"Americans Love A Winner"

One of the most persistent images in cinema is George C Scott limning General Patton's words in front of an American flag. So far, Trump looks like the kind of winner Patton imagined, assuming his bet that the remnant of the Maduro regime will cooperate with the US going forward pays off.

The success of the operation vindicates his choice of Secretary Hegseth and Hegseth's purge of the Biden Pentagon, something that had been in question for much of the past year.

The operation was a demnonstration of US technological superiority:

At the core of Venezuela’s defensive architecture was a network of radars supplied by the China Electronics Technology Group, including JYL-1 three-dimensional surveillance systems and the JY-27 metric-wave radar, which for years had been promoted as a supposed “stealth aircraft hunter“. Based on assessments of the swift and decisive operation, these sensors were disabled during the initial phase through intensive electronic jamming, leaving the integrated air defense system without early-warning capability.

. . . The neutralization of the radar network prevented any effective employment of longer-range air defense systems, including the S-300V and Buk-M2 complexes acquired from Russia to establish a layered defense. In parallel, suppression strikes against several Buk-M2 systems—at least two confirmed—completely nullified their ability to respond.

K T McFarland said this at Fox News:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown his entire military at Ukraine in hopes of establishing Russian domination and killing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The bloody war has dragged on for three years, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, while draining both countries. And still, that war grinds on.

. . . President Trump sent a small group of special forces into Caracas. Within three hours, they had captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, transporting them to New York to face justice in a U.S. court. No Americans were killed.

I don't think the timing of Secretary Hegseth's announcement that he intends to demote Sen Mark Kelly from his rank as a retired Navy captain was coincidental. He did this in the shadow of the Venezuelan success. Kelly's reply is petty:

"Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn't like, they will come after them the same way. It's outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that," Kelly said in a statement on X.

The problem is that the successful Venezuela raid was the product of "good order and discipline" in the armed forces that Kelly is alleged to have undermined, and he opposes that raid:

The President of the United States just overthrew a foreign ruler and explained to the American people that this is about taking control of the oil reserves of a foreign nation. He said that the U.S. will “run the country” until a proper transition can take place and went right into how U.S. oil companies will benefit from this takeover. He doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.

The visible Democrat strategy dsince the raid has been to question its legality and oppose it via Congressional action:

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., called Trump's actions "illegal" and said opposing lawmakers plan to use the "power of the purse" to counter them.

. . . He pointed to a war powers resolution, whose cosponsors include Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that senators intend to soon bring up for a vote to block further military action in Venezuela.

The problem for the Democrats is that the raid, at least so far, makes Trump a winner, and as Patton understood, Americans love a winner. Some Democrats recogtnize the potential problem, but so far, only Sen Fetterman has spoken out publicly:

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is breaking with many Democrats by praising the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, saying Americans across party lines once agreed he needed to be removed.

"I don't know why we can't just acknowledge that it's been a good thing," Fetterman said Monday on "Fox & Friends."

"We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here."

the rest are remaining circumspect:

Some Democrats are grumbling at their party's largely oppositional stance to President Trump's raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying privately that their colleagues should be celebrating.

. . . These lawmakers argue it could be a major political miscalculation if the party fails to applaud the downfall of a brutal dictator with sufficient volume, even given grave concerns about the operation's legality and longer-term ramifications.

I'm inclined to trust Rump's instincts. As long as he acts decisively without any disastrous outcomes, Americans will want to be on the winning side.

🚨 NEW: CNN reports SURGE in support for what President Trump did to Maduro +25 POINTS among the American public

"After the ousting, look! Support went THROUGH THE ROOF!" says pollster Harry Enten.

"It turns out, Americans like what they deem to be successful operations!" pic.twitter.com/SCHCcPc9TY

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) January 6, 2026