Taking Greenland Would Be Unpopular

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Avery Lotz at Axios:

Americans are divided on the merits of President Trump's recent foreign incursions and threats and remain especially skeptical of acquiring Greenland, new polling has found.

The big picture: While the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has gained support in its aftermath, Trump's Greenland gambit remains deeply unpopular, underscoring the political riskiness of a key piece of his so-called "Donroe Doctrine."

By the numbers: A plurality of Americans say Trump's use of military force against Venezuela was not justified, but a growing share back it, including a majority of Republicans, per polling from The Economist and YouGov.Meanwhile, 17% of U.S. adults said they approve of the president's push to acquire Greenland, according to a Reuters-Ipsos survey conducted between Jan. 12-13. Two out of five Republicans say they support doing so.

However, only 4% of those surveyed — and 8% of Republicans — said using military force to take Greenland is a good idea, per the Reuters-Ipsos poll.

A separate poll released by the Economist-YouGov found broad opposition to seizing ownership of Greenland, either by force or monetary incentives.Just 8% of U.S. adults — and 18% of Republicans — backed taking control of the self-governing territory of longtime U.S. ally Denmark by force.

Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy at CNN:

Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose the United States attempting to take control of Greenland, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, indicating that President Donald Trump’s push to expand America’s territory faces stiff headwinds with the public.

The survey finds just 25% of Americans favor the US attempting to take control of the Danish territory. Even the president’s partisans are about evenly divided, with 50% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they support it and 50% opposed. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are deeply against the move, with 94% opposed overall, including 80% who say they strongly oppose it. About 8 in 10 independents who don’t lean toward either party are also opposed.

Trump said Wednesday on his social media website Truth Social that “anything less” than US control of Greenland is “unacceptable.” The message came ahead of a meeting at the White House between Danish officials, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that appeared to do little to bring the two sides any closer to an agreement.

 

Big Mad Don

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including the snatching of Maduro from Venezuela.

Whoa. Trump goes nuclear on the five Republicans who backed the Venezuela war powers resolution, saying they “should never be elected to office again.”

He names them: Collins, Murkowski, Paul, Hawley, Young pic.twitter.com/YvCKdhNzWx

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) January 8, 2026

Josh Dawsey, Annie Linskey, Lindsay Wise, and  Siobhan Hughes at The Wall Street Journal:

President Trump called Republican senators on Thursday to personally rebuke them for supporting a war-powers resolution that served as a symbolic repudiation of the administration’s moves in Venezuela, according to congressional and White House officials familiar with the calls.

Trump called Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana, the officials said.

In at least some of the calls, he told the senators they were voting against the military, two officials said.

...

A spokeswoman for Collins confirmed he called the senator. Trump expressed frustration at Collins for her vote, according to a person familiar with the matter. The president complained that she never did anything for him and said that supporting his efforts in Venezuela—and voting against the resolution—were important for the country, the person said. Most of the call involved Trump expressing his rage, and at one point he did say that he was so angry he might support Collins’s opponent, the person said.

Collins doesn’t have a Republican opponent. So far, only Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and Democrat Graham Platner, an oyster farmer, have indicated that they plan to run. The deadline for running is March 15, according to the secretary of state’s office, and the paperwork related to those bids became available last week, the office said.

When reporters read Trump’s social-media post to Collins Thursday after the vote, she said dryly that Trump “obviously is unhappy with the vote,” adding, “I guess this means that he would prefer to have Gov. Mills or somebody else.”

A Long Time in Venezuela

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- including the snatching of Maduro from Venezuela.

David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

During the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump did not give a precise time range for how long the United States would remain Venezuela’s political overlord. Would it be three months? Six months? A year? Longer?

“I would say much longer,” the president replied.

Over the course of the interview, Mr. Trump addressed a wide range of topics, including the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, Greenland and NATO, his health and his plans for further White House renovations.

Mr. Trump did not answer questions about why he recognized Mr. Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s new leader instead of backing María Corina Machado, the opposition leader whose party led a successful election campaign against Mr. Maduro in 2024 and recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He declined to comment when asked if he had spoken to Ms. Rodríguez.

“But Marco speaks to her all the time,” he said of the secretary of state. Mr. Trump added: “I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration.”

Mr. Trump also made no commitments about when elections would be held in Venezuela, which had a long democratic tradition from the late 1950s until Hugo Chavez took power in 1999.

"Take the Oil"

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Anton Troianovski at NYT:

While he was out of office, President Trump mused about what would have happened if the United States had taken control of Venezuela.

“We would have gotten all that oil,” he said in a speech at the North Carolina Republican Convention in 2023. “It would have been right next door.”

On Saturday, Mr. Trump made it clear that he now intends to follow through.

In the last year, as the Trump administration built up pressure against Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, the president and his top aides said that the aggressive U.S. actions were necessary to curb drugs and migration from that country. But on Saturday, as Mr. Trump discussed the predawn attack on Venezuela that led to the capture of its leader, it was evident that the president’s longtime fixation on oil was a driving factor in his decision to greenlight the mission.

“We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he celebrated the seizure of Mr. Maduro, promising that American companies would be able to tap more of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

On January 21, 2017, he told the employees of the CIA:

But when I was young—and I think we're all, sort of, young. When I was young, we were always winning things in this country. We'd win with trade. We'd win with wars. At a certain age, I remember hearing from one of my instructors, "The United States has never lost a war." And then, after that, it's like we haven't won anything. We don't win anymore. The old expression, "To the victor belong the spoils"—you remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil. Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it, Mike [Pence], if we kept the oil you probably wouldn't have ISIS because that's where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. [Laughter] Maybe you'll have another chance. But the fact is, should have kept the oil.

But taking military action on behalf of the oil companies is likely to be unpopular.  Americans do not like oil companies: