While describing the US navy operation in Venezuela on Saturday, President Trump referenced a two-word title for his dedication to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
“They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’” Trump mentioned, crediting unnamed others with the phrase.
Like so lots of Trump’s speaking factors, this one has its roots in right-wing media.
The New York Post, one in all his favourite publications, appears to have coined “Donroe Doctrine” a couple of 12 months in the past. The paper put the phrases on the quilt on January 8, 2025, when Trump’s ambitions for Greenland have been within the information.
The alliterative phrase step by step labored its manner into geopolitical conversations, and it got here up on Fox News the day earlier than the strike: Griff Jenkins talked about it on “Fox & Friends,” one in all Trump’s favourite reveals, Friday morning.
“What’s been described as the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ — remember the Monroe Doctrine? Exerting America’s dominance over, in this case, our western hemisphere,” Jenkins mentioned.

Indeed, you most likely discovered concerning the Monroe Doctrine in highschool historical past class. The 1823 assertion warned European powers to respect the US sphere of affect within the West.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot,” Trump mentioned at his Saturday press convention, earlier than uttering “Donroe Doctrine” for the primary time.
Some listeners instantly looked for the origins of the phrase and located the New York Post cowl.
The entrance web page from final January additionally referenced Trump’s edict to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and his discuss of Canada changing into a 51st state.
The cowl story by Post reporter Caitlin Doornbos quoted a supply saying Trump was “laying out the early framework of the ‘Trump Doctrine.’”
The phrase “Donroe Doctrine” didn’t get a lot pickup at first. But it started to flow into extra extensively final fall, with headlines within the Financial Times, the New York Times and different shops. It was additionally cited on Fox News a number of instances within the fall.
Trump’s corollary “basically says we assert the right to go into any country whose internal troubles are creating a threat to us in the region. And that’s a pretty broad mandate,” New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger mentioned on NCS’s “Inside Politics.”
Trump used the phrase once more Sunday evening when he spoke with reporters on Air Force One, arguing the Venezuela motion differs from US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of “it’s in our area. The Donroe Doctrine.”
A Post spokesperson had no remark about who got here up with the headline. Post editor in chief Keith Poole is understood to say internally that “all our headlines are a collective effort.”
Trump has had a posh relationship with the Post, his hometown tabloid, for many years. He’s been a supply for the paper, a topic, a fan, a foe, and so forth. He hopped on the cellphone with Post reporters each on Saturday and Sunday to speak concerning the Venezuela motion and subsequent steps within the nation.
On Sunday, Trump mentioned the US “should run the country with law and order. We should run the country where we can take advantage of the economics of what they have — which is valuable oil and valuable other things.”
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