▲ CIA Director John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump and United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, observe a remote transmission of the operation against Nicolás Maduro.Photo Afp
David Brooks and Jim Cason
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, January 4, 2026, p. 4
New York and Washington. Donald Trump, celebrating the military operation against the government of Venezuela, indicated that this is also a message to other governments in the Western Hemisphere, Mexico included, that they have to subordinate themselves to the interests of their country under the Monroe Doctrine and as the dominant State in the hemisphere.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview about the military operation against Venezuela and which can be interpreted as a message directed to Mexico, Trump told Fox News that “it was not the intention,” but added that “something will have to be done” with the power of the drug cartels in this country. He added that with President Claudia Sheinbaum “we are very friendly, she is a good woman, but the cartels rule in Mexico. She does not rule in Mexico…
“She is very afraid of the cartels… I have asked her numerous times if she would like us to get rid of the cartels, and she has said no. Something will have to be done with Mexico,” he concluded.
But he did not mention Mexico again in the press conference broadcast to the nation later this Saturday. However, he placed the war operation within the resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine – or what is now called the “Donroe” doctrine in his honor. It was in that context that other countries in the region were talked about.
“Cuba will be something that we will have to talk about, because Cuba is a failed nation now… it is very similar in that we want to help the people of Cuba,” Trump responded to the question about what all this means for the island. His Secretary of State, the Cuban-American Marco Rubio, added that “Cuba is a disaster,” and noted that the operation in Venezuela shows that Trump is willing to take actions to accompany his words. “If I lived in Havana, I would be worried.”
Trump was also asked about Colombia, and he repeated the message he recently offered that the government of that country continues to allow the cultivation and trafficking of cocaine and “they are sending it to the United States,” and he repeated his phrase that its president, Gustavo Petro, “does have to watch his ass.”
When asked about the capture early this Saturday of a president whom he accuses of drug trafficking while he recently decided to pardon a former Latin American head of state, the Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a long prison sentence after being found guilty of drug trafficking in a trial in the United States, Trump only repeated that the way in which he was criminally prosecuted was “unfair.” He added that he supported Nasry Asfura, the presidential candidate from the same party as Hernández, who won, and that this showed that the majority in that country is not upset with his pardon.
He asserted that, in fact, the Latin American candidates who were supported by Trump won not only in Honduras, but in Chile and before that in Argentina. “We are doing very well,” he stated.
