By Jesse Bedayn, Mike Catalini, Mike Householder, Sophie Bates, Obed Lamy, and Calvin Woodward
Associated Press
It’s only been days since an audacious U.S. raid snatched Nicolás Maduro from a Venezuelan military base and sped him to a Brooklyn prison, yet Detroit-area Trump supporter Aaron Tobin can already see it all playing out on the big screen.
It’ll be the subject of movies for years to come, he predicts. “I am thrilled.” Plenty of others who voted for President Donald Trump and spoke to The Associated Press about the raid are applauding, too — at least for now.
The seizure of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and his wife has forced another reckoning on the “Make America Great Again” coalition, already rocked by the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and strained by rising health insurance premiums and living costs.
Trump promised his voters that “America First” would stand against more foreign entanglements. Instead, he intervened with force 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 film that Tobin sees in his mind is only at its opening scene, before all the complexities of uprooting a foreign government by a U.S. president’s fiat come rushing in. U.S. forces entered and exited swiftly. But what happens next?.
Trump finds early but not endless support
Early on, the pushback from congressional Republicans and Trump’s core constituencies has been guarded.
Against that backdrop, Trump voters interviewed by AP journalists around the country praised the operation and expressed faith in Trump’s course. But not always limitless faith.
“I support him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, said while browsing at a Trump merchandise store in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. “Until he messes up, I support him.”
Trump’s apparent willingness to stay involved in Venezuela and his intensifying rhetoric about expanding U.S. power elsewhere in the hemisphere are making some of his die-hard supporters nervous.
Not all of them are reaching for the popcorn yet.
In Mississippi, a conflicted Trump voter
Chase Lewis, 24, of Philadelphia, Mississippi, said he still isn’t sure whether he supports the raid. “It’s good that they’re finally freed 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 that are serving right now to be dragged into a war because we went and stuck our nose in Venezuela’s business.” He noted that Trump had campaigned against starting new wars. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”
In Colorado, cheers and caution from Trump voters
To Trump voter Travis Garcia, leaning against his red pickup truck on a chilly evening in Castle Rock, Colorado, it’s a slam-dunk. “Of course I’m going to be happy that they captured a dictator that’s constantly sending drugs our way,” he said, “If we’re not gonna do it, who’s gonna do it?”
The 45-year-old, who works in remodeling, said the operation reinforces Trump’s stature as “a powerful man who follows through on his word and isn’t going to be shy and timid and let other countries run the rules.”
Mary Lussier, 48, a flight attendant from Larkspur, was so amazed by the success of the mission in Venezuela that she would be OK with more such operations. Fewer bad leaders “would make the world a little bit lesser of a bad place.”
Still, Lussier wouldn’t want U.S. soldiers stuck in a prolonged conflict, and much of her admiration for the operation hinged less on the possible benefits to the U.S. than on the 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 contrary to what he campaigned on.”
“I would like to see more of a diplomatic way of making change,” said the retired engineer. Still, he said, pondering for a moment, “I think in this case it might have been warranted.”
The Colorado Trump supporters interviewed by AP all applauded the military operation’s smoothness and “class,” as one described it. But that support could waver if the U.S. gets into a longer conflict, which none of them would support.
From Pennsylvania: Good riddance to Maduro
At the Golden Dawn Diner in Levittown, Pennsylvania, Ron Soto, 88, expressed unreserved faith in the president’s ability to manage what comes next.
Maduro is an “awful man,” said the retired tractor-trailer driver. But should U.S. forces go into other countries, too, like Cuba? “I don’t think they’ll have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put the fear in them.”
In Bensalem, retired firefighter Kevin Carey, 62, pronounced himself supportive of what Trump did but aware of the risks.
“I wouldn’t say thrilled but I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. Carey recalled the seizing of U.S. hostages by Iranian revolutionaries in 1979 as an indication of what might happen if the conflict escalates. But “he’ll take all actions to avoid that, I believe,” he said of Trump.
On any further foreign intervention, Carey broke out laughing when he said: “He wants Greenland to be part of America!”
Affirmation from the Midwest
Exiting a Walmart in Martinsville, Indiana, Mark Edward Miller, 75, from nearby Mooresville, said the only thing that surprised him about Trump’s intervention was that word of it did not leak in advance. The consistent Trump voter is a retired aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force.
“I don’t feel like he’s actually taken over a country,” Miller said. “I believe that he’s doing exactly what our country should be doing — supporting, especially in our hemisphere, governments that are friendly with 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.
“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,” he said.
His takeaway: “President Trump does not speak idly. If he says he’s going to do something, he does something.”
Bedayn reported from Colorado, Catalini from Pennsylvania, Householder from Michigan, Bates from Mississippi, Lamy from Indiana and Woodward from Washington.