By Nathan Layne
Jan 4 (Reuters) – Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump have largely praised the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as a swift, painless win, though political analysts warn support could wane if the operation drags on and echoes past foreign interventions.
While a handful of conservative figures criticized the attack on Venezuela and detainment of Maduro as a betrayal of Trump’s “America First” pledge to avoid foreign entanglements, most of the president’s Republican allies fell in line.
The early support came even after Trump said the United States would temporarily “run” Venezuela and work to tap its oil reserves, raising the possibility of the kind of open-ended foreign entanglement he and the MAGA base have long opposed.
For now, the base appears willing to cheer on the removal of Maduro, seeing little risk of an escalation into a years-long quagmire like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, political analysts said.
“This is too recent for there to be significant MAGA-base push back,” said Joshua Wilson, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. “There are many questions about how things will develop, and so this could become another test of Trump’s ability to frame events and control his base.”
The military action comes amid a slump in Trump’s approval ratings, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showing that just 39% of U.S. adults approved of his job performance, largely reflecting disappointment over his handling of the economy.
Historically, presidents usually only gain a short-lived political boost from military action, according to Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. That means the risk for Trump and Republicans is on the downside heading into November’s midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake.
“If it goes well, it will largely be forgotten, I suspect, by the time of the midterms,” Wilson said. “If it goes poorly, it will be an albatross.”
Before Saturday’s events, the last time the United States took action to remove the ruler of a Latin American country was the 1989 invasion of Panama that ousted dictator Manuel Noriega. That was the first of two quick, relatively successful military actions under U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who also orchestrated the 1991 Gulf War, yet he still lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992 primarily due to a weak economy.
GREENE, OWENS CRITICIZE ATTACK
Democrats have widely criticized the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela as ill-advised and potentially unlawful given they were carried out without approval from Congress. The party’s leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said Trump risked dragging the U.S. “into another costly foreign war.”
The Democrats have been joined by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Trump supporter who had a public falling out with the president this year. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday, the Republican described Maduro’s arrest as a betrayal of Trump’s pledge during the 2024 presidential campaign to steer clear of foreign conflicts.
“This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people,” she said.
Candace Owens, a right-wing podcaster known in part for spreading conspiracy theories, was also critical of Maduro’s capture, writing on X that the CIA had staged “another hostile takeover of a country at the behest of a globalist psychopaths [sic].”
Yet most of Trump’s political supporters – and even some critics – either backed the attack or declined to weigh in.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide and prominent voice in the Make America Great Again movement, praised the raid as “bold and brilliant” on his podcast hours after the operation, embodying the hawkish tone prevalent across the president’s base.
Trump administration officials have gone to lengths to characterize Saturday’s operation as a law enforcement action against Maduro, who has been indicted on drug-related charges and has a court hearing on Monday in New York.
Some MAGA influencers said they also supported Trump’s stated goal of asserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Right-wing activist Laura Loomer argued on social media that the United States must exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves rather than allow adversaries such as Iran, China, Russia and Cuba to benefit from them and finance attacks on the West.
“We will exert our power and take the oil and financially starve the axis of evil,” Loomer wrote on X, in a broadside against Representative Thomas Massie, one of the few Republicans to question the legal basis for the strikes on Venezuela.
Nikki Haley, who lost to Trump in the Republican primary of 2024, called Maduro a “brutal socialist dictator” in a post on X and said the Venezuelan people “deserve freedom”.
Republican Senator Rand Paul, a longtime opponent of overseas military interventions, did not explicitly criticize Trump’s actions in a social media post, but cautioned that “time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost.”
Matt McManus, a political science professor at Spelman College, said it would be incorrect to cast the MAGA movement as strictly isolationist, when it has long been comfortable in projecting power. He pointed to Trump backers’ support of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June and of Trump’s various threats against other countries during his first term.
“MAGAdom has never really been defined by a great concern for ideological consistency,” McManus said. “It very much takes its cues from the leading figures… And of course, right now, Trump is signaling very heavily that Venezuelan intervention is what’s good for America.”
But McManus and other experts agreed that a prolonged intervention in Venezuela would test Trump’s grip over his party and the MAGA movement, especially if U.S. troops are deployed – a possibility the president has not ruled out.
“I guess Venezuela will be the acid test that answers the question is MAGA whatever Donald Trump says it is,” said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
(reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Sergio Non and Chizu Nomiyama )
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