Trump promised to end American adventures overseas, and reel in the involvement in more overseas conflicts, yet in the past year it would appear he has done the exact opposite of that. Does this mean he's abandoning his base and is betraying the ideals of MAGA?

President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Venezuela, arrest its president and temporarily run the country marks a striking departure for a politician who long criticised others for overreaching on foreign affairs and vowed to avoid foreign entanglements.

His vision for US involvement in Venezuela, sketched out in a midday news conference, left open the possibility of more military action, ongoing involvement in that nation’s politics and oil industry and “boots on the ground”. The term suggests military deployment of the sort that presidents often avoid for fear of provoking domestic political backlash.

“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Mr Trump said.

As recently as his inauguration for a second term in January 2025, Mr Trump told supporters: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, by the wars we never get into.”

Since then, Mr Trump has bombed targets in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia, blown up dozens of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and made veiled threats to invade Greenland and Panama. So, what happened? Why the year long series of aggressions? Surely it must be exciting for Don and Petie, but really?

But the emerging political stakes were captured by a social media post from US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, who has broken with Mr Trump because of what she said has been his departure from the America First rhetoric of limiting foreign adventures. She is resigning from Congress next week.

“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”

Polls have shown that, before the attack, the prospect of US military action in Venezuela was unpopular, with roughly one out of five Americans supporting force to depose Mr Maduro, according to a November Reuters/Ipsos survey.

Mr Brett Bruen, a former foreign policy adviser in Mr Barack Obama’s administration, said the US could now be sucked into overseeing a complex transition process.

“I don’t see any short version of this story,” said Mr Bruen, now head of the Global Situation Room, an international affairs consultancy. “The US will get tangled up in Venezuela but will also have new problems to contend with related to its neighbours.”

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/we-are-going-to-run-the-country-trump-bets-on-regime-change-in-venezuela

"Donald Trump’s moves to invade Venezuela, abduct its president and first lady, invite global corporations to exploit its resources, and leave the nation’s feckless authoritarian regime largely intact range from blatantly illegal to facially insane. And the MAGA response to them is the most illustrative yet of the movement’s utter ideological and moral bankruptcy. This is a president who promised to put America first: He ran on isolationism, as well as an end to the era of wars of choice, foreign quagmires, and the U.S. as the world’s police officer. What Trump has offered instead: wars of choice, with America as the world’s plunderer—and his followers not only cheer but invent ridiculous pretexts to defend this utterly unjustifiable move."

https://archive.ph/680te#selection-1037.0-1037.748