It would be hard to blame someone who woke up Saturday morning — seeing the news that the United States had invaded Venezuela and exfiltrated its dictatorial ruler — and thought he or she might still be dreaming.
A hard pinch and a cup of coffee later, and reality set in. But questions remain.
So what does this mean politically, and what should Americans make of what happened?
Here are some takeaways as the dust settles on Caracas:
Donald Trump, the “America First” candidate and president, has turned out to be rather hawkish. In less than 12 months in office this second time around, he’s conducted strikes in seven countries — Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and, this weekend, oversaw a daring middle-of-the-night raid in Venezuela. U.S. forces captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, sending them to New York to stand trial for drug trafficking.
To call the action surprising and eye-opening doesn’t quite do it justice, especially considering Trump made his bones in opposition to neoconservatives’ “endless wars” and nation-building in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Saturday, Trump said the United States is going to “run” the country until he finds a suitable leader.
“Well, we’re gonna be running it with a group,” Trump said, “and we’re gonna make sure it’s run properly.”
He noted that “people that are standing right behind me” are going to run it. That included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Rubio on Sunday tried to walk that back some, describing what the U.S. is doing as a “quarantine,” meant to effect “policy.”
As the United States was about to commit to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein from Iraq 20-plus years ago now, the Bush administration made different arguments and justifications for intervention that seemed to shift like the sand of the Middle East.
Was it that Saddam Hussein was funding the kinds of terrorists who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks? Was it getting rid of a dictator who didn’t align with American values? Was it creating a democracy that could be a model for the rest of the Middle East to follow? Or was it that he had weapons of mass destruction that he couldn’t be allowed to keep before they resulted in a “mushroom cloud,” as then-President George W. Bush warned in 2002?
In the case of Maduro, is it regime change because of a dictator who again doesn’t align with American values, combating drug trafficking, leveraging oil or some version of all of the above? Each of those has had their moments as the justification for the Trump administration’s saber-rattling.
During Saturday’s news conference, Trump stressed oil as a key motivator. He said American oil companies would be going in and modernizing the country’s oil production and refinement capabilities. He said the companies would invest billions and “use that money in Venezuela.” He said that the “biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela” and Venezuelan ex-pats in the U.S. It’s unclear how that would be managed.
Trump has a long history of saying the United States should “take the oil.”
“You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said of taking oil from Iraq in a 2011 interview with ABC. “We’re reimbursing ourselves.”
Fast-forward to 2023, when Trump was out of office, talking about Venezuela.
“We’re buying oil from Venezuela,” Trump said during an event in North Carolina. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door. But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it.”
On Sunday, the administration was out in full force defending its actions, pinning the reasoning on drugs, primarily. The White House has repeatedly claimed to be stemming the flow of fentanyl by striking alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, despite the fact that fentanyl isn’t largely produced in Venezuela.
Vice President Vance, who has been a vocal critic of U.S. intervention abroad in other cases, took on that critique on social media.
“[C]ocaine, which is the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela, is a profit center for all of the Latin America cartels,” he wrote on Sunday. “If you cut out the money from cocaine (or even reduce it) you substantially weaken the cartels overall. Also, cocaine is bad too!”
He noted that “a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico,” a reason that Trump “shut down the border.” That raises questions about what’s next, too.
Vance also referenced the oil: “I understand the anxiety over the use of military force, but are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing?”
Rubio, meanwhile, said that this was a law enforcement action to recover fugitives, because of a 2020 indictment of Maduro for the trafficking of cocaine. That, by the way, seems to be part of the administration’s rationale for not seeking authorization from Congress.
These explanations are likely more politically palatable to the MAGA base than saying the United States is at war with Venezuela or, as Trump said, that the United States is now running another country — with no clear goals for an exit.
Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, has always been more hawkish than Trump on foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Latin America.
During this Venezuela operation, Trump seems to be leaning on Rubio. Rubio was a central figure in the administration’s announcement on Saturday and did the rounds on the Sunday shows to defend the action.
