Inside the MAGA Divide Over Trump’s Venezuela Gambit

The looming threat of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela is once again exposing the rift between the Republican Party’s foreign policy hawks and its anti-interventionist wing. But the fault lines are unfamiliar — a vivid illustration of the fluid nature of foreign policy alliances inside the Trump coalition.

In one corner of the right, Trump’s increasingly menacing posture toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is garnering support from traditional foreign policy hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has urged on Trump to expand his controversial strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who has called on Trump to go even further and oust Maduro from power. Both men are long-standing hawks who have backed Trump’s past foreign interventions — most recently the administration’s decision to join Israel’s bombing campaign in June targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

At the same time, Trump’s pressure campaign has earned the backing of a handful of Republicans from South Florida, including Reps. María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez. Though all generally hawkish in their foreign policy outlook, the three have been especially outspoken in their support for removing Maduro from power — an indication of the weight that the issue continues to carry for South Florida’s small but influential Venezuelan expat community.

On the other side of the issue, Trump’s saber-rattling is meeting resistance from the GOP’s “restrainers,” a group that includes both “America First” nationalists like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson as well as more conventional anti-interventionist libertarians like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. Many members of the camp opposed Trump’s decision to bomb Iran in June on the grounds that it risks dragging the U.S. into another costly regime-change war in the Middle East, and they are raising similar concerns about toppling Maduro’s government in Venezuela.

Yet each coalition is subtly different than the ones that formed in other recent intra-right skirmishes over the Trump administration’s interventionist forays.

In this instance, long-time anti-interventionists like Carlson and Bannon are being joined by a handful of prominent conservatives who supported the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran. That cohort includes the divisive MAGA activist Laura Loomer, who clashed with Carlson earlier this year over his opposition to the Iran bombings but has now joined him in opposing military action in Venezuela. In a series of social media posts in recent weeks, Loomer has attacked fellow Republicans calling for the U.S. to intervene, arguing that ousting Maduro would saddle U.S. taxpayers with the cost of rebuilding the country while creating an opportunity for China to deepen its foothold in the region. (Loomer did not respond to requests for comment.)

Also apparently siding with anti-interventionists is Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, whom the administration tapped to spearhead diplomatic outreach to Caracas. Earlier this year, Grenell defended the U.S. bombing campaign in Iran, but he has emerged within the administration as a prominent proponent of a diplomatic resolution with Maduro’s government. In October, the administration paused Grenell’s outreach to Venezuela — a move that seemingly empowered more hawkish forces within the administration — but Grenell has continued to remain publicly committed to the potential for a peaceful resolution.

The anti-interventionist camp also has quietly won the backing of some right-leaning anti-immigration advocates, who fear that an escalation of the conflict could spur a hemispheric migration crisis that would undercut the administration’s efforts to cut down on immigration from South and Central America.

“Every foreign adventure that we’ve entered into has resulted in significant immigration,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for immigration restrictions. “That’s the way it always works, and it needs to be factored into any decision about intervening in foreign countries.”

Krikorian pointed out that the ratcheting up of tensions with Venezuela could also threaten other aspects of Trump’s immigration agenda, including efforts to deport Venezuelan immigrants back to their native country. On Tuesday, Maduro’s government announced that it would continue to accept twice-weekly deportation flights from the U.S. despite Trump’s recent decision to unilaterally declare a closure to Venezuela’s airspace, but Krikorian cautioned that the situation could get more difficult if the U.S. further escalates the conflict.

“Upping tensions with Venezuela makes it less likely we’re going to be able to get the Venezuelan illegal aliens that Biden let in out of the country,” he said.

The shifting composition of the right’s coalitions around the Venezuela issue can be explained by a handful of factors. For one, the issue mobilizes a small but influential group of conservative Hispanic voters for whom ousting Maduro remains a top-line issue — and who make up a critical part of Trump’s electoral coalition. At the same time, Venezuela — unlike Iran or Syria — sits in the U.S.’s backyard in the Western hemisphere, meaning that the knock-on effects of a protracted conflict could much more directly impact the U.S. Lastly, in contrast to the controversial strikes against Iran, the conflict with Venezuela doesn’t implicate U.S. support for Israel, an issue that continues to divide the GOP across traditional ideological lines.

The intra-right coalitions could shift further as the administration’s end game comes into clearer focus. In public, the administration has maintained that its pressure campaign is about combatting “narcoterrorism” and that it is not seeking to oust Maduro — even as it has continued to classify his government as “illegitimate,” ramped up U.S. military presence in the region and quietly discussed scenarios for a post-Maduro future.

But in the meantime, the political situation within MAGA bears a resemblance to the situation on the ground: fluid and uncertain.