\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to start a war. I\u2019m going to stop wars,\u201d Donald Trump said after declaring victory on 6 November 2024. It wasn\u2019t his first pledge to disengage the US from foreign conflicts, and Trump\u2019s top allies in conservative media and the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d (Maga) movement have all rallied to his pledge to \u201cput America first\u201d.<\/p>\n
Now that the US president seems to have broken his pledge by launching an invasion of Venezuela, not to mention threatening future actions against Cuba and Colombia and potentially Greenland, some have reasonably wondered whether Trump\u2019s supporters in Maga media would hammer him for that inconsistency.<\/p>\n
But in the days since the US forcibly abducted Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and his wife, with dozens killed as part of the night-time operation, Trump has instead received strong support from his media allies, with a few on-again, off-again backers expressing some reservations.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, the party is going to stand with him on this and conservative media is going to stand with him on this,\u201d former Republican congressman and talk radio host Joe Walsh said.<\/p>\n
The conservative radio and television host Mark Levin, one of Trump\u2019s strongest media defenders, not only celebrated Trump\u2019s military actions but on Sunday called those who questioned the legality of the incursion, including Senator Bernie Sanders and the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, \u201cpure evil\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey defend totalitarianism [sic] regimes against our nation\u2019s own security and interests,\u201d he added. Levin and Fox News host Sean Hannity have also championed \u201cThe Donroe Doctrine\u201d, the notion that Trump\u2019s America has dominance over the Western hemisphere.<\/p>\n
The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro called out those on the \u201cso-called isolationalist right\u201d who may oppose the Trump administration\u2019s actions, referring primarily to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Shapiro said that Maduro was ousted by \u201ca conservative Republican president, a gutsy president, who makes the calls to preserve America\u2019s national security and her foreign interests\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Trump and Carlson on the Tucker Carlson Live Tour in Glendale, Arizona in 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Patrick T Fallon\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But even Carlson expressed cautious optimism in an episode of his streaming show on Monday after Trump gave his backing to Maduro\u2019s former vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n Carlson said he\u2019s \u201cgrateful for the wisdom of not taking out the entire government\u201d, clarifying: \u201cNot because I support the government, but because we have clear models in Iraq and Libya and a lot of Syria: it can be very hard to put those things back together again.\u201d Carlson said it \u201cseems like a much wiser approach\u201d to keep the government structure in place but \u201cmaking sure it\u2019s pro-American\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes me calm down a bit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The coverage among opinion hosts on Fox News has also been overwhelmingly positive. Fox News host Laura Ingraham called the capture of Maduro \u201cquintessentially Maga\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica and the world is a safer, freer place,\u201d Hannity said on Monday night. \u201cAnd this administration, they are making no apologies, nor should they.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s like my surgeon: he\u2019s elegant, and he\u2019s precise, and he went in there with the perfect extraction,\u201d Fox News host Jesse Watters said on the Five on Monday. \u201cThis is not regime change. This is just trying to change the regime\u2019s behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone is falling in line. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who now runs her own company and has a radio channel on SiriusXM, mocked the pro-Trump coverage on her former network, even as she re-affirmed her support for the president. \u201cI turned on Fox News yesterday, and I\u2019m sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda,\u201d she said on her Monday show. \u201cThere was nothing skeptical. It was all rah-rah cheerleading, yes, let\u2019s go. And that\u2019s fine. I love our military as much as anyone, and I believe in President Trump, but there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah-rah train.\u201d She said Trump\u2019s actions to depose Maduro were clearly about global oil dominance and not \u201cthis bullshit about law enforcement\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump in 2016.<\/span> Photograph: FOX\/FOX Image Collection\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Kat Timpf, a libertarian commentator who is a regular panelist on Fox News host Greg Gutfeld\u2019s late-night show, pointed out the inconsistencies in Trump\u2019s past comments about international involvement. \u201cLet me get this straight: we go to a country, we capture their leader, we bomb it, and then we say, \u2018We run this country now.\u2019 And that is not war,\u201d she said, \u201cbut when they send cocaine over here that people are willingly snorting \u2013 that is war? It doesn\u2019t make any sense \u2026 I hope I\u2019m wrong. I hope this is suddenly the one regime change that works out well for us and for the people we are supposed to be rescuing, but we do not have a very good track record.\u201d (Timpf said on X that she\u2019s received \u201cvery brutal personal attacks\u201d from Trump supporters \u2013 and from fellow long-term skeptics about foreign interventionism \u2013 for expressing concerns about Venezuela.)<\/p>\n The conservative media personality Candace Owens, who has emerged as a regular critic of the president, called it a CIA-led \u201chostile takeover of a country at the behest of a globalist psychopaths\u201d, she wrote in a post on X, adding that \u201cthere has never been a single regime change that Zionists have not applauded because it means they get to steal land, oil and other resources.\u201d<\/p>\n And Carlson, too, who had long warned against \u201cregime change\u201d in Venezuela, seemed skeptical that the US should be meddling in other Latin-American countries, including Cuba, where Trump seemed to show interest in intervention. \u201cTo spend all your time worrying about Cuba? I love the Cubans here. Love them. But how much money do you want to spend out of your kid\u2019s college fund on regime change in Cuba?\u201d<\/p>\n On his War Room show on Saturday, Steve Bannon, who prominently opposed the US pushing for so-called regime change in Iran this summer, called Trump\u2019s move in Venezuela \u201ca stunning and dazzling strike\u201d and a \u201cbold and brilliant raid\u201d \u2013 though he has questioned the long-term consequences.<\/p>\n There was also some discord in the Murdoch-controlled print media ecosystem. The New York Post\u2019s editorial board came out strongly in defense of the raid, writing: \u201cOperation Absolute Resolve was stunningly successful, fresh testimony to the tremendous professionalism of America\u2019s servicemen and -women \u2013 and of course to the resolve of President Donald Trump.\u201d The Wall Street Journal\u2019s editorial board, however, took a more skeptical perspective, writing on Saturday that it was \u201codd\u201d that Trump was \u201cso dismissive\u201d of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. The board also dinged Trump for talking excessively about US interest in Venezuelan oil, \u201cwhich sends a message that the US purpose is largely mercenary\u201d. On Sunday, the board seemed skeptical about the possibility of Venezuela\u2019s current leadership remaining in place. \u201cThe Trump Administration talks about its foreign-policy \u2018realism\u2019,\u201d they wrote. \u201cBut if Maduro 2.0 remains in defiant power in six months, its gamble on his henchmen won\u2019t look very realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n Walsh, a former supporter of the Tea Party movement who left the House of Representatives in 2013, knows the price of standing in opposition to Trump. He had his radio show cancelled by Salem Radio Network in 2019 after he became a critic of Trump and announced a primary challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be in rightwing media, it became clear when he first won, you either get on the train, or you don\u2019t. It\u2019s still that way,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cIf 100% of the audience came out against what Trump did in Venezuela, you\u2019d see these people move, but that\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI\u2019m not going to start a war. I\u2019m going to stop wars,\u201d Donald Trump said after declaring victory on 6 November 2024. It wasn\u2019t his first pledge to disengage the US from foreign conflicts, and Trump\u2019s top allies in conservative media and the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d (Maga) movement have all rallied to his pledge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3037,4014,205,4627,13163,3895,81,4723],"class_list":{"0":"post-40793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-doesnt","9":"tag-maga","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-republicans","12":"tag-sense","13":"tag-stars","14":"tag-trump","15":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}