Reacting to Donald Trump’s administration’s late night announcement of two more unprovoked attacks on alleged drug boats that followed the president renewed threats against Venezuela, longtime Washington Post columnist David Ignatius claimed he sees a pattern of conquest and domination emanating from the White House.
During an appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” Ignatius, an expert on foreign affairs, claimed the president appears dead set on taking over Latin America.
Speaking with the hosts, he glibly called it a “branding exercise” for Trump who loves nothing more than seeing his name on everything he touches.
“This Congress, as you say, seems determined to give up its Article One powers to declare war," he said of Trump's saber-rattling. “Nobody really has the guts to stand up and insist on a clarity about what this mission is.”
“My own perspective as an observer is that this is, in a way, a branding exercise,” he added. “Donald Trump wants to brand Latin America as his own. This is going to be Trump Latin America and Venezuela is the first test case. He wants hegemony, he wants to have us rule in our hemisphere unquestioned. It's the biggest difference, really, in his foreign policy is this focus on Latin America. And I think that he is gradually tightening the squeeze on [President Nicolás] Maduro and Venezuela, finding new reasons each week.”
“For now, several months, it's been these drug smuggling boats,” he noted. “But, as we've noted, they're not smuggling the drugs that are really doing damage to the United States. Then it was seizing oil tankers that had been sanctioned under previous reasons but were available targets. And now the president, as we sometimes say, is jawboning he's threatening Maduro with further additional strikes. And this not so veiled suggestion that what he really wants is for him out of Venezuela.”
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