Degradation Day

By Nick Catoggio

Tuesday, January 06, 2026

 

Nicolás Maduro has a chance to do the funniest thing.

 

The former caudillo of Venezuela doesn’t hold many “cards” right now, to borrow a phrase, but he does hold one. And the timing of his kidnapping by the United States has given him a fortuitous opportunity to play it.

 

He could announce through his attorneys, on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, that he’s prepared to tell “the truth” about his country’s role in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in exchange for a pardon from Donald Trump and a comfy Assad-style retirement in Russia.

 

If you didn’t closely follow the mythology behind the right’s “stop the steal” nonsense that winter, you might not know that Venezuela played an outsized part in it. Per MAGA lore, vote-rigging software developed under Maduro’s predecessor and patron, Hugo Chávez, somehow made its way into voting machines in American swing states. Fiendish “deep state” Democrats supposedly capitalized, tilting the final tally toward Joe Biden and depriving our hero of his rightful victory.

 

I’m prepared to attest to anything Trump wants, Maduro might say, but only if I see movement on executive clemency.

 

Imagine the chaos that would sow. The president would be captivated by the thought of having his paranoia “vindicated” at last; he celebrated the dictator’s capture a few days ago by revisiting the election conspiracy theories involving Venezuela on Truth Social, in fact. MAGA chuds inside and outside the government would also be tantalized, some because they earnestly believe the conspiracy themselves and others because they’d cynically view Maduro’s “confirmation” as a useful political weapon against Democrats.

 

Marco Rubio, the ideological architect of the Venezuela operation, would be trapped. It would kill him to see a socialist tyrant escape justice for a reason as cockamamie as Trump’s “rigged election” fantasy, but how could he object? And as much as rank-and-file Republicans would want to believe that Maduro is telling the truth, it would gnaw at the smarter ones among them that federal prisoners seeking lenient treatment have a strong incentive to lie if doing so would make the president happy.

 

The Republican Party would dissolve into moronic infighting over whether a sleazebag dictator at Trump’s mercy should be treated as a credible witness to an inane conspiracy theory and, if so, whether he should be absolved of his crimes in exchange for his “testimony.” Even if that didn’t end with Maduro going free, he’d at least have exacted some revenge on the United States for seizing him: Once again, for the millionth time since 2015, the humiliating degradation of the American right under Trump would be exposed.

 

That’s how I remember January 6 five years later, as the most degrading chapter in a decade of bootlicking right-wing servility toward a venal fascist sociopath. The pitiful trajectory of the so-called conservative movement since that day was captured in a tweet sent while the insurrection was still raging by, ironically, Marco Rubio: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.” Correct—yet now, as the project to transform the United States into a third-world country accelerates, Rubio has become one of its chief enablers.

 

The lesson of January 6 is that Americans not only won’t punish a leader for trying to take power by force, they’ll hand power to him again if given the chance. Centuries of lofty rhetoric about American exceptionalism have crashed on the rocks of knowing that might-makes-right authoritarianism now enjoys enough of a constituency to win national elections, at least when inflation is high. Every filthy thing Trump has done in his second term derives from the sense of impunity voters instilled in him by forgiving him for what he did that day.

 

The insurrection is a stain that will never wash off, the grubby depravity of decadent America laid bare, and the most disgraceful episode of the Trump era—so far. But maybe not for long.

 

Greenland.

 

It feels right that the fifth anniversary of January 6 brought a joint statement by European leaders politely requesting that the United States not grab Greenland like it grabbed Maduro.

 

Superficially one has nothing to do with the other, but there may perhaps be a common thread between Trump paying no price for attempting to seize what he wanted domestically in 2021, laws and norms be damned, and Trump potentially attempting to seize what he wants internationally in 2026, laws and norms be damned.

 

Some Republicans are coping with the thought of America stealing a trusted ally’s land by speculating that Trump’s chatter about it is an elaborate troll, another symptom of the right’s degradation. (“The president likes to think out loud. … Sometimes he does it just to aggravate you guys,” Sen. John Kennedy theorized, not at all wishfully.) But the Europeans are right to take Trump seriously—and Denmark, to which Greenland belongs, is right about the consequences if America acts.

