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Three things were said in the aftermath of the remarkable”Operation Absolute Resolve,” mounted by the American military, which resulted in the arrest in Venezuela and removal to a Brooklyn jail of dictator Nicholas Maduro and his wife in the early morning hours of Saturday which deserve particular attention.
During the press conference that morning, after President Donald Trump had announced the stunning success of the American military’s actions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “President Trump doesn’t play games.”
In the course of the press conference that followed, President Trump declared at one point, simply but directly: “Life is a deal.”
And on Air Force One Sunday, a reporter asked the president what would happen next, and President Trump replied: “It depends.”
There in those three short statements is, in a nutshell, not just the “Donroe Doctrine,” but, also the explanation for Operation Midnight Hammer which devastated the Iranian nuclear weapons program on June 21-22 last summer.
President Trump had extended offers to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the dictator of Iran, and to Maduro as well, to work out deals that would remove the threats they both presented to the American people. In both cases, the dictators refused their opportunity to negotiate in good faith. In the case of Iran, the president removed the threat and in the case of Venezuela, he removed the dictator.
(He has issued another warning now to Khamenei not to kill protesters who are flooding the streets of Iran. The world will see if the aging tyrant pays attention.)
This is all pretty straightforward and left-wing Democratic politicians and left-wing legacy media have to work overtime to miss the obvious takeaways.
First, when President Trump makes a demand or issues a warning, the recipients must take it seriously. As Secretary Rubio noted, Trump is not playing a game and, as the entire world has witnessed in both Iran and Venezuela, the American military is led by remarkable professionals. The troops the president and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth command can do extraordinary things anywhere in the world.
Second, the president doesn’t ask for unreasonable things. His demands on foreign powers are that they act reasonably and do not imperil the American people or interests.
The “Donroe Doctrine” seems pretty simple to me: If you kill Americans, Donald Trump will strike back and try — usually successfully — to kill you. If you threaten Americans, he will nullify the threat. ISIS in Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Iran and Venezuela have all gotten that message in the first year of the second Trump term. So have all the other various combatant countries that Team Trump have talked into cease-fires or peace deals.
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What will happen in the next three years abroad? “It depends,” to quote the president. But the enemies of the United States should keep in mind what Secretary Rubio stated so simply: Donald Trump doesn’t play games.
If President Trump offers an adversary a deal backed up by a threat, they ought to negotiate in good faith and get the best terms on the table.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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