The NPR Politics Podcast - How Do Trump’s Actions In Venezuela Square With MAGA And ‘America First’?

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

President Trump campaigned on promises to put “America First,” and to oppose regime change and nation building. We discuss whether those promises align with the United States’ military actions in Venezuela over the weekend.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR, and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen. Hi, this is AJ and Lorium, Michigan, where we have just received our 100th inch of snow for the year. Today's show was recorded at... 107 p.m. on Monday, January 5th. Things may have changed by the time that you hear this, but I'll still be out here shoveling snow for the next five months. Here's the show. It's good for you. My blood does not allow for that kind of weather.

You've got mid-Atlantic blood? No, he's got Southern European blood. Southern Italian. We don't like this weather. What are you talking about? It's too cold. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. And today on the show, the political implications of President Trump's decision to send American military forces into Venezuela to arrest its president, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro and his wife were arraigned today in New York on charges of narco-terrorism. They entered a plea of not guilty. And it has been a dramatic few days for the America First President, who campaigned repeatedly on opposing regime change and nation building last night on Air Force. One, he was asked, who is in charge of Venezuela's government?

Don't ask me, who's in charge? Because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial. What does that mean? It means we're in charge. We're in charge. Mara, what do you make of those remarks from the president? Well, what I make of them is that it sounds like he owns what happens in Venezuela. It's the pottery barn rule, as expressed by Colin Powell, who was the Secretary of State when George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

But later, Marco Rubio tried to clarify. verify those we're running Venezuela remarks to say, no, this is not going to be an occupation like the Iraq occupation. We're not going to do nation building. We're not making sure the road is paved to free and fair elections. As a matter of fact, is what we're hearing now from the administration. This is not about democracy in Venezuela or getting rid of a dictator. The goal, as the president now expresses it, is in addition to trying to stop cocaine from coming to the United States. It's also to let U.S. oil companies back in. Right. And this seems to be part of what we're seeing as this revived new strategy of Trump's to be the preeminent strength in the Western Hemisphere. You know, what comes after this is not clear. You know, he's sort of, you know, continuing to talk about Greenland and the necessity to have it for security. There was teasing about Cuba and how it could fall because it relies on cheap old. from Venezuela. And in fact, Cuban troops were killed in this mission in Venezuela, defending Maduro. Yeah. And, you know, I'm struck by the fact that he's talked this way with this muscular foreign policy, not only because he had so talked about, you know, America first

and being against regime change, but it makes sense if you think about where he is politically. The economy and affordability and the cost of living have been the key focus of and the reason why Democrats did so well in 2025. And, you know, if you've got that kind of domestic vulnerability, well, a big show on foreign policy front and toughness certainly is one way to rally your base. You know, right now, though, if you look at the television channels and the cable channels, you'll see wall-to-wall coverage of what's happening with Maduro in New York at his court trial. You know, what's happening with Venezuela. It is what has changed the subject from Trump's political vulnerability. And, you know, it's not a far leap to suggest that that may have been part of the calculation here.

It also speaks to the rising influence of one secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who's also the national security advisor, who's also the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, who's also the acting archivist for records in this country. Right. Well, I was actually just talking with someone who had a foreign policy role in the first Trump administration. And he said that this operation was, quote, extremely MAGA. So, Domenico, I'm wondering how the MAGA movement is squaring this operation with Trump's statements in the past. It's a real rally around Trump moment. I mean, this is not turning into something where, you know, MAGA influencers are suddenly saying, he's abandoned us. He's not living up to what he said it was. No, I think this proves that Trump is the person who is in charge of this mass following. And the Republican Party has always been bound together by this three-legged stool of fiscal conservatism, national security, hawkishness, and cultural conservatism. Trump's glue for this coalition has been cultural conservatism. He's sort of flouted the economic conservatism with these tariffs and being against free trade. And he had seemed to be flouting the idea of a national security hawkishness by talking about how regime change isn't good. The Iraq war was a really bad idea.

