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Trump Busted Swiping Venezuela Plan’s Catchy Name

He called it the “Donroe Doctrine,” but—spoiler—someone else called it that first.

It is certainly a catchy name for invading a country and seizing its leader—and like all Donald Trump tropes, it is completely self-centered.

Following Saturday’s dramatic U.S. military operation in Venezuela, Trump, 79, quickly renamed a two-century-old policy—after himself, dubbing it the “Donroe Doctrine” to describe his approach to foreign policy and U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

But the name, widely attributed to the president, was in fact first coined by the New York Post last year, appearing on the cover of the Trump-endorsing newspaper in June. Among those pointing out the fact that Trump’s favorite paper was first with the pun were CNN’s Brian Stelter.

On Jan. 8 2025 the paper’s front page, known as “the wood,” featured the headline “The Donroe Doctrine: Trump’s Vision for the Hemisphere,” along with an image of Trump pointing to a map in which Canada is crossed out and renamed the 51st state, Greenland is labeled “our land,” and the Panama Canal is labeled “Pana-MAGA”—illustrating the ideas of dominance the president flaunted ahead of his inauguration.

The pun on the policy of U.S. supremacy in the Western Hemisphere plays on how it was originally established by President James Monroe in 1823, declaring that any European colonial expansion was to be seen as hostile to the U.S. It was later expanded by President Theodore Roosevelt to justify U.S. military intervention in Latin America. Trump’s version is more expensive, apparently declaring its own colonial vision for the hemisphere.

But more than six months after the Post declaration of the Donroe Doctrine, Canada and Greenland remain independent and the Panama Canal is still controlled by Panama.

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Shortly after the strike, Trump spoke from his Mar-a-Lago estate, claiming that under Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s actions “were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries, and not anymore.”

“All the way back, it dated to the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’” he said.

After months of Trump’s attacks on Maduro, the Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York and face federal charges related to narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. They entered not-guilty pleads n a defiant court appearance Monday, with Maduro proclaiming “I am a man of God and the president of the Republic of Venezuela.”

However, it appears that the U.S. president is taking the new era of the “Donroe Doctrine” seriously and shows no intention of ending his Western domination after the attack on Venezuela, as he has floated ideas of targeting both Colombia, which he deemed “run by a very sick man,” and Communist-controlled Cuba, and has once again set his sights on Greenland, telling The Atlantic that the U.S. “absolutely” needs it.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on whether Trump coined the “Donroe Doctrine” after seeing it in The New York Post.

Trump’s love of the Post is well known. He was a fixture of its Page Six gossip column for decades, briefed its reporters under his own name and as fake PR “John Baron,” continues to read it in print, and has a framed copy of its cover from the day after he was mugshotted in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Wiktoria GuciaReporter

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