Trump is driving away the people who decide elections | Opinion

Capturing Nicolás Maduro may be the most traditionally Republican thing President Donald Trump has done since returning to office.

If it stopped there, he probably would have gotten a huge boost in the polls.

Most Republicans — and most Americans — agree Maduro was a brutal dictator. No one is shedding a tear over his removal. The problem for Republicans is that it didn’t stop there.

Trump now says the United States may “run” Venezuela for years. After floating threats toward Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and even Greenland, he told the New York Times that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality.” That isn’t strength. That’s dangerous. And it’s the kind of arrogance our founders designed the Constitution to restrain.

That’s why it mattered when five Republican senators finally grew a spine and did their jobs, voting with Democrats to advance a war-powers resolution to block Trump from dragging the country deeper into Venezuela without Congress’s consent. That wasn’t a rebellion — it was a constitutional gut check. In America, presidents don’t get to launch wars on a whim. Congress authorizes force. That safeguard exists precisely to stop one man’s impulses.

Which brings me to the House Republican retreat, where Trump seemed baffled that - after what he called the most successful first year in presidential history — voters might be turning on Republicans, remarking, “I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public.”

Here’s the answer.

We didn’t vote to occupy foreign countries.

We didn’t vote to be the aggressor in the Western Hemisphere.

We didn’t vote for Stephen Miller playing Bond villain with U.S. foreign policy.

And we certainly didn’t vote for masked ICE Agents shooting and killing American citizens.

Look I understand the impulse to defend law enforcement. “Back the Blue” has been a Republican rallying cry for years, especially after Democrats flirted with defunding the police. It has been a great wedge to highlight that the GOP to show we believe in the rule of law and in giving officers the tools they need to keep communities safe. But standing for law and order also means holding law enforcement accountable when it crosses the line.

Instead, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rushed to label the woman killed in Minnesota a “domestic terrorist.” No investigation. No independent review. Just instant condemnation and a rush to justify their actions.

I’ve heard the talking points — she was a paid agitator, a radical. Maybe she was. But she was also an American citizen, and in this country that means she has the constitutional right to protest, even when we don’t like what she’s saying.

Of course, she can’t interfere with law enforcement and if an ICE Agent told her to stop, she should have complied. But her death should never have been the outcome.

And there’s an uncomfortable double standard here. Many of the same voices now claiming that disobeying law enforcement justifies lethal force are the same ones who called January 6 patriots - even after rioters broke into the Capitol and ignored police orders.

For people who oppose Trump, this changes nothing - it just adds fuel to the fire. For his most loyal supporters, it won’t move the needle either. But elections aren’t decided at the extremes. They’re decided in the middle — by voters who want stability, restraint, and leaders who govern by principle instead of impulse.

That’s the part Trump doesn’t seem to grasp when he wonders what’s going on in the public’s mind.

Trump may think this has been a great week. But the rest of the country sees something else: a president who governs by intimidation instead of persuasion, by shock instead of leadership, and by impulse instead of constitutional restraint.

And while he’s feeding his ego, he’s burning the very coalition Republicans need to win. If Republicans lose this fall, it will be because Trump drove away the middle - the people who are troubled by us “running” Venezuela, by Stephen Miller, by ICE and Border Patrol going too far - and shattered the trust that wins elections.

Matt Wylie is a South Carolina-based Republican political strategist and analyst with more than 25 years of experience working on federal, state and local campaigns.