{"id":195649,"date":"2026-01-04T13:43:46","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T13:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/maduros-capture-had-the-worlds-ear-but-trump-returned-to-petty-gripes-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T13:43:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T13:43:46","slug":"maduros-capture-had-the-worlds-ear-but-trump-returned-to-petty-gripes-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/maduros-capture-had-the-worlds-ear-but-trump-returned-to-petty-gripes-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Maduro\u2019s capture had the world\u2019s ear \u2013 but Trump returned to petty gripes – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though he also discussed plans to \u2018run\u2019 Venezuela, the US president could not resist upending his moment of glory
US attacks Venezuela \u2013 live updates<\/a>
\u201cN<\/span>ever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few but what I\u2019d really like to talk about is my disastrous predecessor and some pathetic city mayors,\u201d is what Winston Churchill didn\u2019t say during Britain\u2019s war against Adolf Hitler.
On Saturday, Donald Trump fancied himself at his most Churchillian as he hailed the derring-do of US military heroes who toppled Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in an audacious overnight operation<\/a>.
But far from the gravitas of London\u2019s cabinet war rooms or the White House\u2019s situation room, Trump was luxuriating at his winter retreat, the gilded Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he whiles away the days playing golf and the evenings playing DJ.
And while Trump talked at length about the capture of Maduro and vague plans to \u201crun\u201d Venezuela<\/a> in a case of the American empire strikes back, he could not resist upending his moment of glory by airing familiar grievances, from his legal treatment to frustrations with specific officials and a perceived lack of credit for his past actions.
Wearing a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, the president claimed Maduro had sent \u201c<\/strong>savage and murderous gangs\u201d into the US which, with a weave of the Trump brain, led to a digression on crime in Washington DC, then the role of the national guard, and then how the national guard is doing great work in Memphis and New Orleans.
Suddenly, with a global audience on tenterhooks for the future of Latin America, we were here: \u201cWe also helped, as you know, in Chicago and crime went down a little bit there. We did a very small help because we had no working ability with the governor. The governor was a disaster and the mayor was a disaster.\u201d<\/em>
Then Trump pivoted to fires and \u201criots\u201d in Los Angeles, lamenting: \u201cWe did a great job. Got no credit for it whatsoever, but that\u2019s OK, it doesn\u2019t matter. We don\u2019t need the credit.\u201d<\/em>
Standing to Trump\u2019s right, Marco Rubio, secretary of state, remained inscrutable.
The president continues to settle scores. While praising the current military leadership involved in the Venezuela raid, he complained about generals he worked with previously. He said: \u201cI worked with some I didn\u2019t like. I worked with some I didn\u2019t respect.\u201d This was in contrast with Gen Dan \u201cRaizin\u201d Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, whose name is a source of childlike fascination for Trump.
Trump was grilled about why, yet again, he had failed to tell members of Congress what he was up to. He shot back with gripes about their trustworthiness, stating: \u201cCongress has a tendency to leak … Congress will leak and we don\u2019t want leakers.\u201d
Later, he was asked about his pardoning of Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, <\/strong><\/em>the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. How could he square this with the purported crackdown on narco-terrorist Maduro?
When in doubt, blame former president Joe Biden. Trump asserted that Hern\u00e1ndez \u201cwas treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump\u201d, using the third person as a rhetorical flourish: \u201cThat didn\u2019t work out too well for them. This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly.\u201d<\/em>
Indeed, Trump mentioned his predecessor half a dozen times. \u201cWhat Joe Biden administration\u2019s did to our country should never be forgotten,\u201d he said. If Trump had lost the 2024 election, he claimed, the US would have become \u201cVenezuela on steroids\u201d.
After nearly an hour, the final question was about Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. Another chance to bash Biden: <\/em>\u201cLook, that\u2019s Biden\u2019s war. That\u2019s not my war \u2026 If I were president, it would have never happened. Putin says it, everybody says it.\u201d
Love it or loathe it, Trump had just done something big and historic that made the whole world sit up and take notice. He had shaken the kaleidoscope of the rules-based order and tried to make American interventionism great again despite the reservations of his support base. Yet here he was still getting peevish about perceived slights, ingratitudes and injustices.
Trump is a man who is comfortable in his skin. But as a recent media report on the 79-year-old\u2019s state of health noted, his hand has become so delicate that it started bleeding when Attorney General Pam Bondi nicked him with her ring while giving the president a high-five. The world\u2019s most powerful man is also its most thin-skinned.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though he also discussed plans to \u2018run\u2019 Venezuela, the US president could not resist upending his moment of gloryUS attacks Venezuela \u2013 live updates\u201cNever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few but what I\u2019d really like to talk about is my disastrous predecessor and some pathetic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-195649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}