By JESSE BEDAYN, MIKE CATALINI, MIKE HOUSEHOLDER, SOPHIE BATES, OBED LAMY and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press
It’s only been days since an audacious US raid snatched Nicolas Maduro from a Venezuelan military base and sent 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 US president’s fiat come rushing in. US 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, in contrast to their uproar over the Epstein episode or the tensions coursing through Republican politics over the now-expired health insurance subsidies.
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. They didn’t all back up Trump’s claim that those who “voted for me are thrilled. They said, ‘This is what we voted for.’”
“I support him so far,” Paul Bonner, 67, told AP 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 US 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 the move caught him off guard and he still isn’t sure whether he supports it. “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.” I have noted that Trump had campaigned against starting new wars. “Depending on how you look at it,” he said, “this was an act of war.”
An electrician apprentice who gave up his delivery job because he needed to make more money, Lewis said he wants to see the Trump administration focus on bringing down costs for young people like himself. 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
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 the town 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 Maduro’s removal and said fewer bad leaders “would make the world a little bit lesser of a bad place.”
Still, Lussier wouldn’t want US soldiers stuck in a prolonged conflict, and much of his admiration for the operation hinged less on the possible benefits to the US than on the smooth efficiency and bravery of the raiders.
Outside a Safeway grocery store in Castle Rock, Patrick McCans, 66, delicately said 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.”
Instead of playing ball, Maduro was “playing chicken with Trump, and Trump doesn’t like chicken,” he said, chuckling from beneath a Baltimore Ravens baseball cap.
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 US is drawn into a longer conflict, which none of them would support.
Few mentioned Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil, but thought Maduro’s removal would benefit citizens and slow the drug trade and immigration to the US
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. The retired tractor-trailer driver regularly visits the diner to meet friends, drink coffee and catch up.
Maduro is an “awful man,” he said. But should US forces go into other countries, like Cuba, as it did in Venezuela? “I don’t think they’ll have to,” he said. “Because he (Trump) put the fear in them.”
As for Trump’s comment at one point that his administration would “run” Venezuela, Soto said the president will “straighten that country out and make 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, 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 US 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!”
At the Trump merchandise store where Bonner shopped, banners and other items proclaiming “Trump 2028” are on display. 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, I wanted a lawn sign “just to irritate people” but couldn’t find one.
The crisp military operation plainly left him impressed. “They got in and they got out, did what they had to do,” he said. Of Maduro, he said: “He’s an enemy of the United States so I support Trump 100%.”
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 was an aircraft maintenance specialist in the Air Force before his retirement.
“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 of them.
“Especially if they were as successful as this last one where we didn’t lose any troops, we didn’t lose any plans 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 thrilled and surprised” by what happened.
“Cuba’s very nervous right now,” he said. “And the Cuban people are suffering immensely from their horrible situation and their economy. Iran might 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 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.
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