In this second term, Rubio has taken on quite a few roles. After the hollowing out of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, Trump made him director of that program, as well as acting archivist of the National Archives, he’s Trump’s acting national security adviser and the secretary of state, which is also fourth in line to the presidency.
It’s all evidence of how far Rubio has come to be able to burrow into Trump’s inner circle. That’s quite the turnabout from the bitter campaign a decade ago when Rubio was likening Trump to “third world strongmen” and a “con artist” with “small hands,” while Trump was dismissing him as “Little Marco.”
Trump referred to Maduro as a “dictator” four times during his news conference Saturday (an “outlaw dictator,” “illegitimate dictator,” “now-deposed dictator” and “dictator and terrorist”).
But there are lots of other dictators, authoritarians and strongmen in the rest of the world, many of whom Trump has praised through the years.
Trump has allied himself with people like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Argentina’s Javier Milei, rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, seems deferential to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and, during his first term, made overtures to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Couldn’t there be justifications for those leaders’ overthrow, too, that an American administration could come up with, following Trump’s logic?
It’s not a far leap to suggest the difference is politics (and oil).
Yes, there’s undoubtedly an irony in Trump campaigning against intervention and what he’s done in Venezuela. There will be — and already are — voices of opposition in Trump’s base.
But dedication to Trump among the faithful runs deep — and there’s an entire conservative media infrastructure built to insulate him and give the base talking points.
It started in the early moments Saturday morning after the raid. On Fox News, for example, panelists were pointing to Democrats’ arguments of the move being illegal as something to mock and knock down. They focused instead on how few in Venezuela were defending Maduro and on the 2020 indictment against him. One network legal analyst said essentially that Trump’s action shows that the long arm of American justice doesn’t end at U.S. borders.
Given the hyper-partisan ways in which Americans take in their news, don’t expect any sort of a wholesale abandonment of Trump. It’s more likely to become a rallying point.
Republicans were already tilting toward action in Venezuela before what happened this weekend. A Quinnipiac University poll from December found, overall, that 63% of people said they were against military action in Venezuela. That included 68% of independents. But 52% of Republicans were in favor.
Plus, remember, this is a group of voters that has a lot of practice with being in favor of a tough, hawkish approach to foreign policy. (See: war, Iraq.) The Republican Party, for decades, was held together by a three-legged stool of fiscal conservatism, cultural conservatism and a hawkish foreign policy.
Trump’s approach to economics and foreign policy bucked that tradition and seemed to saw off two of those legs, making for some uncomfortable compromises for the GOP, while culture was the main thing gluing together the MAGA coalition.
So, going back to a hawkish foreign policy seems not that far removed from what the Republican Party has been.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries disputed Rubio’s insistence that the U.S. actions were “not an invasion” on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“This was not simply a counter-narcotics operation,” Jeffries said. “It was an act of war. It involved, of course, the Delta Force. … We have to make sure when we return to Washington, D.C., [after the holiday recess] that legislative action is taken to ensure that no further military steps occur absent explicit congressional approval.”
But solely focusing on the legality of the move could be a political pitfall for Democrats. Trump and Republicans are very good at trying to put Democrats in a position of seemingly defending drug dealers and bad people.
Remember, the reason Democrats did well electorally in 2025 is because of the economy, specifically the cost of living. If they do well in 2026, it will likely again be because of that — not whether Trump’s incursion into Venezuela was legal or violated international norms, as crassly political as that sounds.
Still, Democrats can’t ignore Venezuela and solely focus on affordability, either. They might point out the apparent hypocrisy of ousting Maduro because of drugs while pardoning the former head of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking.
They could also pivot to how this is a distraction from the fact that many people are struggling to buy groceries, homes and health care.
It’s about “surfacing Republican priorities,” said one Democratic strategist, who asked to remain anonymous because of their role with an outside group.
“They’re more focused on making warfare than fixing health care,” the strategist said.
Americans, including Trump and Vance, have been skeptical of U.S. foreign intervention not because the U.S. military can’t pull off regime changes but because of what happens on Day 2 and beyond.
Trump was asked Saturday about the United States’ “mixed track record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes afterwards.”
