NATO countries as of this past Tuesday confirmed a 2026 Ukraine aid pacKage of $60 billion to prolong its war with Russia. On one hand, the US is not on board with this; on the other, it's simply absurd for Denamrk to rattle a NATO sword over military action to take over Greenland, when NATO is already stretching its resources with its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

In fact, the possibility of everything NATO coming to a sudden stop isn't as unlikely as Prime Minister Frederiksen would like to believe. The same "coalition of the willing" conference this week

assembled in Paris as the operation to manipulate the U.S. into forming the cornerstone of the Ukraine “security guarantees” continues. A great deal of this is public relations and psychological operations intended to create something against President Trump’s expressed intention.

. . . There’s no President Trump because the intent of the principals is against our America-first interest. Hence, the USA did not sign up to the EU created security guarantees, because Trump is demanding they do their own work.

Key word “proposed” -- ”These elements will be European-led, with the involvement also of non-European members of the Coalition, and the proposed support of the US.”…

President Trump is presenting: The U.S. will provide intelligence *monitoring* assistance, but that’s it.

Not in our strategic interest. Not our war. Not our issue.

So if Denmark and NATO implicitly threaten to go to war over any attempt by Trump to seize Greenland militarily, then indeed from their point of view, "everything would stop" -- in particular, the ability of the NATO tail to wag the US dog. You want to end the agreement? Fine, it was set up originally as an alliance against Stalin and subsequent Soviet adventurism. The Ukraine war has shown that Russia is now a second-rate power that can't overwhelm a third-rate power. The US at this point can defend itself against Russia without NATO's aid. Let NATO without the US make its own choices.

This is the direction NATO is headed no matter what. It's plain at this stage that Trump is determined to acquire Greenland. I strongly suspect that in the near term, he's going to emulate Polk and make Denmark what will amount to an offer they can't refuse -- but this will also mean the end of NATO, or at least a NATO with the US as a member. But at that point, what happens to Canada? If Canada remains part of a NATO alliance potentially aligned against US interests, that would be an intolerable situation, as far as I can see.

Trump is playing a long game here.

Why Delcy Rodriguez?

Reports that have trickled out over the past several days indicate that Trump decided to leave Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro's vice president, in place following Maduro's removal. She was sworn in as "interim president" on Monday by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the President of the National Assembly. According to CBS News,

She quickly denounced the U.S. operation as a violation of the United Nations founding charter and a unilateral attempt to force regime change on Saturday, but soon adopted a more conciliatory tone.

In a social media post following a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Rodríguez called for "respectful international relations" between Caracas and Washington and extended an invite for "the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation."

. . . Mr. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. had been in contact with Rodríguez and "she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."

But in an interview with The Atlantic published on Sunday, he added a warning.

"If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro," Mr. Trump said.

The latest information suggests things may be more intricate. According to this Wall Street Journal story behind a paywall,

A recent classified U.S. intelligence assessment determined top members of Nicolás Maduro’s regime—including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—would be best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain near-term stability if the autocrat lost power, people familiar with the matter said.

This page excerpts a little more of the story:

The analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency was briefed to President Trump and shared with a small circle of senior administration officials, according to two of the people. It was a factor in Trump’s decision to back Maduro’s vice president instead of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, some of the people said.

The assessment provides insight into Trump’s decision not to support the opposition’s bid for control of Venezuela following the brazen U.S. military operation to capture Maduro last week and bring him to the U.S. for trial. As in his first term, Trump was convinced that near-term stability in Venezuela could be maintained only if Maduro’s replacement had the support of the country’s armed forces and other elites.

But it wasn't just the CIA. According to Bloomberg,

As the US threatened Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power in recent months, a cadre of executives, lawyers and investors tied to the oil industry made their case to anyone who would listen — the Trump administration, congressional aides: His familiar No. 2 Delcy Rodríguez should fill his shoes in Venezuela.

. . . President Donald Trump’s inner circle came to the same conclusion, though people familiar with the matter say they did so independently. Both groups believed that the vice president, long seen as a bridge between the government and private sector, could stabilize Venezuela’s oil-based economy and facilitate American business faster than leading dissident María Corina Machado could, said the people.

