Venezuela and Other Trump Misadventures

Plus all the links

So…I did up a quick item on Friday to put up with links from over the last couple of weeks and figured I’d run it Sunday morning. Well, that didn’t work out as I expected. Instead of junking it, I’m putting a quick extra item up top, and lightly editing where necessary. I’m not sure all of this will strike folks as relevant now - but if not don’t forget that there’s an excellent and up-to-date set of links at the bottom.

Item One: I’m obviously not a foreign policy expert, and while I do have things to say about Venezuela and the presidency I’ll mostly wait until we learn more. I will say what I’ve been saying throughout 2025: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth certainly appear to have dismantled the basic processes for developing and coordinating foreign policy and military action set up by Harry Truman, and have replaced them with presidential whim and bureaucratic freelancing. That’s…not good.

See also James Fallows on Saturday’s press conference, and the very real possibility that Trump improvised a totally different “plan” than what anyone else in the administration intended.

Public opinion may not be the most important part of all of this, but it does matter. I see people talking about “Wag the Dog” already and I’ll mostly just link back to what I said about this back in November: If Trump thinks that foreign adventurism will make him popular, he’s very likely totally mistaken.

Item Two: Trump has been bragging again about “acing” a basic cognitive test for the “third straight time.”

So many unknowns here. Did his doctors really order the exam because they were concerned? If so, that’s an enormous big deal - possibly reason in itself for him to be removed from office. But it’s also possible that he either made the whole thing up, or asked to be tested so he could brag about it.

Which gets to…bragging about passing a basic competency test? Again: Yikes! And again, two possibilities. He might understand it’s nothing to brag about but believe that people (his supporters? The media?) are too stupid to know that. Or he may sincerely believe that it’s an amazing accomplishment – even more Yikes!

One general point: It sure would be nice to institutionalize public disclosure of presidential health. We’re basically back now to where things were up through John Kennedy’s presidency, when the White House would habitually hide or outright lie about even major issues. Things improved after that, but it was never properly regularized and therefore it became easy for Trump (and for that matter Joe Biden) to evade meaningful disclosure. Often, indeed, to their own disadvantage, as wild speculation has replaced reasonably solid public information.

Item Three: Trump also vetoed two bills, both of which passed uncontested through Congress, apparently as retaliation against GOP Members of the House who had opposed him on other matters.

Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for a president to use bills as bargaining chips; in fact, that’s basically what smart presidents do, regardless of what they think of the underlying substance. If Trump was in fact a “transactional” president, as many claim, that would be what he’s doing here. But as usual with Trump, these vetoes are better seen as poorly thought out temper tantrums, not bargaining.

After all, both bills passed through both chambers without any apparent opposition, suggesting the GOP-sponsored bills may well have the two-thirds support needed for a veto override. But even if Trump could rally enough “no” votes to prevent that, the House sponsors are in a strong position to force the issue. After all, the temporary spending bill that re-opened the government expires at the end of January, and Congress must pass a new bill to prevent another shutdown. In the House, that probably means a party-line vote. And the 219-213 GOP majority (after Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation) means that any three Republicans might be enough to sink that bill.

In other words: Trump is likely picking a fight he won’t win…while also alienating people whose votes he’ll need. Speaking of which…

Item Four. Before the Venezuela attack, Trump threatened that if Iran violently suppresses protesters, he’ll “come to their rescue” and that the US is “locked and loaded” to do so.

As US/Iran maven Dalia Dassa Kaye points out, “A US government that was serious about protecting Iranian people would not be deporting Iranians back to Iran against their will.” Especially since it’s joined with a “dismantling of human rights and democracy tools at the State Department.”

I’m far from an expert, but it’s hard to see exactly what the US could do here, with sanctions against Iran already in place, no willingness to accept refugees if necessary, and no obvious levers available. As many presidents have discovered, if a full-scale invasion doesn’t make much sense, there are real limits to what the US can do directly to support anti-regime protesters in foreign nations. See Ike and Hungary in 1956, LBJ and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Reagan and Poland in 1981, and George H.W. Bush and China in 1989, among others,

It’s not clear how seriously to take Trump, who also retreated on several tariff threats in the last week, while meanwhile bombing Nigeria and taking action in Venezuela. It’s possible that Trump thinks he’s doing fancy strategy here, but it reads (again) more like temper tantrums. It’s incredibly dangerous, for the US and the world, for other nations to come to the conclusion that the US president is “TACO” – that Trump Always Chickens Out - but it’s also incredibly dangerous if he mostly backs down but occasionally lashes out.

All the Items. Trump’s attack on democracy and the rule of law continue, which makes him very dangerous; there’s also plenty of danger, too, in sheer incompetence and incoherence in the Oval Office. But it’s still worth recognizing that it’s going very badly for him. He’s regularly rolled by everyone; as Greg Sargent reports, that includes falling way short on his core “mass deportation” goals. Remember too that just because something happens it doesn’t mean that it was Trump who wanted it. Yes, that could even include Venezuela. We don’t know enough yet to say one way or another.

Meanwhile his polling numbers continue to be awful; FiftyPlusOne has him back below 40.0% after what may have been a brief December rally. (Nate Silver has him a bit better, but agrees on the general trajectory). His net approval is basically where it was in January 2017, and worse than every other polling-era president at that point of their first year in office.

OK, time for the links, starting with those political scientists who interrupted their vacations to post quickly on the weekend’s news:

1. Elizabeth Saunders at Good Authority has the must-read on Venezuela and the world Trump is creating.

2. Seva Gunitsky on Venezuela and Putin.

3. I agree with Seth Masket that Trump supporters who opposed foreign wars are unlikely to split with him over, well, war. But I think there’s a real chance that if things are perceived to be going badly his approval rating overall and on foreign policy could fall further.

4. Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan on Mayor Mamdani. Count me in the camp of those who expect him to fall short – not because of anything about him or his coalition or his ideology, but because I can’t remember a New York mayor who didn’t fall short. Governing is hard, especially in NYC, and even for those who have the right tools. Still, nothing wrong with having hope, and perhaps he’ll beat the odds.

5. Adam Bonica on Trump and windmills.

6. Lindsey Cormack on 2025 in congressional newsletters.

7. Meredith Conroy on gender gaps in 2025.

8. And Matthew Green at Mischiefs of Faction on discharge petitions in the House.