President Donald Trump built his political appeal over the past decade partly by vowing to extricate America from military quagmires overseas, promising to avoid “nation building” and wars designed to topple regimes.
But hours after the American military executed a daring attack on Venezuelan soil — capturing its president, Nicolás Maduro — Trump said the U.S. would temporarily run the country and build up its oil industry, as he and his top Cabinet members put other world leaders on notice.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a Maduro ally, is “making cocaine” and sending it to the U.S., Trump alleged at a news conference Saturday. “So he does have to watch his ass.”
In an interview earlier with Fox News, Trump expressed impatience with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over how to fight drug cartels that are “running” the country. He said, “Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” without elaborating.
Cuba, he said, is “going to be something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation right now.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was even blunter. “Look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit,” Rubio said, standing alongside Trump at the news conference.
“We’ll talk and meet with anybody, but don’t play games. Don’t play games while this president’s in office,” he said. “It’s not going to turn out well.”
Trump’s use of the U.S. military to oust Venezuela’s president and his threats of potentially similar operations to come elsewhere are a dramatic shift from his past “America First” rhetoric, underscoring his pursuit of a more interventionist foreign policy in his second term. His remarks Saturday outlined a new foreign policy doctrine for a president who has demonstrated an increasing willingness to wield military force on multiple fronts.
It’s an approach that could carry risk for a president who said in his inaugural address last January that he hoped to be remembered as a “peacemaker.”
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end and, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said at the time.
Former Defense Department official Seth Jones, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Trump and his national security team will own the results of whatever follows in Venezuela.
“This is theirs,” Jones said. “If this goes south, there is no one else you can blame.”
As a candidate in 2016, Trump blasted fellow Republicans and previous presidents for backing troubled military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. “Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change is a proven, absolute failure,” he said.
In the 2024 presidential campaign, he pledged to fire “warmongers” serving in the government and chose a running mate, JD Vance, who championed his skepticism of waging wars in foreign countries.
Yet in his first year back in office, Trump has ordered military strikes on targets in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran — and now in Venezuela to capture Maduro and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises by going after Maduro and that the operation was in keeping with his “America First” agenda.
“President Trump is a decisive and strong leader who does EXACTLY what he says he’s going to do,” Leavitt wrote on X.
“During his historic campaign in 2024, President Trump explicitly promised that he would work to ‘demolish foreign drug cartels’ to keep our citizens safe and that’s exactly what he did today through an unprecedented display of speed, precision, and power,” Leavitt wrote.
White House officials also have cited Trump’s role in brokering an elusive ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas as proof that his tough approach can defuse conflicts.
The operation in Caracas early Saturday followed a U.S. air campaign that began in September against dozens of alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Those strikes, which, like the operation against Maduro, have not been authorized by Congress, have killed at least 114 people, according to the Pentagon. They have received both support from Trump’s allies in Congress and criticism from lawmakers, former military lawyers and allied governments that the attacks violate U.S. and international law.
U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in June, which featured the first use of a massive bunker-busting bomb, prompted criticism and concern among some of Trump’s supporters and political allies that he was straying from his original anti-interventionist vision.
Trump is now threatening to attack Iran again unless the regime’s leaders comply with his latest warning that they must not kill protesters massing in Tehran’s streets over economic conditions.
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote Friday in a social media post pledging to come to the protesters’ rescue if needed.
After Trump announced the capture of Maduro, most Republican lawmakers publicly endorsed the move, while Democrats and a handful of GOP members expressed doubts about the legal basis for the operation and the potential for an open-ended, risky U.S. commitment in Venezuela.
Outgoing Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, a staunch supporter of Trump-turned-critic, said on X that Trump’s Make America Great Again supporters shared a “disgust” with “never ending” military adventures abroad.
“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong,” she wrote.
Trump’s focus on foreign policy, either as a commander in chief presiding over airstrikes or as a “peacemaker” pushing for diplomatic deals, poses a potential political risk. His approval ratings have slipped as voters who hoped to see economic conditions brighten on his watch struggle to pay their bills.
Mark Mitchell, head pollster at Rasmussen Reports, who briefed Trump and senior White House officials privately in November, said that when voters are asked whether the government’s focus needs to be on domestic or foreign policy, “everyone says domestic.”
Mitchell said he told Trump that “the optics of spending too much time on foreign policy were hurting him.”
In his remarks Saturday, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s oil as a prize Americans gained in the operation against Maduro. Dissatisfied with the quantity of oil that Venezuela is pumping, he said, U.S. companies will now go in, boost supplies and sell the product.
A U.S. official elaborated later in the day, saying the administration will work with oil executives to begin expanding the country’s oil output.
Trump did not rule out additional military strikes in Venezuela if he determines they are needed.
In 2002, as President George W. Bush weighed a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq, his secretary of state, Colin Powell, warned him of the potential risks of regime change.
“Once you break it, you are going to own it,” Powell told him, “and we’re going to be responsible for 26 million people standing there looking at us.”
Bush eventually opted to go ahead with the invasion and soon learned the harsh lessons of what was dubbed the “Pottery Barn rule.”
Trump suggested Saturday that Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine will manage Venezuela’s government transition.
Jones, the former Defense Department official, said the biggest problem Trump will face is creating the conditions for a government that has the support of the people of Venezuela.
“The entire success of the mission will hinge on whether the population views its government as legitimate,” Jones said. “This was the fundamental problem the U.S. faced in Iraq.”