Well, when you watch things like Fox News, for example, in the moments after this happened, it seemed like 2003, 2004, all over again, very easily moving into that stream of being able to say, this was a bad guy. Let's mock Democrats for their kind of weak notions of the legality or breaking of international norms. and let's talk about why being tough is a good thing. Yeah, but, you know, I would want to check back in with MAGA. In these kind of the flush of the aftermath of this daring raid is one thing. But remember, the reason why MAGA happened and also what fueled Trump's rise was the reaction against the occupation of Iraq. Even J.D. Vance, who served in Iraq, got disillusioned and thought that America should stop intervening in foreign wars around the world. So I think that Venezuela has the potential to answer a very important question about MAGA, a political question, which is, what is MAGA? Is it what Donald Trump wants on a given day? Or does it have some kind of principles like non-interventionism that transcends Trump? Now, people like Marjorie Taylor Green, she's kind of an apostate, had a big falling out with Trump. She's leaving Congress this week. But in some ways, she's the conscience of the MAGA movement. She says, hey, wait a minute, this isn't what we voted for. We wanted you to focus on domestic problems.

like the cost of health care and groceries, not spend a lot of our money overseas. So we'll see what happens over time. But yes, I agree. Right now, there is not a Republican backlash or a MAGA backlash against Trump. And I don't think there will be because I think that Trump has proven repeatedly to be the person who is the sole heartbeat of what the MAGA movement is. And we can argue that point. But, you know, coming into this action in Venezuela, there was a Quinnipiac poll that found that 63 percent of people overall felt that they would be a against intervention in Venezuela. But when you break it down, sure, nine and ten Democrats were against it, more than two-thirds of independence. But guess what? 52% of Republicans said they would

be in favor of action in Venezuela. And that was before any of the media echo chamber really got up to speed and running. And there was a significant portion of them who were undecided. And yeah, sure, there's going to be a few voices who say that this isn't living up to MAGA. But I think this idea of what is the GOP post-Trump is what's going to get debated and fought out in 2022. And one thing to note here when you're talking about how Trump has brought the Republican Party together, this ties to immigration. The Trump administration is very clearly tying this mission to immigration, which is something he campaigned on, and tying it to drugs, which is something that he's also made a very big issue out of. And so this isn't some distant land. This

is the argument in our hemisphere, in our backyard, and literally affecting our border, our population, our country in a way that, you know, Iraq didn't, is the argument that I'm hearing. All right. We are going to take a quick break and we will be right back with more. Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen. we're back. And during his remarks on Saturday, President Trump mentioned the Monroe Doctrine, which he said should now be the Don Roe doctrine, named after him. And then on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this on Meet the Press.

We are not going to be able to allow in our hemisphere a country that becomes a crossroads for the activities of all of our adversaries around the world. We just can't allow it. We can't have a country where the people in charge of its military and in charge of its police department are openly cooperating with drug trafficking organizations. We're not going to allow that. These things are direct threats to the United States, and we intend to use every element of leverage that we have to ensure that that changes.

You know, there's lots of corruption around the world. There's lots of corruption in the Western Hemisphere, right? Yeah. So what does this mean going forward, right? Does this mean that the United States is now going to be the ethics police for every dictator? And in this case here, I think there's a lot of questions open questions about what the United States, how it's going to flex its muscles, how much Marco Rubio is going to be continuing to influence Trump's foreign policy agenda.

Well, Marco Rubio, as you said before, is the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. And Venezuela and Cuba, more Cuba than Venezuela, but Venezuela and Cuba have been in his sights since he was a senator. Like this is, this is a, you know, one of those core issues for Marco Rubio. Even before he was a senator, this is the core issue for the Venezuelan and Cuban diaspora in the United States where he grew up and strongly, deeply opposed to communist left-wing dictatorships in South America. This is kind of his destiny to do this. And it's going to be really interesting to see if he can pull it off in a way that not only satisfies Trump, but also does what needs to be done in Venezuela so people can come back. say more. The question that's being raised about the foreign policy, the Don Roe Doctrine, is what kind of a message it sends to other countries around the world? Mark Warner, Democratic Senator from Virginia, asked over the weekend, wow, does this mean that Vladimir Putin can go and arrest Zelensky because he doesn't like him or that she can take over Taiwan and it'll be under the same principle that Trump just used for this operation? We don't know.

