Welcome to “The New Monroe Doctrine,” where I give you an update on what’s going on in the Western Hemisphere, south of our border, especially as it relates to the United States.
When the News Gets Personal
Slow news week, huh?
For those of you who have been with me for a while, you know that I’ve been predicting the fall of Nicolás Maduro for months, since the summer, and even went out on a limb and suggested how it would likely end up happening. I say this not to toot my own horn, but to tell you that I became personally invested in this situation. Every week, I was documenting what was happening, what the rest of the media was getting wrong, what Donald Trump and Marco Rubio were saying, and what Maduro’s response was — usually some sort of silly song and dance number. I was getting to know many Venezuelan people and journalists, working on some interviews, etc. I’m already passionate about Latin America and our foreign policy there, but seeing a free Venezuela became a passion project to say the least.
On Friday afternoon/evening, January 2, I struggled to write that evening’s New Monroe Doctrine column — nothing made sense in my mind. I had a headache brewing. What should have taken a couple of hours took like four or five. It finally occurred to me that I was exhausted. With the exception of one or two days, I worked through the entire month of December, even on holidays, and I just needed a mental and physical break. I cut out early, took a bath, watched a little TV, got into bed, and thought, I’ll just sleep in tomorrow.
What could possibly happen? The Western Hemisphere can do without me for a night.
On Saturday morning, when I finally woke up and looked at my phone, I was alarmed at the number of texts and notifications I had, many from our managing editor, Chris Queen. As it turns out, a lot can happen overnight — Maduro had been captured.
And I missed it. I didn’t get to break the news. This was the big story I’d been working toward for months, and I slept right through it. What bothered me even more was that when I opened my email, I had a few from some of you with people on the ground in Venezuela who told me something was happening as early as 2 a.m. I could have been on it all night. I felt awful, like I’d let everyone down.
Thankfully, our own Rick Moran jumped into action and broke the news on Saturday, and he did a good job with it. But it took me several hours to compose my thoughts and even get something into writing that day because I was so emotional. I eventually got over the fact that I’d missed it and realized that it didn’t matter who got the story — the important thing is that the people of Venezuela have hope for the first time in decades, and that the United States is showing our adversaries on the world stage who is boss again.
The funny thing is, I was getting ready for bed last night — Thursday night — and thinking, gosh, it’s been about two or three weeks since we captured Maduro. But no, it’d only been about six days. For all of us covering the news — and maybe for all of you watching and reading — it’s felt like much longer. We’ve had fun with the “slow news day” jokes behind the scenes here, but everything is moving so fast all of a sudden, not just in Venezuela, but all over the world, from Minnesota to Iran. I’ve barely slept all week.
Making History
So, back to capturing Maduro… The amount of news coming out this week has been overwhelming, especially when you’re in the middle of writing an article and have to start over. Or when you are capable or, more likely, willing, to play detective and figure out that 80% of what the media prints isn’t true or is exaggerated.
But regardless of the fine details, this is an incredibly historic moment for our country and our world. The ramifications reach far beyond Venezuela and, if Trump, Rubio, and their team continue on the right path, it may very well change the world forever, or at least for a long time. Admittedly, in the beginning, I wasn’t all that sure that they were on the correct path, but in more recent days, after doing my own research and talking to some smart people, I’m much more confident. Heck, just watching the meeting Trump had with the oil executives today made me realize he’s on the right path more than we know.
If anyone can take on this project and complete it successfully, it’s our president and the men and women who surround him. I am confident in that for now.
The biggest sign that things are changing quickly and for the better? The reaction of the other countries south of our border, especially the other socialists. They’ve seen what Donald Trump is capable of, and they realize they’ve lost or are losing the battle.
