It would be hard to blame someone who woke up on Saturday morning — seeing the news that the United States had invaded Venezuela and deposed its dictatorial ruler — and thought they were still dreaming.
A pinch and a cup of coffee later, reality set in. But the questions remain.
So, what does this mean politically, and what should Americans think about what happened?
Here are some takeaways as the dust settles in Caracas:
1. It was a bold and surprising move for a president who campaigned against American intervention.
Donald Trump, the “America First” candidate and president, ended up proving quite hawkish. In less than 12 months in office, in his second term, he carried out strikes in seven countries — Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and this weekend oversaw a daring nighttime operation in Venezuela. U.S. forces captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, sending them to New York to be tried for drug trafficking.
Calling the action surprising and revealing does not do it justice, especially considering that Trump built his political career in opposition to the neoconservatives’ “endless wars” and nation-building in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Saturday, Trump said the United States would “run” the country until they found a suitable leader.
“Well, we’ll run it with a group,” Trump said, “and we’ll make sure it’s run properly.”
He noted that “the people right behind me” would run it. That included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Rubio, on Sunday, tried to downplay it, describing what the U.S. is doing as a “quarantine,” intended to influence “policy”.
2. Just like in Iraq, there were varying justifications for removing Maduro.
When the United States was about to commit to toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq more than 20 years ago, the Bush administration presented different arguments and justifications for the intervention, which seemed to shift like the sands of the Middle East.
Was it because Hussein was funding the kinds of terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks? Was it the removal of a dictator who did not align with American values? Was it creating a democracy that could serve as a model for the rest of the Middle East? Or was it the fact that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could not be allowed, at the risk of resulting in a “mushroom cloud,” as then-President George W. Bush warned in 2002?
In the case of Maduro, is it a regime change because of a dictator who, again, does not align with American values, the fight against drug trafficking, control of oil, or a combination of all these factors? Each of these arguments has been used at some point to justify the Trump administration’s aggressive stance.
During Saturday’s press conference, Trump emphasized oil as the main motivation. He said American oil companies would enter the country and modernize oil production and refining. He said the companies would invest billions and “use that money in Venezuela.” He also said the “biggest beneficiaries would be the Venezuelan people” and Venezuelan expatriates in the U.S. It’s not clear 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 about taking Iraq’s oil in a 2011 ABC interview. “We’re reimbursing ourselves.”
Fast-forward to 2023, when Trump was already out of office, he spoke about Venezuela.
“We’re buying oil from Venezuela,” Trump said during an event in North Carolina. “When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We would have taken control. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right there, next door. But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re enriching a dictator. Can you believe it? Nobody can believe it.”
On Sunday, the administration came out in full force to defend its actions, justifying them mainly with the fight against drugs. The White House has repeatedly claimed it is stemming the flow of fentanyl by targeting alleged drug traffickers’ boats off Venezuela’s coast, even though fentanyl is not produced on a large scale in the country.
Vice President JD Vance, who has been a fierce critic of American intervention abroad in other cases, addressed that criticism on social media. “Cocaine, which is the main drug trafficked from Venezuela, is a source of profit for all the cartels in Latin America,” he wrote on Sunday. “If we cut off the money from cocaine (or even reduce it), we will substantially weaken the cartels as a whole. Plus, cocaine is also harmful!”
He noted that “a lot of fentanyl is coming from Mexico,” one of the reasons Trump “closed the border.” This also raises questions about what comes next.
Vance also referenced oil: “I understand the anxiety about the use of military force, but should we just allow a communist to steal our resources in our hemisphere and do nothing?”
Rubio, in turn, said it was a law enforcement action to capture fugitives, due to a 2020 indictment against Maduro for cocaine trafficking. This, by the way, appears to be part of the administration’s justification for not seeking congressional authorization.
These explanations are probably more politically palatable to Trump’s base than saying the United States is at war with Venezuela or, as Trump put it, that the United States is now governing another country — without clear objectives for an exit.
3. Speaking of Rubio, this action certainly points to his growing influence over Trump.
Rubio, of Cuban descent, has always been more hardline than Trump on foreign policy, particularly regarding Latin America.
During this Venezuela operation, Trump seems to be leaning on Rubio. Rubio was a central figure in the administration’s Saturday announcement and appeared on various Sunday TV shows to defend the action.
In this second term, Rubio has taken on multiple roles. After the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Trump appointed him director of that program, as well as interim archivist of the National Archives, interim national security advisor, and Secretary of State, a position that also puts him fourth in the presidential line of succession.
