It’s only been days since a daring US raid kidnapped 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 playing out on the big screen.
He predicts that he will be the subject of movies for years to come. “I’m thrilled.” Many others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press about the raid are also applauding — at least for now.
The capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced another 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 stand against further foreign entanglement. Instead, he intervened by force and without congressional approval in a new frontier, a South American capital so far from Washington that Google Maps says “it seems you can’t find a way there.”
The geopolitical action movie that Tobin sees in his mind is only in its opening scene, before all the complexities of uprooting a foreign government by fiat of an American president quickly set in. American forces moved in and out quickly. But what happens next?
Trump finds early but not endless support
Early on, the pushback from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core constituencies was guarded, in contrast to their uproar over the Epstein episode or the ongoing tensions over Republican policy over now-expired health insurance subsidies.
Against that background, Trump voters interviewed by AP reporters around the country praised the operation and expressed faith in Trump’s path. But it is not always unlimited faith. They did not all support Trump’s claim that those who “voted for me are happy. They said, ‘This is what we voted for.’
“I support him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, told the AP while browsing at a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “As long as it gets in the way, I support it.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to remain involved in Venezuela and intensifying rhetoric about expanding US power elsewhere in the hemisphere are making some of his die-hard supporters nervous.
Not all are reaching for the popcorn yet.
In Mississippi, a conflicted Trump voter
Chase Lewis, 24 years old from Philadelphia, Mississippi, said that this move caught him off guard and he is still not sure if he supports it. “It is good that they are finally freed from that dictatorship,” he said of the Venezuelans, “but I don’t know what it will cost us.”
He added: “I don’t want my friends who are currently serving to be dragged into a war because we went and left our nose in the business of Venezuela.” He noted that Trump campaigned against starting new wars. “Any way you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”
An apprentice electrician who gave up his delivery job because he needed to make more money, Lewis said he wants to see the Trump administration focus on cutting costs for young people like him. He also wants the president to make life better for veterans and worries about bringing the country into more conflicts.
In Colorado, cheers and caution from Trump voters
For Trump voter Travis Garcia, pulling up in his red pickup truck on a cold evening in Castle Rock, Colorado, is a slam-dunk. “Of course I’m going to be happy that they caught a dictator who is constantly sending drugs our way,” he said, “If we’re not going to do it, who is going to do it?”
The 45-year-old man, who works in reconstruction, said that the operation strengthens Trump’s stature as “a strong man who follows his word and will not be shy and timid and let other countries run the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from the city of Larkspur was so amazed by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she would be OK with more such operations. She recalled videos of Venezuelans tearfully celebrating the removal of Maduro and said that fewer bad leaders “makes the world a little less of a bad place.”
Still, Lussier would not want American soldiers stuck in a protracted conflict, and much of her admiration for the operation was based less on the possible benefits to the United States than on the smooth efficiency and bravado of the raiders.
Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, said delicately that Trump’s intervention was “a little bit contrary to what he campaigned on.”
“I would like to see a more diplomatic way of making the change,” said the retired engineer. 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 AP all praised the smoothness and “class” of the military operation, as one described it. But that support could waver if the United States is drawn into a longer conflict, which none of them supports.
Few mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil, but thought Maduro’s ouster would benefit citizens and reduce the drug trade and immigration to the United States.
From Pennsylvania: A good riddance to Maduro
At the Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, 88-year-old Ron Soto expressed unreserved faith in the president’s ability to manage what’s to come. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly visits the diner to meet friends, drink coffee and catch up.
Maduro is “a horrible man,” he said. But should US forces go to other countries, like Cuba, as it did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they will have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put fear in them.”
As for Trump’s comment at one point that his administration “runs” Venezuela, Soto said the president will “straighten that country up and make it a democracy if he can. I don’t know if he can.”
At the Neshaminy Mall, in Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62 years old, declared himself supportive of what Trump did but aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say happy but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Carey recalled the kidnapping of American hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979 as an indication of what could happen if the conflict escalated. But “he will take all actions to avoid this, I believe,” he said of Trump.
As for any other foreign intervention, Carey laughed when he said: “He wants Greenland to be part of America!”
At the Trump merchandise store where Bonner shopped, banners and other items proclaiming “Trump 2028” are on display. Trump is constitutionally barred from taking office in 2028.
“I know he can’t run for president” in 2028, said Bonner, a propane company worker. Anyway, he wanted a lawn sign “just to irritate people” but couldn’t find it.
The crisp military operation clearly left him impressed. “They came in and came out, they did what they had to do,” he said. About Maduro, he said: “He is an enemy of the United States so I support Trump 100%.”
Affirmation from the Midwest
As he walked 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 her word didn’t come out beforehand. The consistent Trump voter 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 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 man in Michigan who sees a cinematic future for the raid, not only approved of the operation but wants more of them.
“Especially if they were 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 visit to the Oakland County Republican Party headquarters, where he was surrounded by Trump and GOP memorabilia. “I am happy and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba is very nervous right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering immensely from their horrible 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 head of a bikie group in his hometown of Oak Park, Michigan.
His talk: “President Trump doesn’t talk idly. If he says he’s going to do something, he does something.”
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Bedayn reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Householder from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.