In Toppling Maduro, Trump Risks Blowback from ‘America First’ Base

In Toppling Maduro, Trump Risks Blowback from ‘America First’ Base

 

President Trump’s pledge that the United States would “run” Venezuela for an indefinite period showed he is willing to enter foreign conflicts he once promised to end.

 

Zolan Kanno-YoungsDavid E. Sanger

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and David E. Sanger

Jan. 3, 2026

Updated 7:10 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/us/politics/maduro-trump-base-america-first.html

 

For months now, a significant segment of President Trump’s political base has been complaining that he has spent far too much time on foreign policy — seeking a Ukraine deal and addressing a long list of other conflicts he claims to have settled — and too little on America’s economic anxieties.

 

His announcement on Saturday that the United States had captured Venezuela’s leader and would “run” the country for an indefinite period is adding fuel to that fire. As the scope of the operation was becoming clear on Saturday, critics said Mr. Trump risks getting the United States into the kind of open-ended conflict that he has railed against for years.

 

“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump ally turned critic, posted on social media. “Boy were we wrong.”

 

Mr. Trump, who has pledged to cease “endless wars” and reduce the number of American troops overseas, left open the prospect of deployment to Venezuela — something that he has spoken of only vaguely in the past. Speaking to reporters, he said the United States was “not afraid of boots on the ground,” adding that the administration planned to have a military presence in the nation “as it pertains to oil.”

 

“We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure,” Mr. Trump said in comments that stunned some Republicans who questioned how the vague plans squared with a commitment to refrain from military intervention and regime change. “We’re going to run it properly and make sure the people of Venezuela are taken care of.”

 

Mr. Trump in the past has risked alienating his base over military action, particularly in the run-up to his Iran strikes in June. Yet the targets in Iran were three underground nuclear sites, enabling Mr. Trump to launch a high-risk bombing raid from the other side of the world, bury the stockpiles of uranium and return home. The uproar died down.

 

What happened in Caracas, however, was different.

 

Mr. Trump decapitated the Venezuelan government and made no secret of the fact that the United States plans to pull the strings.

 

“We’re going to run the country right,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. “It’s going to be run very judiciously, very fairly. It’s going to make a lot of money.”

 

With those words, Mr. Trump adopted a version of what former Secretary of State Colin Powell used to call the “Pottery Barn rule,” which boils down to you-break-it-you-bought-it. That doesn’t necessarily mean a standing U.S. military force in Venezuela, similar to what the United States kept in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it does suggest continuing political intervention, with at least the threat of a military backup.

 

Mr. Trump said on Saturday that his administration was “prepared to do a second wave” after the first attack in Venezuela, but for now it was not necessary.

 

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former State Department official under Mr. Trump, said the plan to run Venezuela was “just jaw dropping.”

 

“That is not something that the president has laid out, certainly during the campaign and even during the last few months,” Mr. Bartlett said.

 

Ultimately, the extent of any backlash may depend on what happens next.

 

“This is the difficult part,” said Dave Carney, a Republican strategist who ran Preserve America, a pro-Trump super PAC. “Nobody wants a quagmire. Nobody wants, you know, body bags coming back to Dover of American solders who are being sniped at from, you know, a rebellious minority in Venezuela.”

 

“If it goes on for three years, it will be negative,” Mr. Carney said. But if the presence in Venezuela lasts months, Mr. Trump “will be celebrated.”

 

In Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, Venezuelans and Venezuelan-Americans did in fact respond to the capture of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, by celebrating in the streets. And many Republicans appeared ready to stand by Mr. Trump, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who initially seemed critical of the operation.

 

Mr. Lee later said in social media post that after speaking to Secretary of State Marco Rubio he believed the military action “we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant” of Mr. Maduro.

 

The operation in Venezuela was also met with support from the foreign policy hawks that have long been a target of the MAGA movement.

 

“I’m grateful to the U.S. personnel who carried out orders in harm’s way,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. “A free, democratic and stable Venezuela, led by Venezuelans, is in America’s national security interests.”

 

Mr. Trump’s aides have said that military action against Venezuela is aligned with his campaign promises by arguing that Mr. Maduro fueled domestic crises in the United States, including gang violence and a surge of drug overdoses caused by fentanyl.

 

The fentanyl that fueled America’s overdose crisis is, however, manufactured in Mexican labs using chemicals from China. The U.S. intelligence community also earlier this year undercut Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Maduro sent members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the United States, saying that the gang was not controlled by the Venezuelan leader.

 

Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and Trump ally who supported the Iran attack, joined Tucker Carlson and others in opposing the operation in Venezuela, maintaining that Americans will ultimately pay the price.

 

“Maybe soon we will see an invasion of Venezuela's so that” Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, “can assume power in a country she will never be able to run without U.S. assistance.” The result, Ms. Loomer said, would be to pave the way for China, among others, to gain a deeper foothold.

 

Such views get to a central argument: Who owns the definition of America First?

 

Mr. Trump, who first played with the term in a New York Times interview in 2016, has said that he invented it — he didn’t — and therefore he gets to define it. Some of his MAGA faithful clearly believe otherwise.

 

But at the core of the dispute is the fact that Mr. Trump is no isolationist, even if many of his backers are.

 

The person who could face future political ramifications of a prolonged military presence in Venezuela is Vice President JD Vance, who is widely thought to be Mr. Trump’s heir to the MAGA movement. He was not present at Mr. Trump’s news conference on Saturday.

 

Mr. Vance, who monitored the operation in Venezuela by video conference, has in the past pushed for military constraint.

 

“No more undefined missions. No more open-ended conflicts,” Mr. Vance told a graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy earlier this year.

 

On Saturday, Mr. Vance expressed support for the military intervention.

 

“The president offered multiple off-ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: The drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States,” Mr. Vance said on social media. “Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says.”

 

Whether all of Mr. Trump’s supporters agree may be another matter.

 

Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

 

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.