Trump says his voters loved the Venezuela attack — here’s what they really think
It’s only days since a daring US raider was hijacked Nicolas Maduro From a Venezuelan military base, he sent him to a Brooklyn prison, but Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can already see it all playing out on the big screen.
He predicts it will be the subject of movies for years to come. “I am very excited.” Many people who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to the Associated Press about the raid are also applauding, at least for now.
The capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced a new reckoning with the “Make America Great Again” coalition, already shaken by the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis. Jeffrey Epstein files and nervous increasing health insurance premiums and living expenses.
Trump promised his voters that “America First” would stand against further foreign meddling. Instead, he intervened with force and without congressional approval on a new frontier, a South American capital so far from Washington that Google Maps “can’t seem to find a way there.”
The geopolitical action movie Tobin sees in his mind is only in the opening scene, before the full complexity of overthrowing a foreign government at the behest of a U.S. president is revealed. US forces moved in and out quickly. So what happens next?
Trump finds early but not endless support
Initially, the response from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core voters was cautious, despite the uproar over the Epstein affair or tensions in Republican politics over now-expired health insurance subsidies.
In this context, Trump voters interviewed by AP journalists across the country praised the operation and expressed their belief in the path Trump followed. But it’s not always unlimited faith. Not all of them supported Trump’s claim that “the people who voted for me were very excited. They said, ‘We voted for this.'”
“So far I’m supporting him,” Paul Bonner, 67, told the AP as he browsed through a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “I’m rooting for him until he screws up.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to continue involvement in Venezuela and his intensifying rhetoric about expanding U.S. power elsewhere in the hemisphere unsettle some of his die-hard supporters.
Not all of them get to the popcorn yet.
A conflicted Trump voter in Mississippi
Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said the move caught him off guard and he’s not sure if he still supports it. “It’s a good thing for Venezuelans that they’re finally getting rid of this dictatorship, but I don’t know what it’s going to cost us,” he said.
And he added: “I don’t want my current colleagues to be dragged into war just because we stuck our noses into Venezuela’s business.” He noted that Trump campaigned against starting new wars. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”
Lewis, an apprentice electrician who gave up his delivery job because he needed to make more money, said he wants the Trump administration to focus on lowering costs for young people like him. He also wants the president to make life better for veterans and worries about plunging the country into more conflict.
Cheers and warnings from Trump voters in Colorado
It’s a slam dunk for Trump voter Travis Garcia, leaning into his red pickup truck on a chilly evening in Castle Rock, Colorado. “Of course, I’ll be happy they caught a dictator who keeps sending us drugs,” he said. “If we don’t do it, who will?”
The 45-year-old man, who works in renovations, said the operation strengthened Trump’s reputation as “a strong man who keeps his word, who is not going to be shy and timid and let other countries enforce the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from the town of Larkspur, was so amazed by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she wouldn’t mind more such operations. He recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating Maduro’s removal and said a less evil leader would “make the world a slightly worse place.”
Still, Lussier did not want U.S. troops to be trapped in a protracted conflict, and much of his admiration for the operation rested on the raiders’ smooth efficiency and bravado rather than on its potential benefits to the United States.
Outside the Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, politely said Trump’s intervention was “a little bit antithetical to his campaign.”
“I would like to see a more diplomatic way of making changes,” the retired engineer said. However, after thinking for a while, he said: “I think it might be necessary in this case.”
Instead of playing ball, Maduro said, “He was playing chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” and chuckled from under his Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.
Colorado Trump supporters interviewed by the AP all applauded the smoothness and, as one described it, “class” of the military operation. But that support could waver if the United States is drawn into a longer conflict that neither will support.
Few people mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuelan oil but thought removing Maduro would benefit citizens and slow the drug trade and immigration to the United States.
From Pennsylvania: Get well soon to Maduro
At the Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, 88-year-old Ron Soto expressed his unconditional faith in the president’s ability to manage what comes next. The retired truck driver visits the restaurant regularly to meet friends, drink coffee and chat.
He said Maduro was a “terrible man.” So should U.S. forces enter other countries, such as Cuba, as they did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they’ll have to do that,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put the fear in them.”
As for Trump’s comment at one point that his administration would “rule” Venezuela, Soto said the president would “fix the country and turn it into a democracy if he can. I don’t know if he can.”
At Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62, said he supports Trump’s actions but is aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say I’m excited, but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Carey reminded Capture of US hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979 as an indication of what might happen if the conflict escalated. But he said of Trump, “I believe he will take every precaution to prevent this.”
in any more foreign intervention, Carey laughed when she said: “He wants Greenland to be part of America!”
Banners saying “Trump 2028” and other items are on display at the Trump products store where Bonner shopped. Trump is constitutionally prohibited from running in 2028.
“I know he can’t run for president in 2028,” said Bonner, a propane company employee. He still wanted a lawn sign “to piss people off” but couldn’t find one.
The vivid military operation clearly impressed him. “They came in, they came out, they did what they had to do,” he said. He said of Maduro: “He is the enemy of the United States, so I support Trump 100%.”
Approval from the Midwest
Mark Edward Miller, 75, exiting a Walmart in Martinsville, Indiana, near Mooresville, said the only thing that surprised him about Trump’s intervention was that the news didn’t leak ahead of time. The consistent Trump voter was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before his retirement.
“I don’t think he really took over a country,” Miller said. “I believe our country is doing exactly what it is supposed to do; supporting governments that are friendly to us and challenging those that are hostile, especially in our hemisphere.”
Seeing a cinematic future for the raid, Tobin, a Michigan native, not only approves of the operation but wants more.
“Especially if they were as successful as this last one, where we didn’t lose any soldiers, we didn’t lose any planes or ships,” Tobin said during a visit to the Oakland County Republican Party headquarters, where he was surrounded by Trump and GOP memorabilia. “I was excited and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba is very tense right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering greatly from the terrible situation and economy they are in. Iran could be next.”
The three-time Trump voter is an active member of the local Republican Party, a certified firearms instructor and president of a cycling group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.
His conclusion: “President Trump doesn’t talk nonsense. If he says he’s going to do something, he does something.”
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Bedayn reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Host from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.