 

“If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO, and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. Trump going full Putin by seizing Greenland, triggering a transatlantic crackup, and shattering what little is left of the wildly successful postwar Pax Americana would top even January 6 as a national disgrace, I think.

 

“Seizure” in this case might not involve guns and bombs. According to The Atlantic, Danish officials don’t foresee a U.S. military invasion of the island but rather a royal decree posted on Truth Social by the mad king at 3 a.m. declaring Greenland a “protectorate” of the United States. That would be Denmark’s cue to remove its assets and skedaddle peacefully to avoid conflict. Another possibility I can think of given the president’s fondness for coercing recalcitrant foreign regimes would be to pressure the government of Greenland into holding a referendum on U.S. annexation and making clear to the residents that they’ll be under America’s thumb no matter how it turns out. An anschluss, one might call it.

 

Nazi analogies are always fraught and seldom apt, but listen to Stephen Miller lately and you’ll hear a man who’s drunk as a skunk on domineering expansionist hubris. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” he boasted on Monday to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” If the jackboot fits, wear it.

 

Digesting that, a thought occurred to me: How would the White House react if the governments of Greenland and Denmark surrendered on everything except sovereignty?

 

That is, what if they offered the U.S. carte blanche on military access to the island, mineral rights, and anything else we might consider a national interest—essentially, everything of value that Greenland has to offer—but with the proviso that the territory remain part of Denmark? (That isn’t much of a what-if. It’s not far from the arrangement we have now.) We’re welcome to rob the bank, in other words, but it’s still their bank. Would the president accept that offer?

 

I don’t think he would. I realize that contradicts the logic of yesterday’s newsletter, which compared Trump to a mafioso who’s forever looking for ways to extract wealth from his victims, but the sense I’m getting from him and Miller is that mere wealth extraction won’t cut it with Greenland. It’s too big, too defenseless, and too close to our coast not to submit to U.S. hegemony. Its mere existence is a wound to fascist pride: If dominating weaker countries means anything, it means the low-hanging fruit in our own backyard simply must be plucked.

 

Greenland is a stand-in for the entire Western liberal order that’s prevailed since 1945. In a system in which cooperating with allies and settling disputes diplomatically are the highest values, there’s nothing strange about a far-flung minor power like Denmark governing territory near the United States. But under a prewar model in which the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, it’s an affront to authoritarian chauvinism. If you have the military might to impose your will, by what logic should cooperation and diplomacy deter you from self-enrichment?

 

That’s why it’s poignant (and silly) for European leaders to reassure Trump that NATO will protect America’s security interests on the island and for Frederiksen to warn him that taking Greenland would mean the end of the alliance. Trump doesn’t care about alliances; if anything, I suspect, he believes NATO is an unwelcome restraint on more aggressive U.S. bullying abroad. He doesn’t care about America’s “interests” in Greenland either, any more than he cared about America’s interests in having an orderly transition of power in 2021. He cares, as always, about his own grandeur, and imperialist land grabs gratify a megalomaniac’s appetite for grandeur like nothing else.

 

One way or another, he’s going to claim hegemony over the island. It’s the only logical outcome of the incremental years-long degradation of the right into dime-store Putinism.

 

Venezuela.

 

On that note, I wonder how long it’ll take for MAGA to begin rooting openly for Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s successor, and the Chavista regime she inherited to crack down hard on democratic activists in America’s new vassal state.

 

I predicted yesterday that Trump will warm quickly to the idea of keeping Rodríguez and the socialist old guard in power indefinitely so long as she and they carry out his mercenary wishes. Partly that’s a matter of pragmatism: Installing opposition leader María Corina Machado as president would have destabilized the country, according to a CIA analysis, necessitating deeper U.S. intervention and potentially a full military occupation. The president understands that Americans will tolerate “easy” wars (like Greenland!) but not hard ones.

 

But it’s also a function of his priorities. If all Trump cares about is access to Venezuelan oil, having a compliant Maduro lackey in charge is just as good, if not better, than having someone like Machado who would enjoy a degree of popular legitimacy and might feel emboldened to resist some of his demands. I admire Machado’s willingness to engage in the sort of degradation ritual that’s now required by the American right to gain the help of the U.S. government—last night on Sean Hannity’s show she offered to give the president her Nobel Peace Prize—but an American Putin will naturally prefer a Yanukovych leading his client state to a Zelensky.