Well, and Domenico, the U.S. National Security strategy that the Trump administration put out very recently seems to say, we want our sphere of influence to be the Western Hemisphere. And what those great powers do in other places is less of a U.S. concern. Yeah, the superpowers carve up the world, essentially, is how it is, right? And, you know, kind of under the egos of each of those superpowers and each of the parts of the world that they're in and where they dominate, it's almost like. like gangland turf war where you're saying, hey, you stay out of my turf, I'll stay out of your turf. And these other countries that, you know, have sovereignty, that run their own countries, that have their own presence, that have their own elections, essentially can do that. But they have to also kind of pay homage to each of those superpowers in those parts of the world.

At least that's what it seems like this Don Road doctrine is in the Western Hemisphere. Let's talk about domestic politics because when you talk about the race for president in 2028, which I realize is a long way off, but it is prime time. It is already time to be talking about it. The names that come up are Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance on the Republican side. I mean, there are other names too, but those are the two big names. Even President Trump has talked about a Vance Rubio ticket. So how does what's happening here play in that playground? The GOP Karma chameleons. I mean, you know, they both have been shapeshifters in different ways. You know, they started out in many respects their political careers in the age of Trump by criticizing Trump and trying to take him down. Rubio first off in, you know, calling him all kinds of names during the 2016 campaign and failing. You know, we know some of the names that J.D. Vance has previously called Donald Trump liking him to a certain World War II dictator, for example. But. wound up then kind of coming around to Trump and kissing the ring. Both men have done this. And I think it also speaks to both men's ambition. So when the Republican Party figures out what it is in 28 and this big open primary that we're going to have on both sides of the aisle trying to figure out what a post-Trump world looks like, you're going to have a pretty big competition, you know, between Rubio and Vance, potentially where each of them is willing to do anything to take

the other down. And also that a lot of that rivalry will depend on how well Venezuela looks at that point. This is huge opportunity for Rubio. I mean, he could show that he is an actual world leader. On the other hand, if it's a big mess, then Vance potentially benefits from that. And it's very notable that at the press conference announcing this raid, where was Vance? Usually he's there every single time behind Trump. He wasn't there. And we know that on that signal chat that included, by mistake, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic, Vance stood up for the non-interventionist wing of the MAGA movement and was skeptical about international operation. But right now, Rubio represents the kind of hawkish Donro Doctrine's side of MAGA, and Vance, in his own

quiet behind-the-scenes way, represents the non-interventionist wing. Okay, we've talked about Republicans. Let's talk about Democrats, how they're responding to this and also, you know, how they need to respond in terms of their aspirations to retake the House and maybe retake the Senate in 2026, midterm politics. Well, again, what's the thing that gave Democrats electoral success in 2025? It wasn't foreign policy. It was the cost of living, specifically prices and placing the blame on President Trump for his tariffs.

And, you know, I would expect that if Democrats are going to have election, success again in 2026. It's going to be because of that, not necessarily because of their high-minded, esoteric criticisms of Trump and this Venezuela raid. At the same time, Democratic strategists will say that they can't ignore Venezuela and simply talk about affordability. They need to show why this is a priority. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of remarkable because in, you know, November, December, I was talking to a senior White House official who said, yes, the president paid a lot attention to foreign policy this first year, but we're going to focus on domestic policy. We understand that people are hurting. We need to focus on the economy. We're going to focus on the economy. He had

those two rallies towards the end of the year. And now all of the focus, once again, is not on affordability. It's on foreign policy in Venezuela. I think Democrats will try to take advantage of that. Stick to their message on affordability. I think that Democrats, like you said, they're not going to get involved in all of the constitutional minutia of who gets to approve a military action. Maryland, Senator Chris Van Hollen, was on Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday. It's my view that the Trump administration's been lying to the American people. This has never been about stopping drugs from coming to the United States. We all support stopping drugs.

This from the beginning has been about getting rid of Maduro, grabbing Venezuela's oil for American oil companies and Trump's billionaire buddies. And look, I do think, though, Democrats have to be careful because they don't want to continue to look like the way Trump tries to paint them anyway as defending drug dealers and bad people with arguments about democracy or legality, right? And I think that's why you're starting to see this sort of message shift. And I think the next, you know, and also will be about affordability. All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and corporate. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR, and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day, and also those who listen.