The president gave a nonspecific and incongruous answer.
“Well, that’s why we have different presidents, but with me, that’s not true,” he said. “With me, we’ve had a perfect track record of winning.”
He went on to cite his administration’s 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, the former leader of Iran’s Quds Force, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former ISIS leader. Neither of them was a head of state. He also talked about the U.S. bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities last year.
But Trump did not lay out the plan for what comes next for Venezuela or his foreign policy.
This is the president’s most vulnerable point politically in this second term. He is facing his worst approval ratings, is going to be 80 in June and is inching closer to politically irrelevant lame-duck status.
So it might not be surprising that Trump would try to stay in the headlines, like with this Venezuela action, and shift attention away from other, more negative issues for him politically.
Copyright © 2026 NPR
Transcript:
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What are the domestic political effects of the U.S. action abroad in Venezuela? NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro is here. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: How are Americans responding?
MONTANARO: Well, it’s been really mixed. You know, partisans have gone to their corners, as you’d expect. Democrats have been talking about the legality of the move, going around Congress and the breaking of international norms. Independents who caucus with Democrats, like Angus King of Maine, senator, have warned that the precedent that it might set for other countries, like Russia, China or North Korea, might not be a really good one.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MONTANARO: And that was echoed by some moderate Republicans, like Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska. He praised the military but had some concern about what it might mean going forward. And there were usual GOP critics of Trump who came out against this, but most Republicans have rallied around the president.
INSKEEP: Even though most Republicans have been echoing Trump’s promise to end foreign wars.
MONTANARO: Right, of course, that idea of America First. You know, there are lots of times that Trump has spoken out against this kind of action, warning about what comes next. And it’s certainly the critique from people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose last day in Congress happens to be today. But Trump also talked about, quote, “taking the oil” from countries like Iraq. And he certainly stressed oil as a motivator during his press conference Saturday for what he did in Venezuela. His administration is also, of course, saying drugs are a main reason, that Maduro was indicted in 2020 for trafficking and that this was, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, a law enforcement action, basically retrieving a fugitive. And those are all ways that right-wing media certainly has been selling this to their viewers.
INSKEEP: Oh, tell me a little bit more about conservative media.
MONTANARO: I mean, the spin started right away. On Fox News, for example, in the immediate hours after the operation, they were holding up Democrats’ arguments that the move is illegal as something to really mock and knock down. They focused instead on how few in Venezuela appeared to be defending Maduro, as well as talking about the 2020 indictment against him laying out those charges of drug trafficking. One network legal analyst said that this action shows essentially that the long arm of American justice doesn’t end at U.S. borders.
I’d expect that’s going to be the kind of message that filters down to rank-and-file Republican voters, if it hasn’t already. You know, Republicans were already tilting in favor of action against Venezuela. In a Quinnipiac poll last month, 52% of Republicans said that they were in favor of action in Venezuela, compared to 68% of independents and 9 in 10 Democrats who were against it.
INSKEEP: Well, there is this long-standing idea in this country of disregarding the law and just do what you think is appropriate, which is one way to view the action in Venezuela, I guess. But does this ultimately help the president politically?
MONTANARO: You know, we’ll see. But views of the president right now are not good. I mean, he’s been at his lowest point politically of this presidency with approval ratings in the 30s. You know, what this did for him was change the subject. But what comes next is going to be key. You know, on Air Force One last night, Trump and hawkish allies like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham were taking something of a victory lap, even talking about how Cuba might be ready to fall next. And Trump was again entertaining the idea that Greenland is a place that the U.S. needs.
The U.S. running Venezuela and getting bogged down there – you know, Trump suggested on Saturday about the U.S. possibly running Venezuela – is not going to be something likely that most Americans are in favor of, or recreating the entire Western Hemisphere in the U.S. image, you know, when voters here are saying that the cost of living is key and most important to them. It’s why Trump’s approval is as low as it is. Democrats are going to have a messaging challenge, too, in trying to be able to pivot to say that they criticize his action here but then going back to affordability as well.
INSKEEP: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Thanks so much, sir.
MONTANARO: You’re so welcome.
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