It’s only been a few days since a daring U.S. raid took Nicolas Maduro from a military base in Venezuela and landed him in a Brooklyn jail, but Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can see it all playing out on the big screen.
It will become the subject of movies in years to come, he predicted. “I’m thrilled.” Many others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press about the raid are applauding — at least for now.
The capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced another reckoning in the “Make America Great Again” coalition, strained by the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and rising health insurance premiums and the cost of living.
Trump promised his voters “America First” to stand up against further foreign entanglements. Instead, he intervened by force and without congressional approval on a new border, so far from the South American capital Washington that Google Maps “can’t find a way there.”
The geopolitical action film Tobin envisions in his mind is only in its opening scenes, before all the complications of overthrowing a foreign government by US presidential fiat come rushing in. American troops moved in and out quickly. But what happens next?
Trump gets initial but undying support
Initially, pushback from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core constituencies has been reserved, unlike their outcry over the Epstein episode or the tension running through Republican politics over the now-expired health insurance subsidies.
Against that backdrop, Trump voters interviewed by AP reporters across the country praised the operation and expressed confidence in Trump’s course. But not always unlimited faith. Not all of them supported Trump’s claim that “the people who voted for me are thrilled. They said, ‘We voted.’
“I’ve supported him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, told the AP while browsing in a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “As long as he doesn’t mess up, I support him.”
Trump’s apparent desire to remain engaged in Venezuela and his strident rhetoric about expanding US power elsewhere in the hemisphere have worried some of his staunchest supporters.
Not all of them have reached for the popcorn yet.
In Mississippi, conflicted Trump voters
Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said the move caught him off guard and he’s still not sure he supports it. “It’s good that they’re finally free from that dictatorship,” he said of Venezuelans, “but I don’t know what it’s going to cost us.”
He added: “I don’t want my friends who are serving now to be dragged into war because we go and stick our noses in Venezuelan business.” He noted that Trump campaigned against starting a new war. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “it was an act of war.”
An apprentice electrician who quit his delivery job because he needed to make more money, Lewis said he wants to see the Trump administration focus on reducing costs for young people like him. He also wants the president to make life better for veterans and worry about plunging the country into more conflict.
In Colorado, cheers and caution from Trump voters
For Trump voter Travis Garcia, huddled in his red pickup truck on a chilly evening in Castle Rock, Colorado, it’s a slam-dunk. “Of course, I would be happy if they caught a dictator who is constantly sending drugs our way,” he said. “If we don’t do it, who will?”
The 45-year-old, who works in remodeling, said the operation would cement Trump’s stature as “a powerful man who follows through on his word and won’t be shy and timid and let other countries make the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from Larkspur, was so surprised by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she would be OK with more such operations. She recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating Maduro’s ouster and said fewer bad leaders would “make the world a little less of a bad place.”
Still, Lussier did not want American soldiers to be drawn into the conflict for long, and much of his praise for the invasion placed less emphasis on the potential benefits to America than on the sheer efficiency and courage of the invaders.
Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCanns, 66, delicately said Trump’s intervention “was a little bit contrary to what he preached.”
“I would like to see a more diplomatic way of making change,” said the retired engineer. Still, he thought for a moment and said, “I think it might be warranted in this case.”
Instead of playing ball, Maduro was “playing chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” he said, grinning from beneath a Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.
Colorado Trump supporters interviewed by the AP all praised the smoothness and “class” of the military operation, as one described it. But that support could waver if the U.S. is dragged into a protracted conflict, which neither of them supports.
Few mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil, but thought ousting Maduro would benefit citizens and slow the drug trade and immigration into the US.
From Pennsylvania: Good Redemption for Maduro
At a Golden Dawn dinner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, Ron Soto, 88, expressed unreserved confidence in the president’s ability to manage what comes next. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly visits friends, grabs coffee and goes out to dinner to catch up.
Maduro is a “terrible man,” he said. But will U.S. troops go to other countries like Cuba as they did to Venezuela? “I don’t think they have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put fear into them.”
As for Trump’s comments at one point that his administration would “run” Venezuela, Soto said the president would “straighten that country up and make it 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 what Trump is doing but is aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say thrilled but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Kerry recalled the 1979 takeover of American hostages by Iranian revolutionaries as a sign of what could happen if the conflict escalated. But “he will do everything he can to avoid that, I believe,” he said of Trump.
As for any further foreign interference, Kerry laughs: “They want Greenland to be part of America!”
At the Trump merchandise store Boehner shopped at, banners proclaiming “Trump 2028” and other items are on display. Trump is constitutionally barred from running for office in 2028.
“I know he can’t run for president” in 2028, said Bonner, a propane company worker. Still, he wanted a lawn sign “to piss people off” but couldn’t find it.
The crisp military action clearly impressed him. “They get in and they get out, what they have to do,” he said. About Maduro, he said: “He is an enemy of the United States so I support Trump 100%.”
Confirmation from the Midwest
Walking out of a Walmart in Martinsville, Indiana, Mark Edward Miller, 75, of nearby Mooresville, said the only thing that surprised him about Trump’s intervention was that the word hadn’t leaked earlier. The frequent Trump voter was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before his retirement.
“I don’t think he actually took over a country,” Miller said. “I believe he does what our country should be doing — supporting, especially in our hemisphere, governments that are friendly to us” and challenging enemies.
Tobin, a Michigan man who sees a cinematic future for the raid, not only approves of the operation but wants more of it.
“Especially if they’re as successful as this last one where we didn’t lose any troops, we didn’t lose any planes or ships,” Tobin said during a tour of the Oakland County Republican Party headquarters, where he was surrounded by Trump and GOP memorabilia. “I’m thrilled and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba is very nervous right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering greatly from their terrible conditions and their economy. Iran could be next.”
The three-time Trump voter is an active member of the local Republican Party, a certified firearms instructor and head of a bicycling group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.
His takeaway: “President Trump is not a lazy talker. If he’s going to do something, he does something.”
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Baden reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Householder from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.
