Trump’s Venezuela Strike Hands Gop A Midterms Messaging Test

President Donald Trump’s allies are gung ho on the administration’s Venezuela operation despite criticism from some in their own party, but they acknowledge that the White House’s latest foreign policy foray comes with a midterms messaging challenge.

Republicans say they need to connect Trump’s policy in the Western Hemisphere to domestic issues around high prices, drug trafficking and border security — or risk voters feeling the president isn’t responsive to their top concerns. It comes amid ongoing questions about how long Washington’s intervention will last and new pushback on the president’s war powers from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

That uncertainty is exacerbated by Trump’s ongoing threats to other nations — from Cuba to Greenland — and risks overtaking his presidency as it did to George W. Bush after the 2003 invasion in Iraq.

“There’s a big difference between the nation building and regime change of the neocons and what the president is doing,” said Trump political adviser Alex Bruesewitz.

He pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as someone who has effectively drawn the link between U.S. intervention in Latin America and its impact on domestic policy. In an appearance on CNN on Monday, Miller lamented that adversaries, like China and Russia, have had a closer relationship with Venezuela — and benefited from its resources — than the U.S. has.

“We just need to stay very clear on our message on how our foreign policy impacts us domestically,” Bruesewitz said.

Ten months before the midterms, the long list of unknowns after the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro underscores the White House’s political gamble in targeting the Latin American country as it kicks off an election year that was expected to focus on affordability. And while Republicans argue the White House is positioned to balance multiple issues, there’s a risk that Trump’s foreign policy agenda overshadows his domestic priorities — as it did for Bush.

While the former president started the Iraq War with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, five Republicans broke ranks on Thursday in a procedural measure to limit Trump’s authority to take new military action in Venezuela, a rare break with the president that prompted Trump to call for the GOP lawmakers’ defeat in their next election.

“There is a lot that is different about Iraq and Venezuela starting with the fact that 77 senators voted to authorize the engagement. But I think it’s quite likely that Venezuela will completely dominate and consume Trump’s second term,” said Mark McKinnon, a former Bush communications aide. “Whatever the outcome ends up being — success or disaster — it’s going to be very complicated, and it’s going to take a very long time. And Trump’s second term will likely be judged and defined by whatever happens.”

Trump appeared to acknowledge the political gamble in undertaking the Venezuelan operation in a Wednesday interview with The New York Times, saying that he feared as the operation was underway that it could end up being a “Jimmy Carter disaster.” Trump said Carter’s failed 1980 operation to rescue 52 U.S. hostages in Iran — during which a U.S. helicopter and transport plane collided, killing eight service members — “destroyed his entire administration.”

“I don’t know that he would have won the election,” Trump said. “But he certainly had no chance after that disaster.”

Former President Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide that November and Republicans made sizable gains on the Hill.

While a helicopter reportedly came under fire during the operation, Maduro’s arrest was, unlike the Carter operation, ultimately successful. Delcy Rodriguez has taken the reins as Venezuela’s interim president with relatively little incident, so far. Some Trump allies concede the situation in Venezuela is far from settled, with a risk of chaos in the coming weeks and months that could be a political albatross around the president’s neck.

“They’re selling this Venezuela thing correctly right now,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary. “But if they are seen as not focusing on pocketbook issues and things don’t go well [in Venezuela], you’ll pay a political price.”

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday dismissed the Senate defections over Venezuela as disagreements over legal technicalities and not a policy dispute about where the White House should be focusing its time. MAGA stalwarts, however, have expressed little pushback to the Venezuela strike.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to speak about internal thinking, said that’s no accident, noting that the White House immediately had surrogates on air on Saturday and Sunday to help make this connection for voters.

“It’s disingenuous for someone to say, ‘Oh, this action doesn’t benefit America.’ Of course it benefits America in a lot of different ways. I can go through a list of 10 different things how it helps America,” the official said. “We’ve defined it in a way that’s easily understandable … we’ve properly explained why this benefits Americans.”

Chief among them is the president’s efforts to control Venezuelan oil to bring down prices for U.S. consumers. Republicans also argue that Trump’s policy in the Western Hemisphere is designed to stem the flow of migration and drugs from a close neighbor.

“Gas prices are going to come down, especially if Trump is brokering these oil deals,” said a Republican operative helping coordinate the party’s 2026 strategy and granted anonymity to describe it. “All these issues are intertwined.”

And White House aides argue the president has the ability to juggle foreign policy issues and domestic priorities important to voters.

The White House official pointed to announcements this week, including the new U.S. dietary guidelines touted as part of the president’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. The White House is also drafting an executive order to allow people to dip into their retirement and college savings accounts to put down payments on homes, POLITICO reported Wednesday. Trump also announced this week plans to direct the government to buy mortgage bonds to drive down mortgage rates and ban large investors from buying single-family homes, saying he plans to speak more about affordability and housing in the coming weeks.

Some Democrats argue Trump has abandoned the America First principles and is ignoring the affordability crisis at home — a messaging strategy that will likely continue as long as Venezuela is in the news cycle. They see an opportunity to win over voters who have grown disillusioned with the administration’s failure to follow through on a promise of no new foreign interventions.

“This president has betrayed voters who trusted him on focusing on issues, kitchen table issues, and bringing down the prices of groceries and rents and inflation, and he’s done exactly the opposite,” said Democratic strategist and Democratic National Committee member Maria Cardona.

But longtime Democratic operative David Axelrod, who helped lead Barack Obama presidential campaigns, conceded it’ll be an easier argument for Democrats to make if Venezuela is the start of a series of foreign interventions — not the end.

“Then, I think, it would be very much defining and in a negative way,” Axelrod said. “But he still hasn’t crossed that Rubicon.”

Republicans have already countered by painting Democrats as hypocrites. The White House highlighted this week that Democrats called for Maduro’s ouster in 2019 and 2020, but have been critical of the administration’s weekend raid.

“The only people that are upset about this are the Democrats that were for it in 2019,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). “The American people aren’t upset about it. The people that have lost loved ones to drug overdoses are not upset by it.”

Eli Stokols, Brakkton Booker and Samuel Benson contributed to this report.