Taking time off from the Iran war this week, Donald Trump posted a picture of Venezuela as the 51st state, the map of the country covered in the Stars and Stripes. This was the US President’s usual trolling, but as his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, once said to me, Trump jokes, but he never really jokes.
In characteristic fashion, Trump doubled down on his meme. He told Fox News he was “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state”. Venezuela has almost 29 million people. It would be the third most populous state in the US, after California and Texas.
It does not seem to have occurred to Trump that Venezuelans might object to being annexed. He told a US journalist, Sharyl Attkisson, quite accurately, that the US was already helping to run the place. “Venezuela is a very happy country right now,” he said. “They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run.”
Shorts
In threatening to seize Venezuela, Trump is not merely being his usual transgressive self. There is a long tradition of US presidents looking beyond America’s borders and grabbing the nearest piece of territory. It is how the US came to assume its present shape. But he is reaching further than any US president before him: Venezuela is 1,400 miles from the continental United States.