. . . , In a Bloomberg Television appearance Monday, Greylock Capital Management Chief Executive Hans Humes, who is part of the creditor committee of Venezuela’s sovereign debt, reiterated what some global oil executives have said in private regarding Rodríguez: “If you want somebody who can operate in reasonably OK conditions, get the person who operated in the worst conditions,” he said.

According to the AP,

In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.

Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.

The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents.

. . . Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.

Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.

While she eventually joined Chávez's staff, he also fired her.

Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.

A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.

. . . As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.

In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.

Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq [.}

. . . We'vw seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”

The upshot so far: Note that Trump is referring respectfully to "the interim Authorities in Venezuela", "interim president" being the title under which she was sworn in. It sounds very much to me as though this designation was agreed to before the raid. Beyond that, according to The Guardian,

Since April last year, according to reports, vice-president and now interim president Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge – the president of the Venezuelan national assembly – have been dealing secretly with Washington. This has reportedly been via that hotspot of informal diplomacy, Qatar.

We have yet to know the details. But the rumours are plausible that last week’s episode was staged to look outrageous, including Delcy Rodríguez’s initial condemnation of it as atrocious. President Nicolás Maduro was handed over to the Americans swiftly and peacefully. The only slip was Trump describing Delcy as “quite gracious” before she was hastily sworn into office soon after the raid. A more serious slip was his dismissal of the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, as lacking “the support within or the respect within the country”.

. . . After last weekend’s operation, people quite reasonably seek clarity of events and motive, but the truth is that international interventions by powerful states are drenched in hypocrisy. Their true purpose may be commercial gain or domestic glory – or to aid an ally. Or it may be just to sound good.

The Guardian characterized the Caracas raid as "a putsch. It was the militarised kidnap of one ruler to aid his more amenable deputy into power." We can grant tnis. The US has a long history of just this sort of thing. It does it best when it does it quickly and decisively, as it did in Iran in 1953.

Meanwhile,

On Monday, Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as president and a crackdown on support for Maduro’s ouster followed, including an order that police search for and arrest anyone supporting an armed attack by the U.S., The Washington Post reported.

She's rounding up the usual suspects -- after all, she seems to have worked behind the scenes to enable the whole show. I think Trump and his people are handling this brilliantly.

"Americans Love A Winner"

One of the most persistent images in cinema is George C Scott limning General Patton's words in front of an American flag. So far, Trump looks like the kind of winner Patton imagined, assuming his bet that the remnant of the Maduro regime will cooperate with the US going forward pays off.

The success of the operation vindicates his choice of Secretary Hegseth and Hegseth's purge of the Biden Pentagon, something that had been in question for much of the past year.

The operation was a demnonstration of US technological superiority:

At the core of Venezuela’s defensive architecture was a network of radars supplied by the China Electronics Technology Group, including JYL-1 three-dimensional surveillance systems and the JY-27 metric-wave radar, which for years had been promoted as a supposed “stealth aircraft hunter“. Based on assessments of the swift and decisive operation, these sensors were disabled during the initial phase through intensive electronic jamming, leaving the integrated air defense system without early-warning capability.

. . . The neutralization of the radar network prevented any effective employment of longer-range air defense systems, including the S-300V and Buk-M2 complexes acquired from Russia to establish a layered defense. In parallel, suppression strikes against several Buk-M2 systems—at least two confirmed—completely nullified their ability to respond.

K T McFarland said this at Fox News:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown his entire military at Ukraine in hopes of establishing Russian domination and killing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The bloody war has dragged on for three years, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, while draining both countries. And still, that war grinds on.

. . . President Trump sent a small group of special forces into Caracas. Within three hours, they had captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, transporting them to New York to face justice in a U.S. court. No Americans were killed.

I don't think the timing of Secretary Hegseth's announcement that he intends to demote Sen Mark Kelly from his rank as a retired Navy captain was coincidental. He did this in the shadow of the Venezuelan success. Kelly's reply is petty:

"Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn't like, they will come after them the same way. It's outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that," Kelly said in a statement on X.

The problem is that the successful Venezuela raid was the product of "good order and discipline" in the armed forces that Kelly is alleged to have undermined, and he opposes that raid:

The President of the United States just overthrew a foreign ruler and explained to the American people that this is about taking control of the oil reserves of a foreign nation. He said that the U.S. will “run the country” until a proper transition can take place and went right into how U.S. oil companies will benefit from this takeover. He doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.

