The Donald Trump Score Card

Donald Trump Issues Greenland Deadline
By Ellie Cook
Published Jan 05, 2026 at 03:22 AM EST
updated Jan 05, 2026 at 06:47 AM EST

excerpt:

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, visiting Greenland in March 2025, said: "Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass."

 

It's January 6th, the fifth anniversary of Trump's deadly riot at the Capitol.

The plaque honoring police officers who defended the Capitol still isn't on display at the Capitol. It's in storage.


A Jan. 6 plaque was made to honor law enforcement at the Capitol. Its whereabouts are unknown
By Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press
Jan 5, 2026 11:30 AM EST

excerpt:

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.

It's not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren't publicly known, though it's believed to be in storage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration's Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers' lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment."

 

Trump push to politicize US military ‘reminiscent of Stalin’, top general warns
Maj Gen Paul Eaton says US president’s effort to bend military to his will could have dire long-term consequences
Ed Pilkington
Mon 5 Jan 2026 06.00 EST

excerpt:

Eaton’s biggest fear is at some point a dramatic clash of forces might take place, with the federalised national guard facing off against state and local police. He conjured up the imaginary scenario of the Texas national guard being federalised – ie ordered out of state control into national control – and imported into Baltimore, Maryland, contrary to the city and state’s wishes.

“What could go wrong?” Eaton said. “You can very easily see an escalation in which both sides think they are right, obeying orders that they believe were given legally.”

Sooner or later, he warned, a “memorable event” was likely to take place. “There are going to be people getting hurt who really don’t need to get hurt.”

 

Trump push to politicize US military ‘reminiscent of Stalin’, top general warns
Maj Gen Paul Eaton says US president’s effort to bend military to his will could have dire long-term consequences
Ed Pilkington
Mon 5 Jan 2026 06.00 EST

excerpt:

The Washington Post revealed that Hegseth had given an order to “kill everybody”. Under the Department of Defense manual on the laws of war, it is forbidden to order that every combatant must be killed irrespective of whether they pose a threat.

Eaton has no doubts about the illegality of the 2 September second strike. “It was either a war crime or a murder. So we have a real problem here. This decision looks a whole lot like a U-boat commander machine gunning victims in the water during world war two.”

 

Trump talks like Columbia's president it next on his hit list.


Trump warns 'sick' South American leader, reiterates 'we need Greenland' for national security
By Ashley Carnahan Fox News
January 5, 2026

excerpt:

"Colombia's very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you," Trump said.

 

Donald Trump Issues Greenland Deadline
By Ellie Cook, Senior Defense Reporter
PublishedJan 05, 2026 at 03:22 AM EST
updated Jan 05, 2026 at 10:35 AM EST

excerpt:

"Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, said on Sunday it "makes absolutely no sense to talk about the need for the United States to take over Greenland."

"The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three nations in the Danish kingdom," Frederiksen said, referring to Denmark, Greenland and Faroe Islands.

Katie Miller, a longstanding MAGA voice and the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image to social media on Saturday that showed the American flag overlaid on an outline of Greenland with the caption "SOON." Miller's post came shortly after U.S. action in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro."

 

Trump makes threats against Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba, Greenland, and Iran.


Trump Goes on Wild Spree of Threats Against Rest of the World
Edith Olmsted
January 5, 2026/10:44 a.m. ET

 

Members of NATO need to protect themselves from the U.S., a member of NATO.


Donald Trump Issues Greenland Deadline
By Ellie Cook
Published Jan 05, 2026 at 03:22 AM EST
updated Jan 05, 2026 at 06:47 AM EST

excerpt:

Unlike Venezuela, Denmark's NATO status means an armed attack on one state is treated as an attack on all members of the alliance. The U.S., NATO's dominant member, attacking another alliance state has long been considered inconceivable.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana Governor appointed by Trump as the administration's special envoy for Greenland last month, said in his first remarks on his new position he intended to "make Greenland a part of the U.S."

 

Trump Has Started Carving Up the World. Now It’s Putin and Xi’s Turn.
Brynn Tannehill
Sun, January 4, 2026 at 3:06 PM UTC

excerpt:

"Members of the EU, NATO, and the countries being threatened here should have their eyes wide open to the implications of what is happening. They are not dealing with someone who can be appeased, any more than Ukraine could have appeased Russia in 2022 by any means other than complete capitulation."

