Venezuela could define Trump’s legacy

After unleashing a night of shock and awe in Venezuela, Donald Trump now appears to be getting into the business of nation-building.

At a remarkable news conference Saturday morning at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the president announced that U.S. forces had successfully captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in an overnight raid in Caracas.

Trump then said a team working with the Venezuelans, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, would take control of the besieged country.

“We will govern the country until we can make a safe, appropriate and reasonable transition,” he said.

It’s unclear exactly what “governing the country” actually means, but the commitment represents a sudden change of course for the president, fraught with contradictions and daunting obstacles.

A president who campaigned against “endless wars,” harshly criticized past U.S. efforts at regime change, and promised to implement an “America first” foreign policy is now pinning his presidency on successfully rebuilding a South American nation whose economy is in shambles and whose political stability has been weakened by decades of dictatorship.

But Trump was relentlessly optimistic.

He said his administration has an “excellent track record of winning” and this will be no different. He has promised to hire American energy companies to rebuild Venezuela’s crumbling industrial infrastructure, funding America’s reconstruction efforts and benefiting the Venezuelan people.

He refused to rule out sending American troops to Venezuela to further those efforts. “We are not afraid of boots on the ground… our boots were on the ground last night,” he told reporters.

Trump, who harshly criticized the US invasion of Iraq, will now have to listen to the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the American architects of the Iraq War, “If you break it, you own it.”

For better or worse, the United States has reshaped Venezuela’s future.

Trump entered office almost a year ago promising to be a peacemaker, but over the past year he has shown he is more than willing to use military force around the world.

Last week he ordered air strikes on Syria and Nigeria. In 2025, it targeted nuclear facilities in Iran, suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, rebel forces in Yemen, armed groups in Somalia and Islamist militants in Iraq.

Unlike past actions that largely involved missiles and aircraft to reduce the risk of harm to American forces, Trump’s attack on Venezuela and his commitments to that country’s future are quite different.

He said at the press conference that his goal was to “make Venezuela great again.”

This distortion of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (or Maga) slogan may be hard for some of Trump’s supporters to swallow.

Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who remained loyal to Trump after accusing the president of abandoning his political base, was quick to condemn the president’s actions against X.

“Americans’ disgust with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support for foreign wars is justified because we have to pay the price for it, and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always fund and keep the Washington military machine running,” he wrote. “A lot of people in Maga thought they were voting to end this. Boy, were we wrong.”

Another prominent Trump critic, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, compared the legal justification for Maduro’s arrest on arms and cocaine trafficking charges to Trump’s statement that the operation was to recover seized U.S. oil and halt fentanyl production.

While most Republican lawmakers rallied behind the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson called military action against the “criminal regime” “decisive and justified.”

During the press conference, the president said the Venezuelan operation advances his “America First” priorities because it ensures U.S. regional security and ensures a stable supply of oil.

He dusted off the Monroe Doctrine, an early 19th-century American foreign policy that argued that the Western Hemisphere should be free of influence from European powers, and renamed it the “Donroe Doctrine.”

Trump said the action in Venezuela showed that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

He said the goal of the US’s new national security strategy is to “protect the commerce, lands and resources that form the foundation of our national security.” He branded the Western Hemisphere as America’s “home region.”

But Trump’s decision to capture Maduro will raise larger concerns about global politics and America’s relations with the world’s other major military powers.

China’s foreign ministry issued a statement expressing shock and condemning what it said was a reckless attack on a sovereign nation.

During the Biden administration, the USA made similar condemnations against Russia, which invaded Ukraine. Now the Trump administration is trying to broker a peace agreement between these two countries, which often appears to favor the Russian side.

Don Bacon, a centrist Republican congressman who is retiring at the end of this year, expressed concern about the message Trump’s actions could send.

“My main concern is that Russia will use this to justify China’s illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine or the invasion of Taiwan.

Trump’s Democratic critics were more direct.

“The United States should not rule other countries for any reason,” said Brian Shatz of Hawaii, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations committee. “We should have learned by now not to get involved in endless wars and regime change missions that have disastrous consequences for Americans.”

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who could become speaker of the House of Representatives if Democrats take back the chamber after midterm elections in November, said Maduro is a criminal and a dictator with a history of human rights abuses. But he condemned Trump’s decision not to consult with legislative leaders before launching the attack.

“Donald Trump has a constitutional responsibility to uphold the law and uphold democratic norms in the United States,” he said. “This is what it takes to put America first.”

Trump said at the press conference that he chose not to brief Congress because he was worried it would “leak” details of the operation before the attack.

This military operation was successful; There were no American deaths and limited damage to US equipment. Trump, with characteristic bravado, called the operation a “spectacular attack” and “one of the most striking, effective and powerful demonstrations of American military power and proficiency in American history.”

While the United States said it would take over the governance and reconstruction of Venezuela, it is now staking its presidency on the continuation of that success — though we don’t know what that actually means. He and his team must strengthen a country that has been in turmoil for decades while stabilizing a region that is sure to be wary of what Trump’s foreign policy has in store for them.