President Donald Trump has given the public a glimpse inside his imperial fever dream by sharing an edited image showing the American flag covering a handful of other countries and territories.
The taunting image, shared on his Truth Social site during a late-night posting spree between Monday night and Tuesday morning, shows Canada, the semi-autonomous island of Greenland, and Venezuela as part of the United States.
The post could be perceived as a flippant joke, but given Trump’s recent rhetoric, and his actions in Venezuela, it takes on a whole new meaning.
It is an edited version of a real photo from August of last year, which shows the 79-year-old head of state holding court with European leaders in the Oval Office, discussing the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
In the photograph are U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
They all look on as Trump speaks, following a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That call revolved around Putin’s ongoing attempt to take Ukrainian territory for Russia, fueled by a desire to return the country to its imperial past.
Trump’s taunting post comes as he jostles with the same leaders over his own dreams of a U.S. empire. This has been fueled by his recent obsession with taking Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally. He has floated the idea of buying the massive Arctic island, but has refused to rule out using force.
Appearing in front of the U.K. Parliament on Tuesday morning, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that Trump is emboldened by the threat posed by China and Russia, which he is taking “seriously,” specifically in relation to the Arctic.
As part of his wild overnight posting spree, Trump also shared a mocked-up image of him, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio planting the U.S. flag on Greenland.
At the beginning of Trump 2.0, he often mused about making Canada the “51st state” of the U.S. He appears to have returned to the idea of taking over the United States’ northern neighbor.
He has been fixating, again, on what he sees as vulnerabilities along Canada’s northern border that could be exploited by U.S. adversaries, two U.S. officials, a senior administration official, and three former senior U.S. officials told NBC News.
“They certainly need to up their game when it comes to Arctic capabilities,” one official told the outlet, adding that Canada’s northern border “is not acceptable given today’s threats” and that “the status quo is not enough.”
Venezuela, of course, has already felt the wrath of Trump’s imperial whims this year. The so-called “Operation Absolute Resolve” on Jan. 3 saw U.S. operatives arrest and deport the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, under the cover of darkness. Ostensibly, this was to try him in an American court because of his alleged “narco-terrorism,” but the Trump administration has made no secret of the role the desire for control of the country’s huge oil reserves played in the operation.
Trump has said the responsibility to pick the country’s next leader rests on his administration. The choice appears to be between the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, who stands for continuity, and opposition leader María Corina Machado, who seeks the restoration of democracy.
And despite Machado literally giving her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump in a bizarre ceremony at the White House last week, he appears to favor Rodríguez, the daughter of a Marxist revolutionary and vice president under Maduro.
Rodríguez, who relentlessly defended the Maduro regime against accusations of drug-trafficking and election-stealing, is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump has said.
But Trump’s praise comes laced with a warning, and a reminder that he’s the real boss. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic earlier this month.
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