 

Make Iran Great Again


Trump poses with ‘Make Iran Great Again’ hat after Maduro abduction
US president renews his threat to hit Iran ‘very hard’ if the country’s security forces kill anti-government protesters.
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 5 Jan 2026

 

Trump’s snatching of Maduro shows a new level of unrestrained global power
Analysis by Nick Paton Walsh
January 5, 2026

excerpt:

"The exhilaration of whisking away a dictator to trial will fade fast and the real, gaping problems of daily Venezuela loom large again. Maduro’s departure is a win for Trump, but chaos or collapse after him would be a cascading loss. The plan for “what next” is more important than the staggering display of US might over Caracas’ skies on early Saturday morning.

Maduro’s removal does not anoint a successor with a real popular mandate. Or resolve where the military’s loyalties now lie. Or hobble the narco-trafficker colossus the US says Maduro led. Instead, it demands fast answers to who leads, who fixes an economy with enduring, ghastly flaws, and who explains to the Venezuelan people the lasting benefits of the hours of terrifying explosions their young and elderly just had to endure in the dead of night."

 

Venezuelan military says Trump's forces killed Maduro's guards in cold blood before snatching him.


Venezuela military says U.S. killed Maduro’s guards ‘in cold blood’ before snatching him
By Antonio María Delgado
January 4, 2026 1:34 PM

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article314164693.html

excerpt:

"Venezuela’s military accused U.S. forces of killing members of President Nicolás Maduro’s security detail “in cold blood” before seizing the embattled leader and his wife in a pre-dawn raid in Caracas on Saturday.

In a nationally televised address, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, occurred on Saturday after “the cold-blooded murder of a large part of his security team — soldiers, both men and women, and innocent civilians.” He blamed what he described as “imperial aggression” and said the armed forces were placed on full operational alert."

 

Trump just removed last restraints on presidential power
By Jon Duffy, Contributing writer
Jan. 3, 2026 7:30 PM PT

excerpt:

"In the early hours of Saturday morning, U.S. forces entered Venezuelan territory and forcibly removed the country’s head of state, Nicolás Maduro. There was no declaration of war by the United States. No authorization from Congress. No imminent threat publicly articulated before the operation was carried out. Instead, Americans were informed after the fact, through statements framed as assertions rather than explanations.

The Trump administration has since suggested that Venezuela’s stability, safety and political transition will now be managed by the U.S. — an extraordinary claim, given the absence of any constitutional or international mandate to do so."

 

Hernandez is the former leader of Honduras. He was convicted in the U.S. of drug trafficking.

Trump pardoned Hernandez. Yet he abducted Maduro and had his DOJ indict him on conspiracy to traffic drugs.

 

Trump is obtaining what he wants in Honduras. He pardoned its former leader who was convicted in the U.S. justice system.

The presidential candidate for Honduras whom Trump endorsed won by 515 votes.


Honduras election results a "technical tie" as Trump launches a dramatic intervention, including a threat
December 2, 2025 / 6:04 AM EST / CBS/AFP

excerpt:

"Nasry Asfura, 67, led 72-year-old rival Salvador Nasralla by just 515 votes, making it a "technical tie," National Electoral Council (CNE) head Ana Paola Hall said on X after a partial digital tally of Sunday's down-to-the-wire ballot."

 

As much as I hate to interrupt the flow of insanity...

The. Epstein. Files.

 

Dems mock Trump, say Maduro captured on the day DOJ was set to explain Epstein files redactions, ‘Just a coincidence...’
By Sumanti Sen
Published on: Jan 04, 2026 07:15 am IST

Dems mock Trump, say Maduro captured on the day DOJ was set to explain Epstein files redactions, ‘Just a coincidence...’

 

Sure is going to be one big war crime trial at The Hague sometime.

 

Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, more than 2,000 rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the process of counting the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president of the United States. They tried to hunt down House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and chanted their intention to “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president. They fantasized that they were following in the footsteps of the American Founders, about to start a new nation. Newly elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6 she wrote: “Today is 1776.”

In fact, it was not 1776 but 1861, the year insurrectionists who had tried to overthrow the government in order to establish minority rule tried to break the U.S. The rioters wanted to take away the right at the center of American democracy—our right to determine our own destiny—in order to keep Donald J. Trump in the White House, making sure the power of elite white men could not be challenged. It was no accident that the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag.

Since the 1980s, Republicans pushed the idea that a popular government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends. As cuts to regulation, taxation, and the nation’s social safety net began to hollow out the middle class, Republicans pushed the idea that the country’s problems came from greedy minorities and women who wanted to work outside the home. More and more, they insisted that the federal government was stealing tax dollars and destroying society, and they encouraged individual men to take charge of the country.

