WASHINGTON — Predictably the southern Minnesota delegate to Congress, Brad Finstad, fell dutifully in line behind President Trump’s military invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of the country’s president. Finstad, a Republican, called the world “now safer” and said that Venezuela can now “reclaim their democracy.” Finstad called Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro “a criminal narco-terrorist and dictator who ruled through corruption and fear.” Finstad’s reaction was knee-jerk, coming even as geopolitical experts were only beginning to make sense of the implications. In announcing the military action, Trump was unable to explain his self-contradicting positions on Latin America coherently. Nor could he lay out any plan into the future except broadly that the United States would be running Venezuela, population 30 million, and that U.S. companies would take over the vast Venezuelan oil production infrastructure. Trump offered a lame justification for invading a sovereign country. He cuted in the long-abandoned U.S. Monroe Doctrine of 1823 for Western hemisphere dominanance. He joked that the Monroe Doctrine should. now be called the Don Doctrine. Trump’s first name is Donald. Get it. Get it.