The visible Democrat strategy dsince the raid has been to question its legality and oppose it via Congressional action:

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., called Trump's actions "illegal" and said opposing lawmakers plan to use the "power of the purse" to counter them.

. . . He pointed to a war powers resolution, whose cosponsors include Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that senators intend to soon bring up for a vote to block further military action in Venezuela.

The problem for the Democrats is that the raid, at least so far, makes Trump a winner, and as Patton understood, Americans love a winner. Some Democrats recogtnize the potential problem, but so far, only Sen Fetterman has spoken out publicly:

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is breaking with many Democrats by praising the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, saying Americans across party lines once agreed he needed to be removed.

"I don't know why we can't just acknowledge that it's been a good thing," Fetterman said Monday on "Fox & Friends."

"We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here."

the rest are remaining circumspect:

Some Democrats are grumbling at their party's largely oppositional stance to President Trump's raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying privately that their colleagues should be celebrating.

. . . These lawmakers argue it could be a major political miscalculation if the party fails to applaud the downfall of a brutal dictator with sufficient volume, even given grave concerns about the operation's legality and longer-term ramifications.

I'm inclined to trust Rump's instincts. As long as he acts decisively without any disastrous outcomes, Americans will want to be on the winning side.

🚨 NEW: CNN reports SURGE in support for what President Trump did to Maduro +25 POINTS among the American public

"After the ousting, look! Support went THROUGH THE ROOF!" says pollster Harry Enten.

"It turns out, Americans like what they deem to be successful operations!" pic.twitter.com/SCHCcPc9TY

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) January 6, 2026

In Other News, Tim Walz's Career Is Over

The New York Times and other sources are reporting:

Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) is reportedly going to announce on Monday that he will drop his bid for reelection to a third term, according to a report from the New York Times. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is now considering running instead.

“Mr. Walz and Ms. Klobuchar met Sunday in Minnesota, where he informed her of his plans and she confirmed her interest in running to replace him,” the paper reported. “For Mr. Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president in the 2024 election, the departure caps a brief rise in national politics.”

Both the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had begun to sense blood in the water after the new year. Per the WSJ:

The massive welfare-fraud scandal in Minnesota dogging Gov. Tim Walz as he seeks re-election in a state that has prided itself on good governance is giving Republicans a potent line of attack against a critic of President Trump.

The unsuccessful 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee is still favored by nonpartisan analysts to win in November. But the large-scale theft—still being tabulated and growing—is a major distraction for Democrats as outrage and embarrassment swell in Minnesota and beyond.

From the Post:

Democrats are favored to win the governor’s race in 2026; Republicans have not won a statewide election in Minnesota since 2006. Walz won reelection by about 8 percentage points in 2022, when some of the fraud cases had already surfaced, and it’s not clear that the new attention to the issue has affected his approval in the state. There are no clear recent shifts in available surveys.

Notice how, even as of Saturday, the conventional wisdom at the Post still favored Walz's survival. For undertstandable reasons, the Post appears to have discounted Nick Shirley's impact on the race. But at the first link above, Matt Margolis has it right:

Scrutiny of Walz intensified after independent journalist Nick Shirley and his crew hit the streets, sniffing out over $110 million in fraud in a single day. They targeted outfits posing as child care spots, autism hubs, and welfare fronts—all sucking up government cash. For example, the Quality Learning Center in Minneapolis, licensed for 99 kids, pulled in $1.9 million this year alone. Shirley showed up and found an empty building. Zero kids. Oh, and the sign? Spells "learning" wrong.

It’s been clear for some time now that this story was threatening Walz’s political future. In addition to seeking a third term as governor, he was also considering a presidential bid in 2028. Now it looks like his career is over, and he’s going to have to start lawyering up.

I ENDED TIM WALZ

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) January 5, 2026

It's worth noting that Trump has been on the right side of the issue all along. Here's a story from last Thanksgiving at Politico:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pushed back Sunday on President Donald Trump’s claim that Somali refugees are “completely taking over” Minnesota after Trump drew widespread criticism for his attacks on Walz.

