To Randy Dutton, a Republican voter in Washington State, the U.S. raid in Venezuela over the weekend was just about perfect.
No American lives were lost. The Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro had been deposed. And the U.S. military — and, by extension, the country itself — looked smart, decisive and powerful.
“This was such an impressive operation,” said Mr. Dutton, 69, a retired Navy officer. “Now when people think, ‘Do we want to go up against the U.S.,?’ the answer will be, ‘Hell, no.’”
President Trump’s audacious raid has been viewed with measured skepticism by some of his most influential supporters, who disdain interventions abroad. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, in a podcast on Monday, questioned whether the military action was the start of a new era of empire. Steve Bannon, the former Trump aide, asked whether it was “hearkening back to our fiasco in Iraq.” (Both men praised the raid itself.) And Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who left Congress this week after a rift with Mr. Trump, said on CNN that “what’s not OK is for our government to put their full focus on foreign countries.”
But this skepticism may not be shared by many rank-and-file Republican voters.
“I think most Republicans agree with what Trump did,” said Mr. Dutton, who is part of a panel of voters The New York Times has been interviewing since Mr. Trump was elected in 2024. “Most people are applauding it.”
Mr. Trump won the presidency in 2016 in part by rejecting nation-building and foreign wars, a position that proved popular with many voters. His recent forays — targeted missions like the bombings in Iran last year, boat strikes in the Caribbean and the ouster of Maduro — could seem to go against that instinct.
But to many Republican voters, he has projected American power without committing troops or costing American lives.
Early polls indicate robust Republican support. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week showed that 65 percent of Republican respondents approved of the operation to remove Mr. Maduro, and just 6 percent disapproved. About 29 percent said they didn’t know or skipped the question.
In interviews with The Times, Republican voters said that Venezuela, and indeed foreign policy in general, was not top of mind. They said they cared far more about inflation and the economy, something that polls show is broadly true for voters of all stripes.
Even many of those who were initially hesitant about the raid came to support it because they felt it made America look stronger in the world.
Kent Cochran, 68, a retired regulatory analyst for an insurance company in San Antonio, said he initially had misgivings.
But after reading detailed accounts of the operation and then listening to a few conservative talk show hosts, including Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, he is cautiously optimistic, he said.
“Somebody has got to be powerful,” he said, “and it might as well be us.”
John Kenney, 60, a test prep instructor in Northern California, said he would not have recommended deposing Mr. Maduro.
But, he said, “we were able to go into a foreign country and pluck out the president alive — without killing thousands of people.”
Now, he said, “I have to tip my hat and say, look at you.”
Democratic critics say the Trump administration uses the nation’s military power when it suits, but then does not take the leadership responsibility that they believe comes with that power.
Many Republican voters, however, argued that the Venezuela operation was a precise hit, and exactly the right way to use American military power. And, they reasoned, that because the United States was neither occupying nor directly governing the country, its responsibility for the outcome was far lighter.
This was very different from George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, voters said.
“This is so much more sophisticated,” said Stephen Ross, a retired car industry executive in Naples, Fla.
The Iraq war was “a debacle,” he said, prosecuted by ideologues who thought they could impose their view of the world on a foreign nation. Mr. Trump, in contrast, is a pragmatist, he said.
“When you’re an ideologue, it’s almost like a religious thing,” he added. “You blind yourself, rather than being guided by facts on the ground.”
Not everybody was enthusiastic.
“I really have mixed feelings about this,” said Donna Burgraff, 64, a college professor in Tennessee who has voted for Mr. Trump three times and has spoken to The Times before.
She said the United States has a special responsibility to wield its military power carefully because it has so much of it.
Mr. Maduro “was a bad guy,” she said, “but is it our job as the U.S. to get rid of all the bad guys in the world?”
Many acknowledged that it was too soon to draw firm conclusions. But they said they trusted that Mr. Trump would not follow through on his rhetoric that Washington would “run” Venezuela — a position he reiterated in an interview on Wednesday with The Times. Nor did they believe he would take action in Colombia, Greenland or Cuba.
“Trump says we’re going to run the country — no, we’re not,” Mr. Dutton said of Venezuela. “We’re going to nudge them into running their country in a way that meets our needs.”
Mr. Dutton said Mr. Trump’s rhetoric had the side benefit of “driving liberals up the wall and sometimes that’s just fun to watch.”
Instead, to these Republicans, Mr. Trump’s actions in Venezuela gave an unexpected new meaning to his slogan “America First.”
“This is the ultimate America First policy — keeping America safe,” said Hilario Deleon, 25, the chairman of the Republican Party for Milwaukee County in Wisconsin. “This is our hemisphere.”
But Mr. Kenney, the test prep instructor, who is a Republican moderate, said he hoped Mr. Trump would not go further.
“I don’t want him doing this every week,” he said. “I don’t think it leaves a good taste in the mouth of the rest of the world.”
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
Sabrina Tavernise is a writer-at-large for The Times, focused on political life in America and how Americans see the changes in Washington.
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