Swamp Notes: Why Trump wants to ‘run’ other countries
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a repeat of an episode published on Swamp Notes, a sister podcast of the FT News Briefing on January 9, 2026. Subscribe to Swamp Notes on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.
After a military operation to capture Venezuela's leader, the Trump administration is seeking influence over other regions across the western hemisphere. The FT’s national editor Edward Luce and US-Europe foreign affairs correspondent Amy Mackinnon share their insights on how Trump and his cabinet have come to embrace the idea of foreign intervention.
Mentioned in this podcast:
US says using military is among ‘options’ to acquire Greenland
How the US’s audacious operation to capture Nicolás Maduro unfolded
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Swamp Notes is hosted by Marc Filippino, and produced by Henry Larson. This week’s show was mixed by Sam Giovinco. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Topher Forhecz. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson.
The FT does not use generative AI to voice its podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, it's Mark Filipino. This weekend, we're bringing you an episode of the other podcast I host Swap Notes, the FTs U.S. Politics Show. This conversation is all about the change in foreign policy priorities our reporters are seeing in Washington, namely U.S. President Donald Trump's willingness to take over other countries. The news this first week of the new year has been really crazy, |
| 0:21.5 | and I hope this episode can help make some sense of it all. |
| 0:23.9 | Okay, without further ado, here's the show. |
| 0:29.8 | After attacking Venezuela, the president of the United States has his eyes on other nations. |
| 0:35.4 | We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. |
| 0:40.0 | Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, Donald Trump has an interest in all three. |
| 0:45.4 | The future of the free world depends on America, being able to assert ourselves and our |
| 0:51.2 | interests without apology. |
| 0:53.6 | And his advisors say it's within Trump's right to use |
| 0:57.0 | force to take charge of other countries. This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the |
| 1:07.3 | Financial Times, where we talk about all the things happening in U.S. politics, finance, and the economy, I'm Mark Filipino, and this week we're asking, what's behind Trump's push to run other countries? Here with me to discuss is Edward Luce. He's the FTs' national editor and co-author of the SwampNotes newsletter. Happy New Year, Ed. Great to see you. And we've also got got Amy McKinnon who covers foreign affairs for the F.T. |
| 1:29.0 | Happy New Year, Amy. Great to be here. First time. Yeah, nice to finally have you on. Amy, it has been |
| 1:34.3 | an incredibly busy start to the new year, to say the least. Donald Trump ordered troops into |
| 1:40.3 | Caracas to capture Venezuela's leader, Nicholas Maduro. Tell me what we know about that |
| 1:45.3 | operation. So this operation was several months in the making. The CIA was on the ground as early as |
| 1:52.0 | August, and their role in this was to really help build out a picture of Maduro's patterns of |
| 1:57.8 | life. So all of the things that you would need to know about a person if you are |
| 2:01.2 | looking to snatch them in the dead of nights. And then, of course, over the fall publicly, |
| 2:06.0 | we saw this very large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean strikes on boats there that the |
| 2:11.9 | administration alleges were trafficking drugs. And then Dan Kane, the chairman of the joint chief, said in his briefing over the weekend, |
| 2:19.5 | that it was really by December, early December, they had all of the pieces in place for this operation. |
| 2:24.7 | And it was just a matter of finding a time when Maduro was accessible, |
... |
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