Walz said in a Sunday morning interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” that being insulted by Trump was “a badge of honor” after he became the subject of a Thanksgiving eve social media post in which the president cited “the refugee burden” as “the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”

“As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”

He added: “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both,” while also taking swings at progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), criticizing her Muslim faith and speculating falsely that she may have entered the country illegally.

What Nick Shirley did was simply instantiate Trump's ongoing criticisms of Walz. The swipe at Walz for being "serioously retarded" raised the hackles of respectable opinion, but it had the strong subliminal effect that Trump's off-the-cuff blows often have, dating back to "low-energy Jeb" -- and Walz, never the sharpest tool in the shed, drew attention to it himself:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says it is “shameful” that motorists are shouting the “R-word” driving by his home — and that he is “deeply concerned” the hate allegedly started by President Trump could “turn to violence.”

Walz, speaking to reporters Thursday about the state budget, revealed in an aside that drivers have been repeating Trump’s claims that the Democratic governor is “seriously retarded” for letting tens of thousands of Somali immigrants take over his “once great state.”

“This creates danger,” Walz said. “And I’ll tell you what. In my time on this, I’d never seen this before: People driving by my house and using the R-word in front of people.

The image is too delicious. The problem is that Walz was vying for the position of Trump's lead opponent, when he simply wasn't a serious candidate. At this point, with Walz taken out of the running as low-hanging fruit, scrutiny will turn to Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, who are in positions just as shaky -- while Trump and the Republicans still have Somalis as a front-burner issue.

The Wall Street Journal called Walz's witghdrawal "a remarkable political fall for a politician who had ascended to the national stage in 2024 as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee". It was no such thing. It was the inevitable outcome of Kamala Harris's choice of what some have characterized as the only candidate who was dumber than she is as a running mate.

It's a major mistake to underestimate Trump. Let's keep in mind that he took out Walz as a spare-time project, while he was working on at least half a dozen serious matters.

UPDATE: The idea is now being floated that Klobuchar, if she wins the governor's race, could appoint Walz as her successor in the Senate for the remainder of her term. However, this assumes Walz escapes legal accountability for Somali corruption, as well as the campaign issue it would create for opponents in either the primary or general election for her gubernatorial aspiration. Walz at this point is going to be poison for anyone who touches him.

Rachel Maddow Works On A Weekend

Over New Year's I noted that NewsNation and CNN had second-string reporters out in the Minnesota snow, not really covering the Somali fraud as much as doing what they could to get ahead of Nick Shirley's reporting. One of Shirley's insights, I feel pretty sure, was that mainstream media doesn't work very hard, and the Christmas break was a perfect time to drop his video, when the cartel had tacitly agreed there'd be no other news.

I also inferred that Trump and his key people had come up with the same strategy over the Venezuela raid, with the news coming out on one of the deadest Saturdays of any year. Let's remember that for Trump, there's no such thing as bad publicity, he makes the news simply by being Trump. It's a losing game for anyone to try to upstage him, but the suits at MS NOW gave it their best shot: they got Rachel Maddow in on a Saturday.

Part-time MS NOW host Rachel Maddow remarkably showed up to work on a weekend, appearing on the network from a mysterious remote location on Saturday morning to criticize President Donald Trump's military operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

"Not only will [Trump] care about people saying this is illegal, he'll see that as an asset," Maddow said in an appearance on colleague Ali Velshi's weekend morning show, suggesting that the president is a "would-be strongman" who ordered the operation to provoke a war and give himself "expanded powers" against domestic political opponents.

Maddow's appearance on MS NOW—and certainly on the weekends—is a relative rarity. She is believed to be the second-highest paid employee at Versant, the new spin-off company made up of Comcast's discarded cable networks, after CEO Mark Lazarus, but she usually only works on Mondays.

As I noted yesterday, China should be paying special attention to what Trump pulled off in Venezuela, and its foreign ministry immediately reacted:

"China is deeply shocked and strongly condemns the use of force by the U.S. against a sovereign country and the use of force against the president of a country," a ministry statement said.

The Venezuela strike, following the Irsn B-2 raid, has got to put the Chinese on notice that US use of force is likely to be a surprise, unconventional, meticulously planned, and calibrated in such a way as to make any counterstrike irrelevant. This would almost certainly be what would happen just before any Chinese move against Taiwan.

