In the days following the US abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro on January 3, Donald Trump wasted little time in extending the threat to both Colombia and Mexico. Labeling President Gustavo Petro a “sick man,” Trump followed up by opining that an invasion of the country sounded “good to me.” As for Mexico, after trotting out his oft-repeated chestnut about organized crime running the country, he proceeded to state: “We will now start hitting land with regard to the cartels.”

Marco Rubio’s State Department quickly joined in on the act. After falling over himself to praise Mexico in a September 2025 visit, when he gushed that “it is the closest security cooperation we have ever had, maybe with any country but certainly in the history of US-Mexico relations,” the secretary of state was now quoted in a terse communiqué as discussing the need for “stronger cooperation” and “tangible results to protect our homeland and hemisphere.” It didn’t take a geopolitical genius to understand how we got from “the closest security cooperation in the history of US-Mexico relations” to “the need for tangible results” in three short months: the invasion of Venezuela had emboldened the administration, leading its foreign policy coterie to swagger around like a posse of punch-drunk cowboys.