How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Donald Trump told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-venezuela.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New York Times</a> on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2026/01/04/trump-maduro-venezuela-war-media/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">kidnapping</a> President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial.&nbsp;Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine — a doctrine that through the years “has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene,” says historian <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/greg-grandin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Greg Grandin</a>. “Trump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is as a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it's a substitute for liberal international law.”&nbsp;This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington discusses the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela, its larger aims of controlling the Western Hemisphere, and bringing Latin America to heel with Grandin, the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/23/border-militia-migrants/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">author</a> of numerous <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/16/one-wall-supersized-extra-racism-hold-the-wars/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">books</a>, including most recently "<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747326/america-america-by-greg-grandin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">America, América: A New History of the New World</a>."“There's an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism,” says Grandin. “They imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.”&nbsp;The administration’s vision is outlined in the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Security Strategy</a> the White House released in December. “This is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form. But what's also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. … It's reserving the right to treat the rest of the world like it treats Latin America.”&nbsp;Trump and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change, to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have <a href="https://theintercept.com/2026/01/06/trump-wars-venezuela-colombia-cuba-iran/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">threatened to expand military operations</a> to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined “<a href="https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Narco-Terrorist Elite</a>,” also joins the conversation to discuss the former Florida senator’s history and ambitions.Tkacik points out that Rubio, a driving force behind Maduro’s ouster, represents a wing of the Republican Party <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/venezuela-boat-oil-trump-latin-america/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fixated on battling nominally left leaders in the region</a>. That mentality is at odds with a key faction of Trump’s base, who say they’re against foreign intervention because they think the government should keep its attention on U.S. soil.Trump’s attack on Venezuela and fixation on so-called “narco-terrorists,” Tkacik says, “represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.”Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intercept-briefing/id1195206601" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2js8lwDRiK1TB4rUgiYb24?si=e3ce772344ee4170" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, or wherever you listen.&nbsp;If you want to support our work, you can go to <a href="https://join.theintercept.com/donate/Donate_Podcast?source=interceptedshoutout&recurring_period=one-time" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">theintercept.com/join</a>.&nbsp;<hr> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.

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