said he had sort of made up his mind after being presented with military options by the

Pentagon. Now he says he's open to negotiations with that country's leader, Nicholas Maduro, who,

by all accounts, he wants out of power.

We may be having some discussions with Maduro, and we'll see how that turns out. They would like to talk.

As the president says that, America's biggest, most lethal aircraft carrier of the USS Gerald Ford

has officially arrived in the Caribbean.

This brings the number of U.S. troops in the region to around 12,000.

President Trump is making no secret that he's

ramping up military presence there, even with joint military drills with Trinidad and Tobago.

But what remains quite unclear is exactly what the president's goals are for and with this

buildup of force. Yesterday, the State Department announced that it's designating the Venezuelan gang Cartel de los

Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.

The Trump administration also claims that organization is actually run by President Maduro himself.

So what is the next move?

It's hard to see how the government shut shutdown and reopening is anything other than a defeat

for the Democrats, a high-stakes confrontation that ended with their own goals unmet and

their message muddled. If they didn't have the leverage or were not willing to use it to prolong

the shutdown, then why did they stage it at all?

The shutdown reinforced the image of the Democrats as feckless. They promised wonderful-sounding

new programs, free child care, but in fact preside over bloated bureaucracies and inept execution.

If America has an affordability crisis, it tends to be in places Democrats govern, like

New York, Illinois, and California, which all feature high taxes, soaring housing costs,

...