As I reported earlier this week, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro called an emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) on Sunday. Petro, Mexico’s Narco-President, Claudia Sheinbaum, and Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, wanted to put together some kind of unanimous message to the United States, calling for us to free Maduro and focus on “peace” or some nonsense. Here’s how that went down:
Argentina’s President Javier Milei said not so fast, comrades… Milei is in the midst of trying to put together a formal bloc of Latin American and Caribbean countries who are pro-free markets and all the good things he cares about, and while nothing is finished yet, he says he has 10 countries, including Argentina, ready to join. The region is changing, and this is a way to amplify that and, with any lucky, send other countries to the political right as well.
Well, 10 countries just happened to block the three mouthy amigos (or two amigos and one amiga) from making their big public joint statement condemning the United States. It’s not clear if they are the same 10 countries that are part of Milei’s new bloc, but it seems highly likely. And if my sources are correct, they are: Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In the end, the meeting was a waste, and Milei blocked Petro, Sheinbaum, and Lula’s socialist, anti-U.S. agenda. It also exposed just how much the region is changing and how fractured it is at the moment.
That was on Sunday. How quickly things change…
Mexico
In Mexico, Sheinbaum has been quietly giving Cuba a lot of “humanitarian” oil, and many people suspected she might ramp that up in the wake of Maduro moving to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Earlier this week, she confirmed that this would not happen, that she was not increasing the numbers. I also know that some members of Congress are working to ensure she stops completely.
On Saturday, Trump was on Fox & Friends, and he sort of mocked Sheinbaum, saying she’s frightened of the cartels (true) and that he’s offered to help her get rid of them many times, but she says no.
¿Cuántas veces le ha llorado Claudia Sheinbaum a Trump para que no venga por los narcoterroristas y su jefe?
“No, no, Mr. President, please”, Sheinbaum 😭 pic.twitter.com/Z6QbjHLs4D
— José Díaz (@JJDiazMachuca) January 4, 2026
However, while Trump was on Hannity on Thursday night, he suggested that he’s going to start striking the Mexican cartels via land. It’s not clear whether Sheinbaum has had a change of heart — unlikely — but she was doing a lot of kissing up today when taking statements from the press. “We don’t want to fight with the United States,” she said somewhat emotionally, “We express our opinions when we disagree, just as they express their opinions when they disagree with us, but we always seek a good relationship based on respect.”
U.S. President Donald J. Trump stated during tonight’s interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, that special operations and land strikes are going to begin soon against the Cartels in Mexico. Talks with the Mexican Government regarding such operations have been ongoing now for… pic.twitter.com/rAIiTJS7aR
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 9, 2026
Colombia
The biggest change has probably come from Petro. He went from asking for emergency meetings and screaming about imperialism on Sunday to calling Trump and telling him he’d like to work with him and scheduling a White House visit on Wednesday to giving interviews about how the only way he’ll ever have any future is to work with Trump on Friday.
Petro will be out of office this summer, and his dream is to apparently travel the world and lecture people, even in the United States, on the “climate crisis.” He says he can’t do that if he remains under Trump’s sanctions, so he’s going to try to work with our dear president. Here’s that clip if you can do Spanish:
🚨🇨🇴🇺🇸 | ÚLTIMA HORA: El exguerrillero Gustavo Petro se humilla y baja la cabeza ante el presidente Donald Trump, admitiendo que su futuro depende de Trump. pic.twitter.com/RRwjhS98zZ
— Eduardo Menoni (@eduardomenoni) January 9, 2026
Cuba
Cuba is definitely not bowing down to Trump and the United States, but the “president” is obviously shaken in the wake of the Maduro capture, though he does have the most to lose. Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speeches this week show him anxious and lacking his usual confidence.
But there’s one more sign that shows he knows that Cuba is on its last leg. As I wrote in the Morning Briefing on Friday:
This guy had the nerve to speak up on Wednesday at some official Commie Party session and say, ‘We need to start thinking that perhaps what’s going wrong in Cuba is our party’s fault.’
