During a CNN interview on Monday, Stephen Miller offered an aggressive defense of the Trump administration’s recent map-scrambling moves in the Western hemisphere, including the capture of the deposed leader of Venezuela and resuming its threats to take over Greenland.
Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser, argued that under the “Trump doctrine,” the U.S. will use its military “unapologetically” to secure U.S. interests, which he said were synonymous with the the “future of the free world.”
“We’re a superpower and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” he said.
As Tapper pressed Miller for how the administration explained leaving another top Maduro figure in power, Miller said expecting opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado to step in and assume power was “absurd and preposterous.”
As the anchor asked Miller how the White House justified invading a sovereign country and arresting its leader, Miller cut in and insisted, “Damn straight we did!”
“The point, Jake, is that we’re not going to let tinpot communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country,” he continued, “and we’re not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversaries.”
On the subject of Greenland, Miller offered a similarly strident model of U.S. power, questioning “what right” Denmark actually had over its legally recognized autonomous island territory, while insisting “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”
The comments come a day after Miller argued in a post on X that Western countries should not have given up their empires and colonies after WWII.
In recent days, the Trump administration has revived imperial rhetoric last seen in the early 1900s, as it defends its shock raid to capture Maduro and Trump’s comments over the weekend that the U.S. must take control of Greenland for national security purposes.
“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and the European Union needs us to have it, and they know that,” Trump recently said.
The comments have touched off widespread criticism from leaders in Greenland, Denmark, and the wider EU and NATO alliances.
“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO and therefore post-second world war security,” Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, told Danish television network TV2 on Monday.
Danish lawmaker Anders Vistisen, a member of European Parliament, told CNN later Monday that the administration’s stance toward Greenland was “appalling” and “very frankly stupid.”
“When we’re talking about Greenland, we’re not talking about a drug-run dictatorship,” he said. “We’re talking about a NATO-allied country, a NATO territory that belongs to a friendly nation that is a very close ally to the USA, and has been so for more than 70 years.”
“Threats, pressure and talk of annexation do not belong anywhere between friends,” Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement Sunday. “That's not how you talk to a people who have repeatedly shown responsibility, stability and loyalty.”
The EU has described the Trump administration’s recent posture as contrary to international law.
“The EU will continue to uphold the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” EU spokesperson, Anitta Hipper, said on Monday.
“These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them, all the more so if the territorial integrity of a member state of the European Union is questioned.”
Some praised the president’s aggressive regional tactics.
“If you don't use it, you lose it,” Fox News anchor Jesse Watters said during a Monday evening discussion segment. “That goes for Greenland and it also goes for all the oil that Venezuela has, and Denmark better wise up. They should sell it to us, lease it to us. We could run it together, who cares? “
“We’re kicking the Chinese out of the hemisphere,” he added. “That goes for the Arctic and that goes for Latin America.”
Despite widespread opposition, the Trump administration has signaled more unwanted interventions could be coming for U.S. neighbors.
In December, the administration appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland, amid the president’s resumed bid to take over the island. In recent days, Trump has warned Mexico to “get its act together” and effectively told Colombian President Gustavo Petro that his country could be the next to face military action.
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