But foreign militsary adventures always have a domestic component. The Venezuela raid has wrong-footed the Democrats:

The vast majority of Democrats are raging at the Trump administration for once again sidelining Congress despite its constitutionally mandated role in authorizing and overseeing military actions.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement: "The Trump administration has not sought congressional authorization for the use of military force and has failed to properly notify Congress in advance of the operation in Venezuela."

Several House Democrats floated the idea of impeachment Saturday, with Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) even telling Axios: "We are in 25th Amendment territory now."

It's amazing how unrealistic this idea is -- under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Vance would have to convince, among others, Secretaries Rubio, Hegseth, Nome, Bessent, and Kennedy that Trump was unable to perform his duties, and then he'd have to get two-thirds of both houses of Congress to confirm it. Impeachment would be easier. At the same link,

House Democrats are set to meet virtually for an "emergency" caucus meeting Sunday afternoon, a senior House Democrat told Axios.

Meanwhike,

🚨 BREAKING: Team America is celebrating because ELON MUSK just had dinner with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago

The crowd LOVES IT!

Elon is ALL-IN on helping save Trump’s term from the Democrats in the midterms

THE BOYS ARE BACK 🔥🇺🇸

pic.twitter.com/7MYm9IFjJD

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 4, 2026

Trump Pulls The Same Nick Shirley Trick

With respectable journalists still on Christmas break, Trump sends the military into Venezuela and plucks out Maduro and his wife to face indictment and trial on drug and weapons charges, just like that.

The Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Saturday morning that “Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.”

Senator Cotton said that he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who informed him that Maduro is in custody in the United States “and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens.”

“I commend President Trump and our brave troops and law-enforcement officers for this incredible operation. The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran and Cuba or whether to act like a normal nation and return to the civilized world. I urge them to choose wisely,” he said.

As a footnote:

Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez claimed on Saturday morning that the Venezuelan socialist regime has no information on the current whereabouts of dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores after President Donald Trump announced their capture.

Rodríguez, speaking over the phone with VTV, the Maduro regime’s flagship propaganda outlet, claimed that Venezuela has been “violated, attacked, and assaulted” by the United States and demanded that the U.S. government immediately shows “proof of life” of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.

The big thing I noticed is how the mission was planned to take place on January 2, when both Venezuelans and the US press were presumably still recovering from New Year's Eve. Trump himself had been at at Mar-a-Lago since before Christmas , but he was clearly still at work, for instance meeting with Zelensky the previous Sunday and issuing Truth Social posts on Iran and Somali fraud over the course of the week -- but nothing specific on Venezuela.

Let's compare this action with the outwardly similar removal of Manuel Noriega from Panama in 1989-90 under Poppy Bush:

Noriega, who had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies, consolidated power to become Panama's de facto dictator in the early 1980s. . . . In 1989, Noriega annulled the results of the Panamanian general elections, which appeared to have been won by opposition candidate Guillermo Endara; President Bush responded by reinforcing the U.S. garrison in the Canal Zone. Following the declaration of a state of war between Panama and the United States passed by the Panamanian general assembly,. . . Bush authorized the execution of the Panama invasion plan.

On December 20, the U.S. invasion of Panama began. Panamanian forces were rapidly overwhelmed. . . . Endara was sworn in as president shortly after the start of the invasion. Noriega eluded capture for several days before seeking refuge in the Holy See diplomatic mission in Panama City. He surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was then flown to the U.S., where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The Pentagon estimated that 516 Panamanians were killed during the invasion, including 314 soldiers and 202 civilians. A total of 23 U.S. soldiers and 3 U.S. civilians were killed. The United Nations General Assembly, the Organization of American States and the European Parliament condemned the invasion as a violation of international law.

The Panama operation took over two weeks and left hundreds of casualties. The time span between the invasion and the ultimate capture of Noriega gave the usual suspects plenty of time to set up their condemnations of blah blah blah. In the case of Venezuela, the whole thing took place overnight while everyone important was snoozing away. You can bet the news anchors were still at their retreats in Aspen. As of yesterday, the story at Reuters was:

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said in a New Year's interview that his country is willing to receive U.S. investment in its oil sector, coordinate in the fight against drug trafficking and hold serious talks with the United States.