Um, you think? It only took you 67 years to realize that maybe this communism stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
But, unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly the ‘come to Jesus’ moment you might hope and think it was. Rather than admit that Cuba’s disastrous experiment has been a failure, he insisted that the communists try their communism even harder, suggesting that ‘every problem must be addressed from the party’s foundation, with greater discipline, ideological firmness, and by going the extra mile as militants.’
Throughout history, dictatorships generally fall after they start using this kind of language.
The Venezuelan Regime
As for what’s left of Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime, it has seen firsthand what can happen when it doesn’t take Trump’s warnings seriously, and now the big, bad, tough narco-terrorists are supposedly playing along. They may not say they’re playing along, but based on Trump’s words and actions on Friday and how quickly things are moving, they either are or he wants them to think he thinks they are. I think. You know what I mean.
“Venezuela respects us again,” he said.
There’s actually a team from the State Department in Caracas right now assessing the security situation and attempting to reopen the U.S. embassy there that has been closed for years.
I can’t confirm this, but “interim president” Delcy Rodríguez has allegedly asked if she can come to the White House next week. Her brother, Jorge, who also leads the Venezuelan National Assembly, has promised that he will release a “significant number” of Venezuelan political prisoners, though, so far, that’s extremely slow going — I can confirm that as of Friday afternoon, he’s released less than 20 of something like 900.
And the funniest one of all is Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s so-called “Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace,” a man who has never seen a day of justice and peace in his life. Cabello, who also has a $25 million reward out for his arrest, will be the toughest bastard of all for the Trump administration to deal with. However, this week, he’s not acting quite as defiant as he usually does.
Someone created a side-by-side video of him on his state TV program in front of a live audience last year, saying, “Not a single drop, but listen carefully, not a single drop of oil can leave here for the United States if they attack Venezuela.”
This week, he’s doing his state TV from what looks like some sort of bunker, and he’s changed his tune a bit. “If they’re willing to buy our oil, they’ll buy it. We sell it. PDVSA issued a statement today on this matter. We sell oil to Chevron, oil that Chevron takes and pays us,” he said.
Again, the video is in Spanish, but I’m going to post it anyway:
Diosdado Cabello 2025: “Ni una gota de nuestro petróleo a los EEUU”.
Diosdado Cabello 2026: “Si EEUU quiere comprar nuestro petróleo, se lo vendemos”. pic.twitter.com/Oh2c7LmwRe
— Progresismo Out Of Context (@OOCprogresismo2) January 8, 2026
By the way, don’t for a minute think that any of these clowns are endgame leadership for that country, no matter how nice Trump says they are. He’s playing a long game, and as I said earlier this week, Delcy, Diosdado, Jorge, and the rest of the regime are just pawns.
I’m going to stop here because after working several 16-hour days this week, I am exhausted, but I have to say that if these past seven days are how 2026 is going to go, I will have plenty to share about our foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere in the months to come, and I can’t wait to dig in and do it. And I hope I can expand beyond Venezuela now and cover some of the other good things happening, like what Milei is doing with that bloc of 10 countries.
I might just need a nap first.
As I say, Rubio isn’t handing me exclusives… yet, but when he does, you’ll be the first to know. Though, to be fair, he probably needs a nap worse than I do. But hey, I’m available to help run Venezuela if you need some extra hands on board, Marco!
And on that note, I’m off. Have a great weekend, y’all! And if any big news breaks overnight, well, I just hope it happens on the other side of the world.
P.S. I’ve had a few of you tell me that you’ve left me comments asking questions that I never responded to this week, and while I’ve tried, I just haven’t had time. But if you do really ever have a question about this stuff, please feel free to email me, and I’ll try my best to answer or find someone who can. I’m more likely to see that. Thanks.
It’s going to be a wild and crazy year for the Western Hemisphere, and I’ll be covering it every step of the way, sharing the truth, not the “truth” filtered through an anti-Donald Trump lens. Sign up to become a PJ Media VIP member and gain access to exclusive content and other perks and support your favorite conservative media. It’s less than $20 for the entire year!
