Scarcely a week ago, U.S. warplanes and drones were streaking across the Caracas night sky to deliver a swift end to the reign of the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. The extraordinary display of kinetic violence delivered a stunning reminder about the reach of the world’s most powerful military—and symbolized the start of a new chapter for the man who commands it.
Donald Trump has been emboldened. The president and his advisers believe that the strike both reignited his political momentum and underscored the lack of concrete limits on his ability to wield power at home and abroad. He blew past the need for congressional approval—or even notification—and has reveled in brandishing armed forces to intimidate foreign foes and friends alike. He seized upon a deadly confrontation on a cold Minnesota street to accelerate his push to put masked, armed federal officers in Democrat-run cities that didn’t vote for him. And he brought his campaign of retribution against perceived political enemies to a new target, one that could undermine faith in the pillars of the nation’s economy.
Even for Trump, it’s been quite the week. But this is more than just a series of dizzying news cycles. The White House, after months of struggle, believes that it has found its footing again. Trump, though never restrained, is now pure id, acting on impulse and goaded on by advisers who see an opportunity to further expand executive power.
His poll numbers are still low, and the aura of invincibility that he held for the first half of last year is gone. The MAGA base has been fractured, and some Republicans have objected to his plans, while many more quietly worry that the president is ignoring the economic issues that will likely decide this year’s midterm elections. But Trump simply doesn’t care.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s longtime adviser, put it to me this way: “It’s a full flex.”
The first days of 2026 have been breathtaking in their share of Wait, he did what? headlines, cable chyrons, and news alerts. The Caracas strike, though rumored for weeks, happened so quickly that many Americans who’d gone to bed unaware that a capture operation was under way woke up to an image of Maduro wearing a Nike tracksuit and handcuffs. Trump then announced that the United States would “run” Venezuela—wait, what?—and also take much of its oil. The military’s triumph then inspired the president and his advisers to renew a call to seize Greenland, thoroughly alarming European leaders who have watched in horror as Trump’s desires for a strategically placed but largely uninhabited sheet of ice have escalated from social-media trolling to an existential threat against the NATO alliance. Where else could Trump wield American power? Perhaps in Iran, which has been engulfed by mass protests, leading the president to threaten action against an oppressive regime that has bedeviled the United States for nearly half a century.
Back home, an ICE agent in Minneapolis fired three bullets into the car of a 37-year-old mother who had been protesting deportation operations. Trump, instead of calling for national unity at a time of tragedy, blamed the victim, and his administration sent more armed officers to the city. And his retribution campaign—faltering to this point, to be sure—targeted the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation. The normally soft-spoken Jerome Powell called it payback for a disagreement on interest rates and warned that Trump had jeopardized the Fed’s independence, perceived by many as the bedrock of American financial stability.
Oh, and for good measure, the White House launched a website on January 6 that thoroughly twisted the facts of the 2021 insurrection, as Trump, once more, suggested that U.S. elections, including the upcoming midterms, could be rigged. The next day, Trump sat for a two-hour interview with a newspaper he often derides to express regret for not seizing voting machines in 2020 and to bemoan the impact of civil-rights legislation on white people.
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“It’s insane,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia told me, as he recapped the events of the past week, including the threats against Powell and Greenland. “This is beyond ludicrous. What is he even talking about? At what point is enough enough?”
Many second-term presidents, coming to grips with their fate as a lame duck, turn to an area in which they have the most unilateral control: foreign policy. Yet it’s been surprising to see how firmly Trump has embraced a new plan of international action. He campaigned in 2016 against so-called forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pledged to avoid such military entanglements. But then he fell in love with the “one and done” strategy of a quick burst of military action—such as the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last June—and blustered about Maduro for months before green-lighting the strike.
He surprised many—and outraged the isolationist factions of his base—by repeatedly declaring that the U.S. would be heavily involved in Venezuela for years. Besotted with Venezuela’s ability to flood the market with oil, Trump has set up what critics say is an extortionist racket of the South American nation. He has told its new leader, in essence, Give us the oil we want, and we’ll let you stay in power, and has privately joked that Venezuela could be in the running to become the 51st state, two people close to him told me.
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There’s likely more to come. Some in the administration believe that Cuba could be next, and White House aides told me that Trump will be briefed tomorrow on an array of options for intervention in Iran, including some military operations that are ostensibly meant to protect the protesters but that could also hasten the end of the regime. Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out using military force to seize Greenland, even though it could shatter the globe’s most enduring and successful alliance. Greenland is part of Denmark, a fellow member of NATO (Article 5 of NATO’s charter declares that an attack on one is an attack on all). European leaders are so spooked by Trump’s bellicose rhetoric that they’ve publicly rebuked the United States. Germany and the United Kingdom are considering troop deployments to Greenland. Trump, though, seems unbothered by the blowback to his threat to redraw the world’s maps. Making a deal instead of using force would be “easier,” the president told reporters last night on Air Force One, adding, “But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”
Trump, of course, is no stranger to the strategy of flooding the zone with outrageous statements and acts, making it hard for his political opponents and the media (not to mention the general public) to keep track. White House aides and close allies privately acknowledged to me that they have been grateful to control the news cycle in the early days of 2026.
But Trump is still set to begin the second year of his term far weaker than he was in the first. He is an unpopular president, per polling, and most Americans dislike both the strong-arm deportation tactics at the center of the Minneapolis protests and Trump’s efforts to use the Department of Justice to carry out his political vendettas. West Wing aides have been eager to shift the conversation away from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein controversy, which, when it erupted over the summer, was the first moment when many Republican lawmakers seemed willing to defy Trump. (The DOJ has repeatedly missed deadlines to release all of the materials in the case; the story will likely spring back to life when more comes out in the weeks ahead.) The White House has also begun to take on its thorniest political issue: high prices. As part of its news blitz this month, the Trump administration has unveiled measures meant to drive down the costs of prescription drugs and credit-card fees, as well as to make mortgages more obtainable.
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The White House spokesperson Kush Desai told me in a statement that the blitz is part of the administration’s work in “implementing the free market policies like tax cuts and deregulation that do work rectifying the ‘America Last’ policies that have let Americans down.”
But some in the GOP remain concerned that Trump is distracted and that the flurry of foreign-policy flexing will be a sugar high that wears off quickly. Others have urged him to stop meddling with allies. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, in a floor speech last week, said that he was “sick of stupid” and urged Trump to focus on his domestic legacy.
Indeed, Republican lawmakers have sent word to the White House that affordability, not military interventionism, remains top of mind for their constituents, and that voters don’t much care about what’s going in distant lands such as Venezuela and Iran—and can find Greenland on the map only because it’s drawn disproportionately large.