 

Already, in fact, Trump has begun tamping down expectations about near-term Venezuelan democracy. "We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote," he told reporters when asked about holding an election next month. "No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have—we have to nurse the country back to health." It’s not clear what nursing Venezuela back to health might mean, but if it has to do with getting its oil infrastructure back online, the president’s own estimate is somewhere in the ballpark of … 18 months. (Ramping up production would take quite a bit longer than that.)

 

And that assumes that U.S. oil companies are willing to take the considerable risk of leading the project, even with our “America First” leader offering to reimburse them with billions in taxpayer dollars to offset the project’s steep cost.

 

It could be a while, in other words, before the zombie Maduro government is displaced. In the meantime, there will inevitably be uprisings by Venezuelans disappointed that the end of the dictator hasn’t meant the end of the dictator’s regime and, just as inevitably, efforts to suppress those uprisings. (“There is no change at all,” one disillusioned citizen complained to the Wall Street Journal. “We are going to remain in the same situation because it’s the same people.”) Paramilitary units loyal to Maduro are already patrolling Caracas for signs of dissent, and Rodríguez has declared a “state of external commotion,” authorizing police to arrest anyone celebrating the dictator’s capture.

 

If you’re a degraded MAGA Republican whose top priorities are securing Venezuela’s oil, protecting Donald Trump’s legacy, and minimizing the political damage from this adventure to the GOP before the midterms, where do your sympathies lie? With the Machado types, who are desperate for freedom and might be willing to fight a civil war to depose the Trump-Maduro puppet government? Or with the Trump-Maduro puppet government, which might conclude that the only way to keep the peace is by using a heavy hand against the Machado types?

 

Remember, when Hamas reasserted its authority over Gaza by murdering Palestinian dissidents following a ceasefire with Israel, the president made excuses for them. “They do want to stop the problems, and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” Trump said in October of the crackdown. “They killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s okay. A couple of very bad gangs.” He didn’t want more chaos in Gaza so he looked the other way at atrocities committed in the name of “stability.”

 

He and his fans will do the same in Venezuela. That’s what degradation is all about.

 

Undoing the damage.

 

I’ll leave you with a question. Assuming that Trump does seize Greenland, should Democrats vow to return it to Denmark if they reclaim the White House in 2028?

 

There’s a case that they should. Grabbing the island would poll very badly, I expect, as Americans don’t like to think of themselves as villains even as they behave civically in ever more villainous ways. Kicking the Danes off a giant iceberg to scratch Trump’s Napoleon itch might be a bit too blatantly Putin-esque for swing voters’ comfort. It’s one thing not to want the United States to play global policeman; it’s another thing to let Trump turn the last, best hope of Earth into a thief.

 

Promising to right his wrong by renouncing a foreign policy of banditry and returning Greenland to the Danes might appeal to voters. But I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

 

After all, there are lots of things the government does that poll badly at first and then grow more popular as Americans get used to them. (The GOP is wrestling with one of those things right now.) The public would loathe seeing the White House seize Greenland initially … but might loathe it less over time as they come to think of the island as part of the United States and get regular snootfuls of propaganda from the administration about the many advantages of controlling it.

 

Come 2028, voters might be ambivalent about giving it up—enough so that any Democrat who pledged to do so could be seen as just another wimpy left-wing weenie, forever apologizing for America and putting foreign interests first. I doubt that pledge would win them many votes. I have less doubt that it would cost them a few.

 

Five years after January 6, we’re long past the point where we should give the people of this declining empire the benefit of the doubt about their moral or civic rectitude. If you doubt that, go take a look at the latest interactive feature on the White House website, a revisionist timeline of the insurrection that would make Kremlin propagandists blush. (Quote: “Vice President Mike Pence, who had the opportunity to return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification under the United States Constitution, chooses not to exercise that power in an act of cowardice and sabotage.”) Americans had every reason to know the degradation they’d get from a second Trump term and they signed up anyway. Disgraceful people, disgraceful leader, disgraceful country.