President Trump's capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro is giving him an opportunity to redefine "America First" as pro-intervention — but risks fracturing the MAGA coalition.
There was some predictable pushback to the strikes from some of the biggest isolationist voices in the Republican Party who have turned into Trump antagonists. Now-former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said the strikes represented what "many in MAGA thought they voted to end." Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told MAGA to "wake up," saying Venezuela "is not about drugs; it's about OIL and REGIME CHANGE."
But conservative commentators who had previously panned foreign intervention in other instances quickly signaled support for the bombing of Venezuela and quick capture of Maduro that occurred without any U.S. deaths. They were attracted to the swift use of force.
"I'm as reflexively non-interventionist as anyone can possibly be, but Venezuela appears to be a resounding victory and one of the most brilliant military operations in American history," wrote The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh, who just weeks ago had chatted with Tucker Carlson about why the U.S. should not be involved at all in the Israel-Gaza conflict. "As an unapologetic American Chauvinist, I want America to rule over this hemisphere and exert its power for the good of our people."
Carlson, meanwhile, told MAGA personality Mike Cernovich on his show Monday that he was "grateful for the wisdom of not taking out the entire government," since it "can be very hard to put those things back together again." He also praised Trump's apparent support for Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's No. 2, to lead the country rather than Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — who Carlson said was the favored choice among the "Bibi people," in reference to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Other prominent anti-intervention Republicans pulled their punches. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote a long social media post focused mostly on dragging socialism, ending on a wait-and-see note: "Time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost." Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said that after speaking with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he thought the president likely had "inherent authority" to "protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack."
The early rallying from Trump's MAGA allies isn't without caveats.
Former Trump adviser and commentator Steve Bannon said Monday that while the MAGA crowd "fully supported" a "precision military exercise" to extract Maduro and put him on trial, people are "concerned about" Trump's comments about being unafraid about putting "boots on the ground" in Venezuela and about re-building the country.
"When Maduro was taken from the Brooklyn detention center through lovely parts of Brooklyn and I think some of the Bronx, the United States looks worse than Caracas," Bannon said on his "War Room" podcast. "Maybe some of that focus should be here."
Megyn Kelly, who campaigned for Trump, recalled the Libyan government bombing Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 — killing 259 people, including 190 Americans — as retaliation for U.S. strikes in Libya.
"You just don't know what you're starting," Kelly said on her show Monday. "How is this going to come back to haunt us?" She said she thinks the Trump administration's stated focus on narco-terroism is likely a pretext to force regime change.
There are major questions about what, exactly, the U.S. is going to do in Venezuela now, as the Trump administration sends mixed messages.
Trump asserted that "we're in charge" of Venezuela now, but Rubio said the strikes were "a law enforcement action" — later adding that the U.S. is retaining "multiple levers of leverage" to include quarantining oil. While the U.S. captured Maduro, the rest of the Venezuelan regime remains in place, even as Rubio said that the U.S. wants to see Venezuela "transition to a place completely different than what it looks like today."
How the administration handles the next steps could present a bigger challenge for the MAGA coalition.
The "America First" slogan popularized by Trump was long seen as being implicitly against heavy-handed intervention and regime change in foreign countries where there is not a direct benefit to the U.S. Some of his loudest supporters are scarred by the failure of attempted nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under former President George W. Bush. Trump himself has panned "nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us," as he put it in a speech to West Point graduates in May 2025.
But how important is that anti-intervention stance to the success of the MAGA coalition?
Early polling shows that while Trump voters largely support his Venezuela actions, they are still skeptical of a more involved U.S. approach in the country.
A weekend Washington Post poll found broad support for using the military to capture Maduro among those who voted for Trump in 2024, with 80 percent approving and just 7 percent disapproving.
But the poll also showed Trump voters having limits to their support for U.S. intervention in Venezuela: 46 percent said they would support the U.S. taking control of Venezuela and choosing a new government for the country while 19 percent opposed and 34 percent were unsure. When asked who should decide the future leadership of Venezuela, just 9 percent of Trump voters said that the U.S. should decide, while 91 percent said the Venezuelan people should decide.
In general, the current Republican coalition prefers "peace through strength" over "diplomacy first." An October Manhattan Institute survey measuring the attitudes of Trump voters and self-identified Republicans who didn't vote for Trump found that the majority — 67 percent — support a "peace through strength" foreign policy that takes an active role in promoting U.S. interests and countering threats with a strong military.
Another 29 percent favored "diplomacy first," saying the U.S. "should focus on diplomacy and always avoid military intervention unless directly threatened."
That's a sizable minority in the fragile Trump coalition that's on the side of "diplomacy first," which the president acknowledged by making Tulsi Gabbard his Director of National Intelligence.
Gabbard, meanwhile, has been notably quiet about the Venezuela actions, while her previous statements in opposition to intervention in Venezuela and elsewhere have made the rounds. She said in an October speech that American foreign policy for decades was "trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building," and that Trump " was elected by the American people to put an end to this."
If Trump needed support from the Gabbards of the world to win in 2024, his Venezuela actions pose major challenges for the MAGA coalition staying together.
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