After the Democrats passed the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the motor voter law, enabling people to register to vote at motor vehicle departments, Republicans increasingly insisted Democrats were cheating the system by relying on the votes of noncitizens, although there was never any evidence for this charge.

As wealth continued to move upward, the idea that individuals and paramilitary groups must “reclaim” America from undeserving Americans who were taking tax dollars and cheating to win elections became embedded in the Republican Party. By 2014, Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) called Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters “patriots” when they showed up armed to meet officials from the Bureau of Land Management who tried to impound Bundy’s cattle because he owed more than $1 million in grazing fees for running cattle on public land.

The idea of reclaiming the country for white men by destroying the federal government grew, along with the idea that Democrats could win elections only by cheating. In 2016, Trump insisted that his female Democratic opponent belonged in jail and that he alone could save the country from the Washington, D.C., “swamp.” Other Republican leaders who had initially shunned him began to support him when it became clear that he could mobilize a new crop of disaffected voters who could put Republicans into office.

And they continued to support him, claiming initially that he could be kept in check by establishment Republicans like his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, who moved from leading the Republican National Committee to the White House for the first six months of Trump’s first term. In his first months in office, Trump delivered the tax cut Republican leaders wanted, as well as the appointment of one out of every four federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices, who would protect the Republican project in the courts.

But the idea that Trump could be kept in check fell apart in September 2019, when it appeared he was trying to rig the 2020 election. A whistleblower revealed that Trump had called the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July 2019 to demand that Zelensky smear former vice president Joe Biden, who was beating Trump in most polls going into the 2020 election season. Until Zelensky did so, Trump said, the administration would not release the money Congress had appropriated to fund Ukraine’s fight against Russia, which had invaded Ukraine in 2014.

The attempt to withhold congressionally appropriated funds in order to tilt an election was a glaring violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act codifying the executive branch’s duty to execute the laws Congress passed. In the congressional investigation that followed, witnesses revealed that Trump’s cronies were running a secret scheme in Ukraine to undermine official U.S. policy and benefit Trump’s allies.

Republicans in 1974 had turned against President Richard Nixon for far less, but although Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said not a single Republican senator believed Trump, they stood behind him nonetheless. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues: “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing…. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

But once acquitted, Trump cut loose from any oversight. He sought revenge and insisted that “[w]hen somebody is President of the United States, the authority is total.” “The federal government has absolute power,” he said, and he had the “absolute right” to use that power if he wanted to.

As early as 2019, Trump had “joked” about staying in power regardless of the 2020 election results, and on October 31, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon told a private audience that Trump was going to declare that he had won the 2020 election no matter what. Trump knew that Democratic mail-in ballots would show up in the vote totals later than Republican votes cast on Election Day, creating a “red mirage” that would be overtaken later by Democratic votes.

“Trump’s going to take advantage of it,” Bannon said, by calling the election early and saying that the later votes were somehow illegitimate. “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” Bannon continued: “Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again…. He’s gonna say ‘F*ck you. How about that?’ Because…he’s done his last election.”

Early returns on Election Night 2020, November 3, showed Trump ahead. But, more quickly than anyone expected, Democratic votes turned the key state of Arizona blue, and the Fox News Channel called the race for Biden. Furious, Trump took to the airwaves at about 2:30 the next morning and declared he had won, although ballots were still being counted and several battleground states had no clear winner. “We won’t stand for this,” he told supporters, assuring them he had won. “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop.”

But it didn’t, and by the time all the ballots were counted, the election was not close: Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.

Trump insisted a Democrat could not have won honestly. Over the next few months, his campaign demanded recounts, all of which confirmed that Biden won. Trump or his surrogates filed and lost at least 63 lawsuits over the 2020 election, most dismissed for lack of evidence.

As legal challenges failed, Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to win the state of Georgia. Trump’s allies plotted for Trump supporters in seven battleground states to meet secretly and submit false slates of electors for Trump. Two slates would enable Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the electors from the now-contested states, so that either Trump would be elected outright, or Pence could say there was no clear winner and send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. Since there were more Republican delegations than Democratic ones, Trump would be president.

“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Trump’s evangelical chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote on November 24, 2020, to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni.

Determined to retain control of the government, certain congressional Republicans went along with the charade that the election had been stolen. Trump allies in the House began to echo Trump’s accusations and to say they would question the counts from certain states. Such challenges required a paired vote with a senator, and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who saw himself as a top 2024 presidential contender, and Ted Cruz of Texas, who didn’t want to be undercut, led 11 other senators in a revolt to challenge the ballots.

