MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
America First has been a key part of President Trump's political brand for more than a decade. His campaigns were built on rejecting American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. Then U.S. troops stormed into Venezuela and took the country's president, Nicolas Maduro, by force. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports on how the administration is explaining this apparent shift.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: By the time President Trump was running for office in 2016, the Iraq War was widely seen as a mistake and nation-building in Afghanistan an expensive failure. In his stump speech, Trump often tapped into Americans' outrage about foreign wars.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're not looking for regime change. We've learned that lesson a long time ago.
We're not looking for regime change. They've tried that.
We must abandon the failed policy of nation-building and regime change.
KEITH: That was Trump speaking in 2019, 2020 and 2016. And again, as he ran to retake the White House in 2024, Trump made the same case against then-President Biden.
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TRUMP: He sent our blood and treasure to back regime change in Iraq, regime change in Libya, regime change in Syria and every other globalist disaster for half a century.
KEITH: Then came Venezuela. This was Trump on Saturday announcing Maduro's arrest.
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TRUMP: We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.
KEITH: Trump says there is currently no U.S. military presence on Venezuelan soil. Last night on Air Force One, he was asked about his assertion that the U.S. would be running the country.
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TRUMP: Don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer, and it'll be very controversial.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What does that mean?
TRUMP: It means we're in charge.
KEITH: We're in charge. To MAGA star turned apostate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump's operation in Venezuela is a contradiction of what he and the Make America Great Again movement stood for.
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MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Now, I am not defending Maduro, and of course, I'm happy for the people of Venezuela to be liberated. But Americans celebrated the liberation of the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussein. They celebrated the liberation of the Libyan people after Gaddafi.
KEITH: Greene, who is retiring from Congress, rather than continue to face the wrath of Trump, was interviewed on Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press."
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GREENE: And this is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn't serve the American people but actually serves the big corporations, the banks and the oil executives.
KEITH: Trump has said he wants U.S. companies to take over the management of Venezuela's oil industry. But aside from Greene, elected Republicans and MAGA influencers have largely fallen in line behind Trump. Alexander Gray was chief of staff for the White House National Security Council in Trump's first term. He says people misunderstand MAGA and America First as isolationist. Gray says MAGA doesn't like weakness or failure. And Venezuela, he argues, is very clearly in the national interest.
ALEXANDER GRAY: That's what he's prioritizing, is the defense of the homeland, defense of the hemisphere and defending them from non-hemispheric powers. And Venezuela fits squarely in that bucket. I think this is very different from Iraq or Afghanistan that were tangential to U.S. interests.
KEITH: Gray predicts under Trump, you won't see the U.S. running the water system in Caracas, for instance. But it's really hard to know what will happen in Venezuela now that the U.S. has removed Maduro. Politically speaking, the Trump administration will own whatever comes next. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on TV over the weekend trying to sell this to the American people, including a message that this is nothing like the interventionism Trump opposed as a candidate. Here he was on "Meet The Press."
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MARCO RUBIO: Venezuela looks nothing like Libya. It looks nothing like Iraq. It looks nothing like Afghanistan. It looks nothing like the Middle East, other than the Iranian agents that are running through there, plotting against America.
KEITH: He said comparing this mission to the U.S. interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan was like apples and oranges. Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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