This article, authored by Jason Cohen is republished under the Creative Commons “CC BY-NC-ND” license with permission from The Daily Caller News Foundation.
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday that support has surged for President Donald Trump’s administration’s capture and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump announced the Saturday operation in a Truth Social post, with many praising the military for how the mission unfolded. Enten cited Reuters/Ipsos and Washington Post polling on “CNN News Central” that showed a significant upswing in how Americans felt about ousting Maduro after the operation.
Trump has to like the dramatic change in the polls on Maduro's ouster. Support for it is through the roof (up 16 pts) vs. pre-ouster.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 6, 2026
We saw a similar rise in support over time for the Iran strikes in mid-2025.
Americans like what they deem as successful military operations. pic.twitter.com/ITTETJR6L0
“It’s been a dramatic change in a direction that I think the president of the United States will like,” Enten said. “Because what are we looking at here? … Pre-ousting, what you saw was the clear plurality of Americans opposed it — 47%. Just 21% supported it … After the ousting, look at that — the support through the roof. Now we’re talking about 37%, well within the margin of error right here of the opposition, 38%.”
“It turns out Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations,” he added. “And in this case, they view the ousting of Maduro, at least up to this point, as a successful one, and therefore the support way up.”
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, called the operation “extraordinary” on CNN’s “Smerconish” on Saturday. He said that Iran, Russia and China would “privately … be impressed with the military capability” the U.S. demonstrated.
“I would argue none of those three militaries could have executed an operation like this … the idea of finding, fixing, kidnapping, taking him [Maduro] out alive with his wife, no casualties on the side of the U.S — that’s an extraordinary military operation,” Stavridis said.
While 65% of Republicans supported the operation, 54% were concerned that the U.S. could become too entangled in Venezuelan affairs, according to a Reuters poll published on Monday.
Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson said on “The Tucker Carlson Show” Monday that he was grateful that the operation had not resulted in complete regime change.
“I’m grateful for the wisdom of not taking out the entire government. Not because I support the government, but because we have clear models in Iraq, in Libya and Syria,” Carlson said. “It can be very hard to put those things back together again … They’re kind of keeping the structure in place, but making sure it’s pro-American. That seems like a much wiser approach.”
The U.S. Army’s elite special forces unit, Delta Force, conducted the operation, bringing Maduro to the U.S. where he faces four criminal charges including narco-terrorism. The former dictator pleaded not guilty during his arraignment on Monday.
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George Patton said, “Americans love a winner.”
Of Course, most of the same people were praising the OWS mRNA clot shot, until they got one and either died or are now very ill.
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