Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the political fallout from military action in Venezuela

Amna Nawaz:

Well, lawmakers return to Washington this week facing the fallout from U.S. military action in Venezuela, as well as a shutdown deadline and a health care fight ahead.

To discuss that and more, we are joined by our Politics Monday team. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Tam, I want to begin with you. And I want to start with Venezuela, which, of course, we have been devoting most of this show to. You now have the former President Nicolas Maduro brought into a court in Manhattan earlier today -- or, rather, in Brooklyn, after a U.S. military operation grabbed him from his home, arrested him, flew him to America to be tried.

You see President Trump now saying the U.S. is in charge of Venezuela and, as we have been reporting, threatening action against Cuba and Colombia and Mexico and Greenland. This is the man who ran on America first, no new wars. How do you square this?

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Yes.

And I spent a good part of today going back through the archives of all of the things that President Trump has said over time, in 2016, in 2019, in 2020, in 2024. He campaigned on no intervention, no foreign wars, no regime change, the regime change was a mistake, nation-building doesn't work.

And he really rode U.S. citizen anger with foreign wars into the White House. It was one of his major attack points against Hillary Clinton and again against Joe Biden and also against Vice President Harris. And in office, especially in this second term, he has had a much more interventionist approach to foreign policy.

Now, I did talk to an official who was part of the first Trump administration with a national security role today who said this operation in Venezuela was -- quote -- "extremely MAGA." And I was like, OK, really? How so?

And what he said is that MAGA was never anti-interventionist, it was never isolationist. What it was is that it needed to be in the U.S. interest and that Iraq and Afghanistan were not clearly in the U.S. interest in the way that this operation was, tying it to immigration, tying it to drugs, and also a real emphasis on this hemisphere, President Trump's Donroe Doctrine of the Monroe Doctrine.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, I can think of one person who disagrees that this is a MAGA kind of policy and move. That's Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Amy, I will turn to you on this. And I want to play for you a little bit of sound from Marjorie Taylor Greene, as we know, is marking her last days in office. Obviously, we expected Democrats to oppose the military action of Venezuela, which they have, noting that Congress was not notified, there was no congressional approval for this.

But Marjorie Taylor Greene also came out against this move by President Trump. Here's what she had to say.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene(R-GA):

This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn't serve the American people, that actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives. We don't consider Venezuela our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is right here in the 50 united states, not in the Southern Hemisphere.

Amna Nawaz:

Amy, what do you make of this new Trump doctrine and also that reaction from Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

Yes.

Well, it's notable that she really has been the only person in Congress on the Republican side to come out and publicly criticize this action. We saw votes taken actually right before the holiday break in the House also calling on more congressional oversight in Venezuela. She was one of just three Republicans who voted with Democrats on this.

So there is not a big faction of Republicans right now, those who call themselves MAGA or America first, who see what the president did as something that is not within that lane.

Part of it, Amna, has been that MAGA and America first isn't necessarily an ideology. It's not a set of really clear principles or policies. It is what Donald Trump makes it to be. He is America first. America first is him. And he said such a thing after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities back in the summer of last year.

He told "The Atlantic" exactly that. He said, America first is -- I invented it and it's basically what I say it is.

So I'm not expecting to see a big rift among Republicans over this issue. Republicans are coming at it from all different angles, but they're basically lining up behind the president.

One other really interesting thing that I noted in looking through some polling, back in November, late November, CBS had a poll asking about military intervention in Venezuela. And they broke it out among Republicans by those who identified as MAGA and those who identified not as MAGA.

And, to Tam's point about this being a very MAGA-fied sort of operation, a significant majority, something like 66 percent of those who identified as MAGA said they would support a military intervention. Less than half of the non-MAGA thought the same thing. So I don't see this -- even though Marjorie Taylor Greene has come out very strongly, I don't see a lot of Republicans who will follow suit.

Amna Nawaz:

Meanwhile, back here in Washington, D.C., as lawmakers are returning, Tam, as you know, the enhanced health care subsidies they have been fighting over for many months have officially expired. Now the House is going to vote on a three-year extension, senators also working on some kind of a plan.

But there is another government funding deadline looming at the end of the month. How are you looking at all of these forces colliding? And are we headed to another shutdown?

Tamara Keith:

I don't know how to predict the future on that one, but I do know there's less of an appetite for a shutdown this time than there was in the fall.

I think that the challenge with these Affordable Care Act subsidies is, in order to get anything big done, it requires bipartisan compromise. And bipartisan compromise simply hasn't happened in this Congress. It's not cool this time around. It's tough.

And in past presidencies, in past administrations, there have been big bipartisan bills even when there was a lot of partisan rancor. The challenge is that President Trump isn't interested in compromise. He's not here to compromise. And he has not shown much of an appetite for really pursuing what the moderates in the House are negotiating over or what a few Republicans in the House joined with Democrats to force a vote on.

Amna Nawaz:

Amy, how are you looking at this?

Amy Walter:

Yes, what's really interesting, I have been making a lot of calls today around talking to Republican strategists about the impact that Venezuela may have in 2026.

And, fundamentally, really, what it comes down to for many of them is that foreign policy, and I agree with this, that foreign policy tends to not have much of an impact when it comes to election time, unless there are actually Americans involved or boots on the ground.

But what it does do is, it makes it look as if the president is spending more time doing foreign policy than domestic policy. Remember, the issue of affordability, and health care fits into this, has been the watchword for Democrats now, and they have used it successfully in winning elections in the 2025 election year.

And they are planning on using that in 2026 as well. If you're a Republican right now, and one of them said to me, the issue right now for Republicans isn't necessarily what happened to Venezuela, but it's the lack of tangible economic wins that people can feel week to week.

The president can do both things, of course. Administrations are big. They can walk and chew gum. You can have foreign policy next to domestic policy. But what we have seen in poll after poll throughout this year, Amna, is voters believing that the president is spending a lot of time on issues that aren't directly addressing affordability and the cost of living.

Tamara Keith:

And it's not just polling. Late last year, talking to a senior White House official, they acknowledged that the president had spent so much time on foreign trips in that first year in office, and they were going to do things differently, and that he was going to get out into the country, and he was going to talk about affordability.

And then, happy new year, there's this operation in Venezuela.

Amna Nawaz:

Happy new year, indeed.

Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, good to see you both. Thank you so much.

Tamara Keith:

You're welcome.

Amy Walter:

You're welcome.