Which Countries Will Trump Invade Next? He’s Given Us a Guide.
The reasons he listed for toppling Venezuela’s Maduro apply just as well to many other governments.
DONALD TRUMP SAID ON SATURDAY that he invaded Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, for several reasons. He outlined them in a press conference and an interview on Fox & Friends hours after the operation concluded. He said he did it to stop drug trafficking, seize oil, save democracy, reassert American dominance, and punish Venezuela for sending migrants to the United States.
That’s a long list, and it raises a serious problem: In theory, these rationales would justify toppling other governments beyond Venezuela. In fact, Trump specifically named additional countries to which the same arguments would apply, and he signaled to at least two of them that they might be next. It’s an agenda of hemispheric conquest that would take the United States back to the 1800s.
Here’s a list of Trump’s targets—explicit or implicit—including one very close to us that he has already attacked.
1. Colombia.
At the press conference, a reporter noted that on December 22, after threatening Venezuela, Trump warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” The reporter asked Trump whether, in the wake of the U.S. operation in Venezuela, he had a message for Colombia. Trump repeated his warning to Petro: “He’s making cocaine. They’re sending it into the United States. So he does have to watch his ass.”
2. Cuba.
Another reporter asked Trump whether he had a message for Cuba. Trump replied that Cuba was “very similar” to Venezuela and that he wanted to help Cuban exiles, just as he had helped Venezuelan exiles. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of immigrants from Cuba and a longtime foe of its Communist regime, added that in view of Maduro’s fate, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit.”
3. Mexico.
On Fox & Friends, Trump was asked whether his move against Venezuela was a message to Mexico. He said no, and he praised Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom he has had relatively good relations. “But the cartels are running Mexico. She’s not running Mexico,” he continued. “So we have to do something. . . . Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.”
4. Canada.
In the Fox & Friends interview, Trump said the flow of illegal drugs into the United States was coming not just from Venezuela and Mexico but “through Canada, too.” This wasn’t just an aside: In a proclamation Trump issued last year, he asserted that Canada’s failure to control drug trafficking “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat . . . to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and he declared “a national emergency . . . to deal with that threat.”
5. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
On Fox & Friends, Trump said he had ousted Maduro in part to punish Venezuela for sending prisoners, mental patients, and other undesirable migrants to the United States. “They sent ’em by the hundreds of thousands of people into our country, and that is just unforgivable,” said Trump. But according to the Migration Policy Institute, twice as many unauthorized migrants have come to the United States from El Salvador as from Venezuela. The same is true of Honduras. Nearly three times as many have come from Guatemala, and more than ten times as many have come from Mexico.
6. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Iran.
At his briefing, Trump said he had authorized the invasion of Venezuela in part to install American oil companies and extract the country’s crude. He portrayed this confiscation as overdue compensation for Venezuela’s nationalization of its oil industry in 1976. “Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars,” he alleged. But many other countries have also nationalized their oil production in the last century, leading to longstanding grievances and litigation with American oil companies. Among those countries are Mexico, Iran, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador.
7. Brazil.
At the briefing, Trump was asked why an “America First” president would take over a country in South America. “We want to surround ourself with energy,” he replied. “We have tremendous energy in that country [Venezuela]. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world.” But Venezuela ranks only second on the International Energy Agency’s list of the top oil-producing countries in Latin America. Brazil ranks first.
8. Belize, Costa Rica, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic.
In September, Trump designated Venezuela and all of these nations, among others, as “major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries” under U.S. law. That could make them targets under the drug-war rationale he outlined in the interview and the briefing.
9. Greenland.
At the press conference, Trump said regime change in Venezuela was part of “our new national security strategy” to counter “growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere.” That sounds like what he said two weeks ago when he announced the appointment of an envoy to acquire Greenland. “We need Greenland for national security,” he declared at that time. “We have to have it.”
10. The United States.
On Fox & Friends, Trump said he had freed Venezuela from a dictator. As evidence, he claimed that Maduro’s putative re-election last year was “rigged” and “a disgrace, just like my election was a disgrace. 2020 was a disgrace.” In fact, said Trump, Maduro’s sham election “wasn’t a hell of a lot worse than what they [the Democrats] did to us in 2020.”
Was Trump implying that American elections deserved no more respect than Venezuelan elections? If so, was he proposing . . . to use force? It seems absurd to imagine an American president invading his own country. He might attack Cuba or Colombia—but the United States? How would that even work?
The answer is that it’s already happened. Five years ago, almost to the day, Trump launched an assault on our Capitol, watched the battle on a screen as it unfolded in real time—just as he did during the Venezuela operation—and egged on his forces as they hunted our vice president.1 Maduro’s regime isn’t the first government Trump has tried to topple in our hemisphere. It’s the second.
Correction (January 4, 2026, 1:05 a.m.): As originally published, this sentence began “Six years ago”; it has been corrected to “Five years ago.”
I recall back when Bush led us into Iraq, the whole "axis of evil" nonsense. It appeared he and his idiot admin thought they could remake the entire Middle east as a "democracy" and put an end to all the jihadism in that region. First take Iraq, then Iran, then the rest would come to heel.
I remember critics at the time saying, this is not going to go like they think it is. The critics were right. And if Trump thinks he's going to run Latin America through force, he is insane. It's not going to work. People have pride of place. They don't want us there telling them how its going to be.
Hubris goes before a fall.
Time for We the People, and our reps in Congress, to stand in opposition and protect our constitution from this bald faced tyrant’s most heinous travesty. Taking it to the streets is patriotism. Our Military Refusing illegal orders is also patriotism. Let’s Pray for all those who serve to find their spines and remember what we fight for (hint: it’s not our oil companies - it’s freedom under the rule of law)