Art Estopinan, former chief of staff to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban American elected to Congress in 1989, before the South Floridian Republican retired in 2019, welcomed the strikes.

“Regardless of whether it was a Republican administration or a Democratic administration, Latin America played second fiddle in the United States’ foreign policy — the Middle East, Iran, China, Europe, and Russia were front and center,” Estopinan told the Washington Examiner. “Now that President Trump has been able to resolve, in his administration, a lot of those conflicts, a focus of this administration is going to be Latin America.” 

The president of the Estopinan Group, a lobbying firm, the former congressman added: “I believe that what the Trump administration is doing is they are seeing what is under the America First policy and MAGA banner, how are these countries not in favor of U.S. national security?”

Estopinan, himself a Cuban American, cited Mexico’s extradition this year of more than 50 convicted narcoterrorists to the U.S. before predicting that, after Venezuela, there would be more actions against Colombia following Trump’s war-of-words with and sanctions against Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Trump made history last year in South Florida as the first Republican to win Miami-Dade County, the country’s most populous majority-Hispanic county and home to a predominantly Cuban, Colombian, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Dominican, and Venezuelan community, since 1988. 

Then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade County by almost 30 percentage points in 2016 and former President Joe Biden by 7 points in 2020 before ex-Vice President Kamala Harris lost it by 11 points last year, a trend precipitated, in part, by Democrats’ embrace of socialism with the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after many members of those communities escaping socialist or communist regimes.

Simultaneously, other Republicans have expressed concerns about Trump’s actions against Venezuela, such as directing a military buildup off the country’s coast and CIA covert operations within its borders, in addition to indicating last weekend that land strikes could “start very soon,” after campaigning last year to end “forever wars.” 

Trump even confirmed a phone call last weekend between himself and self-proclaimed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, although he declined to confirm whether he told the dictator to step down after he posted on social media that “Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers” should consider “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

MAGA Republican Laura Loomer, who is against United States involvement in Venezuela’s leadership, responded to Trump’s post with her own, writing, “maybe soon we will see an invasion of Venezuela” so Venezuela opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, “can assume power in a country she will never be able to run without U.S. assistance.”

“She will fail. China has too many assets in Venezuela. She won’t have success with her regime change, and U.S. taxpayers will be stuck with the bill,” Loomer wrote.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee and its House counterpart have already announced congressional inquiries into the Sept. 2 incident after conveying concerns about the lack of briefings lawmakers have received about the strikes.

“It is a big concern,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE). “Now, Secretary of Defense Hegseth denies it. We should get to the truth. I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, ‘Kill everybody, kill the survivors,’ because that’s a clear violation of the law of war. … Let’s get the facts first.”

Regardless, Trump does have the support of his broader MAGA base, with a CBS-YouGov poll reporting this month that 66% of self-identified MAGA members favor the U.S. “taking military action” in Venezuela, while 34% oppose it. That rate is lower among Republicans who do not consider themselves MAGA: 47% favor-53% oppose.

Former Trump Deputy Special Rep. for Venezuela Carrie Filipetti contended the president’s base supports his actions against Venezuela “so far largely because they understand the goal of countering narcotics trafficking.” 

“Americans seem to understand precisely why what happens in Venezuela matters so much to our personal security, which is why even those who tend to identify more as restrainers have broadly supported the president’s pressure on Maduro,” Filipetti told the Washington Examiner. “Politically, that could change depending on what President Trump does next, but he has a lot of flexibility.” 

Simultaneously, the same CBS-YouGov poll reported that 64% of Republicans writ-large agreed Trump needed to “explain his decisions” regarding his actions against Venezuela, compared to 36% who did not. Another 62% of Republicans thought of Venezuela as a minor threat, in contrast to 25% who thought of it as a major threat and 13% who thought of it as not a threat at all.

Filipetti dismissed criticism that “this is going to be another forever war,” arguing both Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado “have said their interest lies in a peaceful, negotiated transition.” 

“There are dozens of strong options he can pursue that fall way, way below the threshold of an invasion, troops on the ground, or other scenario that might rightly cause concern among his base,” the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and a Wilson Center distinguished fellow for Latin America said, though Trump has not ruled out a troop deployment. “The idea isn’t to build Venezuelan democracy, it’s simply to return to it.”

To that end, Filipetti differentiated Venezuela from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, underscoring that Venezuela “has democratically elected leadership” and “an opposition with experience over decades building institutions and organizing elections.” 

“They know what freedom feels like, and for most of their history, they had it,” she added. “Most importantly, the push for a return to democracy isn’t coming from outside – it’s coming from within Venezuela. Unlike in Iraq and Libya, Venezuela doesn’t have the tribal, ethnic, or religious divisions that have tended to block democratic progress. Venezuela is not at all comparable to those other scenarios, even if the president were to expand operations to counter Maduro directly.”

Nevertheless, Trump and the White House have spent the days since the Washington Post‘s reporting about the double-tap strike, which arguably contravenes the law of armed conflict that prohibits the execution of an enemy combatant who is “hors de combat,” or out of the fight because of injury or surrender, defending it.

“I don’t know anything about it. He said he did not say that, and I believe him,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday of Hegseth. “I wouldn’t have wanted that.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly reiterated on Monday that Hegseth never ordered a double-tap strike, telling reporters during her briefing that it was Adm. Mitch Bradley, the head of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

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“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narcoterrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,” Leavitt said. “Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.

She continued, “This administration has designated these narcoterrorists as foreign terrorist organizations. The president has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is what they are doing.”