It’s only been days since a daring US raid plucked Nicolás Maduro from a Venezuelan military base and rushed him to a Brooklyn prison, but Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can already see it all on the big screen.
It will be the subject of movies for years to come, he predicts. “I am excited.” Many others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press about the raid are also cheering — at least for now.
The seizure of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced a fresh reckoning on the “Make America Great Again” coalition, already shaken by the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and strained by rising health insurance premiums and the cost of living.
Trump promised his voters that “America First” would oppose more foreign entanglements. Instead, he intervened forcefully and without congressional approval in a new frontier, a South American capital so far from Washington that Google Maps says it “can’t seem to find a way there.”
The geopolitical action movie Tobin sees in his mind’s eye is only at the opening scene, before all the complexities of uprooting a foreign government by a mandate from the US president come rushing in. American forces were in and out quickly. But what happens next?
Trump finds early but not endless support
At first, the pushback from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core constituencies was guarded, in contrast to their uproar over the Epstein episode or the tensions running through Republican politics over now-expired health insurance subsidies.
Against this 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 everyone shared Trump’s claim that those who “voted for me are excited. They said, ‘That’s what we voted for.’
“I support him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, told the AP while browsing a Trump store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “Until he messes up, I support him.”
Trump’s apparent desire to remain involved in Venezuela and his increasingly heated rhetoric about expanding US power elsewhere in the hemisphere are making some of his supporters nervous.
Not everyone has gotten to the popcorn yet.
In Mississippi, a conflicted Trump voter
Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said the movement caught him off guard and he’s still not sure if he supports it. “It’s good that they’re finally freed from that dictatorship,” he said of Venezuelans, “but I don’t know how much it’s going to cost us.”
He added: “I don’t want my friends who are serving right now to be dragged into a war because we went and poked our noses into the affairs of Venezuela.” He noted that Trump campaigned against starting new wars. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”
An apprentice electrician who quit his delivery job because he needed to earn more money, Lewis said he wants the Trump administration to focus on reducing 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 conflicts.
In Colorado, cheers and caution from Trump voters
For Trump voter Travis Garcia, leaning against his red pickup truck on a chilly evening in Castle Rock, Colo., it’s a slam dunk. “Of course I will be happy that they captured a dictator who is constantly sending us drugs,” he said, “If we don’t do it, who will?”
The 45-year-old, who works in remodeling, said the operation reinforces Trump’s stature as “a strong man who keeps his word and will not be shy and timid and let other countries follow the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from Larkspur, was so amazed by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she would agree to more such operations. She recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating Maduro’s ouster and said fewer evil leaders “would make the world a little less stupid.”
Still, Lussier would not want American soldiers locked in a protracted conflict, and much of her admiration for the operation depended less on the possible benefits to the US than on the smooth efficiency and bravado of the raiders.
Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, said softly that Trump’s intervention was “a little counter to what he campaigned on.”
“I would like to see more of a diplomatic way of making changes,” the retired engineer said. Still, he said, thinking for a moment, “I think in this case it might have been justified.”
Instead of playing ball, Maduro was “playing chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” he said, chuckling from under a Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.
Colorado Trump supporters interviewed by the AP all applauded the smoothness and “class” of the military operation, as one described it. But that support could wane if the US is drawn into a longer conflict, which neither would support.
Few mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil, but believed Maduro’s removal would benefit citizens and slow the drug trade and immigration into the US.
From Pennsylvania: Good riddance to Maduro
At the Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, 88-year-old Ron Soto expressed unreserved confidence in the president’s ability to handle what comes next. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly visits the restaurant to meet friends, drink coffee and catch up.
Maduro is a “terrible man,” he said. But should US forces go to other countries, such as Cuba, as they did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they will have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put fear into them.”
As for Trump’s comment at one point that his administration would “run” Venezuela, Soto said the president would “right that country and turn it into a democracy if he can. I don’t know if he can.”
At the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62, said he supports what Trump has done but is aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say excited, but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Carey recalled the capture of American hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979 as an indication of what could happen if the conflict escalated. But “he’s going to take every step to avoid that, I think,” he said of Trump.
As for any further foreign intervention, Carey burst out laughing when he said, “He wants Greenland to be part of America!”
At the Trump store where Bonner shopped, banners and other items proclaiming “Trump 2028” are on display. Trump is constitutionally barred from running in 2028.
“I know he can’t run for president” in 2028, said Bonner, a propane company employee. Still, he wanted a lawn sign “just to irritate people” but couldn’t find one.
The clear military operation left him impressed. “They came in and came out, did what they were supposed to do,” he said. Of Maduro, he said: “He is an enemy of the United States, so I support Trump 100 percent.”
Midwestern statement
Leaving 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 it wasn’t leaked in advance. The consistent Trump voter was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before he retired.
“I don’t feel like he actually conquered a country,” Miller said. “I think he’s doing exactly what our country should be doing — supporting, especially in our hemisphere, governments that are friendly to us” and challenging those that are hostile.
Tobin, the Michigan man who sees a cinematic future for the raid, not only approved of the operation, but wants more.
“Especially if they were as successful as the last one where we didn’t lose any troops, 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’m delighted and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba is very nervous right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering enormously from their horrible situation 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 cycling group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.
His description: “President Trump doesn’t mince words. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it.”
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Bedayn reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Householder from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.