A number of staunch Donald Trump supporters have pulled a U-turn and abandoned their “America First” agenda after the president’s Venezuela operation.
The president and his MAGA base have long railed against the U.S. entering more “forever wars” overseas and repeatedly called for a focus on improving the lives of Americans rather than intervening in international affairs.
But several high-profile MAGA figures are now scrambling to rewrite the concept of “America First” after Trump publicly tossed it aside with his attack on Venezuela and abduction of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, who now faces “narco-terrorism” charges in New York.
Trump has also said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future, before going on to threaten military action against several other countries, including Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland.
“‘America First’ never meant isolationist. That’s a neocon smear,” far-right MAGA podcaster and commentator Jack Posobiec told Axios. “One of the biggest splits that you will see is geography.”
“There are a lot more ‘America First’ guys who are willing to be more aggressive within our hemisphere than across the world,” he added.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Trump ally, was among the lawmakers who initially questioned the legality of Trump’s strikes on Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, as a potential act of war not approved by Congress.
Lee quickly pivoted, not only suggesting the attack was constitutional under the “president’s inherent authority under Article II,” but also openly calling for a U.S.-backed regime change in the South American country.
“What should be Marco Rubio’s title in Venezuela?” Lee posted on X on Saturday, while sharing an AI-generated image of the secretary of state in full Maduro-esque military attire and sash.
Matt Boyle, editor of the pro-Trump news site Breitbart News, suggested that Trump launching an attack on Venezuela while threatening other countries amounts to the president “protecting the American interest in the Western Hemisphere.”
“He did so with a quick and decisive military and law enforcement action—not a long, drawn-out war,” Boyle told Axios. “This is ‘America First’ in action.”
Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, also attempted to portray the America First president’s threats to destabilize the South American continent as a positive development.
“If there are to be puppets, they will be American puppets, not Chinese puppets,” he told Axios.
However, not all MAGA figures have embraced a hawkish turn following Trump’s capture of Maduro.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from office on Monday after falling out with Trump over foreign policy and the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, issued a damning statement questioning the rationale behind the Venezuela operation.
“If U.S. military action and regime change in Venezuela was really about saving American lives from deadly drugs then why hasn’t the Trump admin taken action against Mexican cartels?” Greene asked on X.
“Americans’ disgust with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it, and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going,” she added. “This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”
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