"We must start to speak seriously, with the facts in hand," Maduro said in his annual interview with a Spanish journalist, originally published in Mexican newspaper La Jornada and broadcast on Venezuelan state television on New Year's Day.

By yesterday night, this was all inoperative. In an interview this morning with Fox:

he said,

I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. The speed, the violence, you know, they used that term. . . . It was extremely complex, the whole maneuver, the number of landings, the number of aircraft. . . the number of helicopters, the different type of fighter jets, we had a fighter jet for every possible situation. . . and they broke into places that were not really able to be broke into, you know? Steel doors that were put there for just this reason, and they got taken out in a matter of seconds. . . . I've done some pretty good ones in other parts of the world, okay? . . . We did another one not so long ago, it was called the knocking out of the Iranian nuclear threat. . .

He imp;lies that casualties on both sides were relatively low, likely much lower than those in Bush's Panama operation. But it's also worth noting that the Iran strike took place on June 22, the period between Memorial Day and July 4 when respectable journalism shuts down for summer break, which is likely to last until Columbus Day lately.

Both Trump and Nick Shirley are re-teaching an important lesson: act when everyone else is snoozing. But Trump is also building a new set of expectations: he does what he wants, but he's unpredictable. In fact, he'll do it at the worst possible time for his opponents, in a way that nevertheless reflects it's been meticulously planned.

In fact, it's becoming clear that the Venezuelan operation was being planned and implemented in detail over the whole course of the past year:

In January 2025, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14157 that directed the US State Department to label certain Western Hemisphere drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

. . . In July, the US designated the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles)—a criminal organization that the US alleges has ties to the Venezuelan leadership—as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. At the time, the US State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs posted on X that it would use "all the resources at our disposal to prevent Maduro from continuing to profit from destroying American lives and destabilizing our hemisphere"

. . . After authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels, the Trump administration doubled the reward for the capture of Maduro to US$50 million. At the time, an anonymous US official told Reuters that military action against those groups did not seem imminent; another official told Reuters that powers granted in the order included allowing the Navy to carry out sea operations including drug interdiction and targeted military raids.

I love how Reuters has always been the patsy lately.

In August 2025, the US began deploying warships and personnel to the Caribbean, citing the need to combat drug cartels, although most of the fentanyl entering the US is over land via Mexico. On 20 August, Trump ordered three Navy warships to the coast of South America. As of 29 August, seven US warships, along with one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, were in and around the Southern Caribbean, bringing along more than 4,500 sailors and marines.

It's simply astonishing that Trump, the intelligence apparatus, and the War Department were able to bring all this planning and rehearsal off without a leak. Nobody, it seems, had the tiniest inkling; Maduro was setting up a diplomatic campaign with China that very dayL

Just 5 hours ago, Chinese officials arrived in Venezuela for talks with President Maduro.

4 hours later, the US launched large airstrikes on Venezuela's capital in a major escalation.

A statement from President Trump is expected. pic.twitter.com/jbDMXSXnRq

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) January 3, 2026

But consider you're China thining about annexing Taiwan. They now have to consider seriously what Trump would do: he could plan almost anything, he could carry it out with incredible speed and surprise, and the US military could bring the whole thing off.

Trump deliberately cultivates an expectation that he acts on impulse -- in fact, that his motives are entirely self-serving and unpredictable. I'm convinced that nothing could be farther from the truth.

But what does this also say about Secretary Hegseth and the War Department? Think about just one tiny part of the whole plan, that the admirals and gemerals were at minimum too terrified to leak. Not the least little peep. Allowing for the relative scale of the different operations, I nevertheless think we haven't seen anything like this since D-Day and the Manhattan Project.

Nick Shirley Made Reporters Work Through The Holidays

The video embedded above was made by Nick Shirley, the interlocutor in the vignette, about a month before his big video on the Minnesota Somali daycare centers went viral. What strikes me is he's done his homework: he's in St Cloud, MN, where I noted in this post here that House Republican Whip Tom Emmer, suddenly a big advocate of deportimng Somali scammers, had told his constituents there in July 2015 that nothing could be done about the Somalis. Shirley had clearly been aware of that meeting when he set up this interview, and he knew what questions to ask.

