It’s only been days since a daring U.S. raid snatched Nicolás Maduro from a Venezuelan military base and sent him to a Brooklyn jail, but Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can already see it all happening on the big screen.
He predicts that this will be a theme in movies for years to come. “I’m excited.” Many others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press were also applauding — at least for now.
The arrest of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced yet another reckoning for the Make America Great Again coalition, already rocked by the Trump administration’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein documents and strained by rising health insurance premiums and the cost of living.
Trump promised voters to put “America First” against more foreign entanglements. Instead, he intervened with force at a new border without congressional approval, a South American capital so far away from Washington that Google Maps says “it seems there is no way to get there.”
The geopolitical action drama that Tobin sees in his mind has barely begun, before all the complexities of a foreign government uprooted by the orders of an American president loom large. U.S. troops moved in and out quickly. But what happens next?
Trump gets early but not endless support
Early resistance from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core base had been cautious, in contrast to their anger over the Epstein affair or the tensions in Republican politics over now-expired health insurance subsidies.
Against this backdrop, Trump voters across the country who spoke to AP reporters praised the operation and expressed confidence in Trump’s policies. But faith is not always unlimited. They didn’t all support Trump’s assertion that those “people who voted for me were excited. They said, ‘This is what we voted for.'”
“So far, I support him,” Paul Bonner, 67, told The Associated Press while browsing at a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “I’m going to support him until he screws up.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to remain involved in Venezuela and his intensifying rhetoric about expanding U.S. power elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere has unnerved some of his die-hard supporters.
Not everyone is reaching for the popcorn.
In Mississippi, a conflicted Trump voter
Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Miss., said the move caught him off guard and he’s still not sure he supports it. “It’s a good thing that they’re finally getting rid of the dictatorship,” he said of Venezuelans, “but I don’t know what it’s going to cost us.”
“I don’t want my friends who are serving in the military to be dragged into a war because of our involvement in Venezuela,” he added, noting that Trump campaigned against starting a new war. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “it was an act of war.”
Lewis, an apprentice electrician who gave up his delivery job because he needed to make more money, said he would like to see the Trump administration focus on lowering costs for young people like him. He also wants the president to give veterans a better life and worries about plunging the country into more conflict.
In Colorado, cheers and warnings from Trump voters
For Trump voter Travis Garcia, it was a slam dunk as he leaned in his red pickup truck on a cold night in Castle Rock, Colorado. “Of course I would be happy that they caught a dictator who was constantly shipping drugs to us,” he said. “If we don’t do it, who will?”
The 45-year-old, who works in renovation, said the operation strengthened Trump’s status as “a strong man who keeps his word and is not shy about letting other countries enforce the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant in the town of Larkspur, was so surprised by the success of the Venezuela mission that she said she would be open to more such operations. She recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating Maduro’s ouster and said fewer bad leaders “will make the world a less terrible place.”
Still, Lucier did not want American soldiers to be drawn into a protracted conflict, and her admiration for the operation rested largely on the attackers’ smooth efficiency and bravado rather than on the possible benefits to the United States.
Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, said delicately that Trump’s intervention was “kind of the opposite of what he campaigned on.”
“I’d like to see more of a diplomatic approach to change,” said the retired engineer. Still, he thought for a moment and said, “I think in this case, it might make sense.”
Instead of playing ball, Maduro is “playing a game of chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” he said, chuckling while wearing a Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.
Trump supporters in Colorado who spoke to The Associated Press all praised the military operation’s smoothness and “elegantness,” as one described it. But that support could waver if the United States were to become entangled in a protracted conflict, a scenario neither of them would support.
Few have mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuelan oil, but argue Maduro’s ouster would benefit citizens and slow drug trade and immigration to the U.S.
From Pennsylvania: Wish Maduro out of trouble
At the Golden Dawn restaurant in Levittown, Pennsylvania, 88-year-old Ron Soto has unreserved faith in the president’s ability to handle what comes next. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly goes to the restaurant to meet friends for coffee and conversation.
He said Maduro is a “terrible person.” But should U.S. troops enter other countries, such as Cuba, as they did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) scares them.”
As for Trump at one point saying his administration would “run” Venezuela, Soto said the president would “fix this country and make it a democracy if he can. I don’t know if he can do that.”
At the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62, said he supported Trump’s approach but was aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say excited, but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Kerry recalled the 1979 incident in which Iranian revolutionaries took American hostages as an indication of what could happen if the conflict escalates. But “I believe he will do whatever it takes to avoid that,” he said of Trump.
When asked about any further foreign intervention, Kerry laughed: “He wants Greenland to be part of the United States!”
Banners and other items labeled “Trump 2028” were displayed at the Trump merchandise store where Bonner shopped. Trump is constitutionally prohibited from running in 2028.
“I know he can’t run for president in 2028,” said Bonner, a propane company worker. Still, he wanted a lawn sign “just to piss people off,” but couldn’t find one.
He was clearly impressed by the crisp military action. “They came in and went out and did what they had to do,” he said. “He is an enemy of the United States, so I support Trump 100 percent,” he said of Maduro.
Affirmation from the Midwest
Mark Edward Miller, 75, of Mooresville, near Martinsville, Indiana, said as he emerged from a Walmart in Martinsville, Indiana, that the only thing that surprised him about Trump’s intervention was that the news didn’t leak out ahead of time. The staunch Trump supporter was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before retiring.
“I don’t feel like he actually took over a country,” Miller said. “I believe he is doing what our country should be doing — supporting governments that are friendly to us, especially in our Western Hemisphere,” and challenging those that are hostile.
Michigan’s Tobin saw a cinematic future for the raid and not only approved the operation but wanted more like it.
“Especially if they’re successful like they were last time, 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 Republican memorabilia. “I was excited and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba is very nervous right now,” he said. “The Cuban people are suffering greatly because of their terrible situation and economy. Iran could be next.”
The three-time Trump voter is an active member of the local Republican Party, a certified firearms instructor and the leader of a cycling group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.
His conclusion: “President Trump doesn’t sit around. If he says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do something.”
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Bedayn is from Colorado, Catalini is from Pennsylvania, Householder is from Michigan, Bates is from Mississippi, Lamy is from Indiana and Woodward is from Washington state.