All of this shows how much Rubio has infiltrated Trump’s inner circle. It’s a far cry from the heated campaign a decade ago, when Rubio compared Trump to “dictators from third-world countries” and a “con artist” with “small hands,” while Trump dismissed him as “Little Marco”.
4. Right-wing authoritarians are acceptable, but left-wing dictators are not?
Trump referred to Maduro as a “dictator” four times during his Saturday press conference (an “outlaw dictator,” “illegitimate dictator,” “now-deposed dictator,” and “dictator and terrorist”).
But there are many other dictators, authoritarians, and strongmen around the rest of the world, many of whom Trump has praised over the years. Trump has allied with people like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Argentina’s Javier Milei, rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, seems indulgent toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and during his first term, made overtures to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Wouldn’t there be justifications for toppling those leaders too, that an American administration could present, following Trump’s logic?
It’s not hard to assume the difference is political (and oil).
5. Don’t expect the MAGA movement to abandon Trump.
Yes, there’s undoubtedly irony in Trump campaigning against intervention and what he did in Venezuela. There will be — and already are — voices of opposition in Trump’s base.
But devotion to Trump among his supporters is deep — and there’s an entire conservative media infrastructure built to protect him and provide arguments for his base.
That started in the early hours of Saturday morning, after the operation. On Fox News, for example, commentators pointed to Democrats’ arguments that the action was illegal as something to be ridiculed and refuted. They focused instead on how few in Venezuela were defending Maduro and the 2020 indictment against him. A legal analyst on the network essentially said that Trump’s action shows the long arm of American justice doesn’t end at U.S. borders.
Given the hyperpartisan way Americans consume news, don’t expect any widespread abandonment of Trump. It’s more likely to become a rallying point.
Republicans were already inclined to act in Venezuela before what happened this weekend. A December Quinnipiac University poll found that overall, 63% of people said they were against military action in Venezuela. That included 68% of independents. But 52% of Republicans were in favor.
Also, remember, this is a group of voters with a lot of experience supporting a tough and aggressive foreign policy approach. (See: Iraq war.) The Republican Party, for decades, was sustained by three pillars: fiscal conservatism, cultural conservatism, and aggressive foreign policy. Trump’s approach to the economy and foreign policy broke with that tradition and seemed to cut two of those bases, creating some uncomfortable compromises for the Republican Party, while culture was the main element holding the MAGA coalition together.
So, a return to aggressive foreign policy doesn’t seem so far from what the Republican Party has always represented.
6. Democrats need to be careful with their messaging.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries challenged Rubio’s insistence that the U.S. actions “were not an invasion” on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“This wasn’t just a drug operation,” Jeffries said. “It was an act of war. It involved, of course, Delta Force… We need to make sure that when we return to Washington, D.C., [after the year-end recess], legislative steps are taken to ensure no further military action occurs without explicit congressional approval.”
But focusing exclusively on the legality of the action could be a political trap for Democrats. Trump and Republicans are very good at trying to paint Democrats as, apparently, defending drug traffickers and bad people.
Remember, the reason Democrats did well electorally in 2025 was the economy, specifically the cost of living. If they do well in 2026, it will probably be because of that again — not whether Trump’s incursion into Venezuela was legal or violated international norms, no matter how politically convenient that sounds.
Still, Democrats can’t ignore Venezuela and focus only on affordability. They can point out the apparent hypocrisy of toppling Maduro over drugs while forgiving the former Honduran chief, who was convicted of drug trafficking.
They could also argue that this is a distraction from the fact that many people are struggling to afford food, housing, and health care.
It’s about “exposing Republican priorities,” said a Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous due to their role in an outside group.
“They’re more focused on making war than fixing the health care system,” the strategist said.
7. The real political test of this will be what comes next.
Americans, including Trump and Vance, have been skeptical of U.S. foreign intervention not because American military can’t carry out regime changes, but because of what happens on day two and beyond.
Trump was asked on Saturday about the “inconsistent U.S. track record of toppling dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes next.”
The president gave a vague and incongruent response.
“Well, that’s why we have different presidents, but with me, that’s not true,” he said. “With me, we’ve had a perfect record of victories.” He cited the 2020 killing of Iran’s former Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani and ISIS former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, both carried out by his administration. Neither was a head of state. He also mentioned last year’s U.S. bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But Trump offered no plan for what comes next in Venezuela or for his foreign policy.
This is the president’s most politically vulnerable point in this second term. He faces his worst approval ratings, will turn 80 in June, and is inching closer to lame-duck, politically irrelevant status.
So, it’s no surprise Trump is trying to stay in the headlines, as with this Venezuela action, and divert attention from other politically negative issues for him.
Source: npr.org by Domenico Montanaro