Now he's got legacy media running scared. Quasi-mainstream NewsNation, whose business model seems to be to hire former prime-time anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Cuomo from big outlets once they're past their sell-by dates, had its reporter Rich McHugh out in the Minnesota snow on New Year's Eve knocking on Somali heath agency doors. For some reason, I can't embed the tweet, but the Instapundit post that has it is here.

This is an indication of Shirley's reach: CNN tried to discount his effort:

🚨 WOW! CNN got ANNIHILATED by Nick Shirley

“They’ve already done 80 indictments, cases have gone on for years!”

NICK: “Then why did I show up one day in Minnesota, all these daycares, no children, millions of dollars, we uncovered nearly $110M in fraud in ONE DAY?” 🔥

CNN:… pic.twitter.com/k35l2bCGBS

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 31, 2025

But the mere fact that CNN had a reporter both out in the cold and indoors trying to reach the Somali scammers on the phone over the Christmas break reinforces the idea that they were actually having to work through the holidays.

And what's really remarkable is that Shirley doesn't fit the conventional journalist mold. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What qualifications does a mainstream journalist need to have to be taken seriously?" It replied,

In 2026, a mainstream journalist is primarily validated by a combination of formal education, demonstrated ethical rigor, and technical proficiency in emerging digital tools.

. . . A bachelor’s degree in journalism, communications, or a related liberal arts field (e.g., political science, history, or economics) is typically required for entry-level roles.

. . . With the rise of misinformation, the ability to verify original sources and differentiate facts from opinions is non-negotiable for credibility.

. . . In 2026, "cultural fluency" is considered a primary currency, requiring journalists to demonstrate deep understanding and awareness of the diverse audiences they serve.

But Shirley is breaking all these rules. Let's start with his Wikipedia entry:

Shirley was raised in Utah. He attended Farmington High School in Farmington, Utah, graduating in 2020.

It isn't clear if he ever even applied for any level of further education, but he clearly comes off in his interviews and presentations as well-spoken. A visit to the speech therapist might polish him up a bit more, but this isn't part of the usual college indoctrination.

Shirley started his YouTube career as an amateur vlogger and prankster at age 16. Most of his pranks involved his high-school friends, while others included publicity stunts such as disrupting celebrity weddings.[7][6][5] He also offered to sell some of his own recorded footage, including of the January 6 attack, to media companies such as CNN and HuffPost.

Shirley said in late 2021 that he would cease his activities on YouTube in order to participate in a religious mission in Chile for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He returned to the platform two years later and began producing political content exclusively.

Like it or not, an LDS upbringing seems to turn out some good kids.

Shirley made multiple videos in support of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the months preceding the 2024 presidential election. He paid a number of Hispanic men $20 each to hold pro-Biden and pro-immigration signs in front of the White House as part of a publicity stunt in favor of Trump. When asked by Reuters whether he had exploited participants in the video, he said he "wanted to give the migrants an opportunity to voice their opinions".

This guy is miles ahead of Reuters reporters with four-year degrees.

Shirley's videos typically feature man-on-the-street interviews in protest locations, migrant shelters, and urban areas. He describes his work as independent journalism aimed at exposing government oversight issues. The Hill wrote that due to his lack of a background in reporting, Shirley has "received pushback from some traditional members of the media for claiming to be a journalist".

But according to this site,

In the United States, journalism holds a singular position among professions, a calling governed not by regulation but by constitutional protection. Unlike medicine, law, engineering, or education, journalism requires no license, formal certification, or governmental approval to practice. This absence of licensure is not the result of oversight or neglect, but a deliberate safeguard designed to protect one of democracy’s most vital institutions: a free and independent press.

I've got to say that Nick Shirley turned my much-expressed attitude that reporters and commentators take great swaths of time surrounding the Christmas holidays off completely upside down, and he did it singlehandedly. And now he's teasing another video:

🚨 Nick Shirley Says His Next Video Will Be Even Crazier Than the First

“It's going to be even crazier because now the Somalis were after me. They were coming, and people were stopping in the middle of intersections … I had to get security for this video coming out.” pic.twitter.com/IgFAbVB6G7

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 31, 2025

But notice his real knack for building interest: "I had to get security for this video coming out.” Hr's picked this up by himself. They don't teach this in journalism school.