For weeks, Trump had urged his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., for a “Stop the Steal” rally arranged for January 6, the day Congress would count the certified electoral ballots. Speaking at the Ellipse near the White House that morning, Trump and his surrogates told the crowd that they had won the election, and Trump warned: “We are going to have to fight much harder.”

Trump claimed that Chinese-driven socialists were taking over the country and told the crowd: “We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

And, knowing they were armed, he told them to march to the Capitol.

As Trump’s supporters attacked, lawmakers from their hiding spots begged the president to call off his supporters, but he did nothing for more than three hours. After 5:40, when the National Guard had been deployed without his orders, thus making it clear the rioters would be overpowered before either taking over the government themselves or giving him an excuse to declare martial law, Trump issued a video statement.

“I know you’re hurt,” he said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now…. We love you. You’re very special.” He tweeted: “Remember this day forever!”

When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13, 2021, for incitement of insurrection, only 10 Republicans voted in favor, while 197 voted no (4 did not vote). In the Senate trial, 7 Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, while 43 continued to back Trump.

In a speech after his vote to acquit, McConnell said, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” but said he must answer for his actions in court. “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell said. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump for four felonies associated with his attempt to retain power illegally.

Trump fought back, arguing that he had presidential immunity for his actions. Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately, but it waited until the last possible moment, on July 1, 2024, to decide Donald J. Trump v. United States, finding that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. Trump himself had appointed three of the justices in the majority.

A second grand jury returned a new indictment stripped of the actions now immune, but by then it was too late: Trump was reelected president, and the Department of Justice has an understanding that it will not indict or prosecute a sitting president. And so, five years after the events of January 6, 2021, we are learning what it means to have a president who has demonstrated his determination to overthrow our democracy and who does not have to answer to the law.

Although he was elected with less than 50% of the votes cast, Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” As soon as he took office in January 2025, the president and his henchmen flouted the 1974 Impoundment Control Act again, seizing Congress’s right to control the nation’s finances. Trump used emergency powers to ignore the Constitution and deployed troops in Democratic-led cities. When Congress required the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, the administration largely ignored the law. Today, more than two weeks after the deadline, it had released less than 1% of the files. Ignoring the rights afforded to individuals by the Constitution, Trump is seizing people off the streets and prosecuting his perceived enemies.

Trump has taken on himself the right to go to war with another country in order to take its oil, and is openly working to destroy the rules-based international order that has stabilized the world since the 1940s. Today, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told 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,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

That vision is a profound rejection of the principles of the rules-based international order, which was designed to use power for deterrence rather than domination. It is also a profound rejection of the principles of American democracy, a system of checks and balances to channel power into a government that could deliver stability and prosperity to all the people, not just a select few.

In 1863, when that system was unraveling under pressure from those who wanted to base society on a system of enslavement that enriched an elite, Republican president Abraham Lincoln asked Americans to remember those who had died to protect a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Lincoln asked Americans to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion,” and to resolve that “these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Heather Cox Richardson
—

Notes:

Kevin Liptak, “Trump’s Presidency Ends with American Carnage,” CNN, January 6, 2021.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/politics/stephen-miller-greenland-venezuela.html

Donald J. Trump, “Tweets of January 6, 2021,” American Presidency Project.

Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels, “Trump Prematurely Declares Victory, Says He’ll Go to Supreme Court,” The Hill, November 4, 2020.

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/16/g-s1-38003/trump-mandate-presidents

Dan Friedman, “Leaked Audio: Before Election Day, Bannon Said Trump Planned to Falsely Claim Victory,” Mother Jones, July 12, 2022.

Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels, “Trump Prematurely Declares Victory, Says He’ll Go to Supreme Court,” The Hill, November 4, 2020.

Ryan Nobles, Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen, and Jamie Gangel, “First on CNN: January 6 Committee Has Text Messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows,” CNN, March 25, 2022.

Donald J. Trump, “Remarks to Supporters Prior to the Storming of the United States Capitol,” January 6, 2021, at American Presidency Project, January 6, 2021.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/13/politics/mcconnell-remarks-trump-acquittal

https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/doj-epstein-files-timing-delays-00712169

https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

X:

laurenboebert/status/1346439502454288388

laurenboebert/status/1346811381878845442

Bluesky:

kyledcheney.bsky.social/post/3mbpydz4g3t2x

 

Well, what war crime did the Tangerine Tyrant accomplish today ?