Early on in Donald Trump’s second term, the president started to focus on priorities he hadn’t talked about on the campaign trail the year before. In fact, the Republican turned his attention to an imperialistic vision, announcing interventionist plans for everything from Greenland to Panama, Canada to Gaza.
Polls suggested that most Americans were not on board with this foreign agenda. The president didn’t appear to care.
With Trump’s second year of his second term poised to get underway, and with his interventionist global agenda reaching radical new heights, there’s fresh evidence that the American mainstream is even less impressed than it was in early 2025. The Associated Press reported:
More than half of U.S. adults believe President Donald Trump has ‘gone too far’ in using the U.S. military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted Jan. 8-11, after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture. It found that 56% of U.S. adults think Trump has overstepped on military interventions abroad.
These top-line results are important, but just as notable are the survey results on the specific international targets Trump has in mind.
Venezuela: The president said earlier this week that critics of his recent military offensive in Venezuela necessarily “hate our country.” He might want to rethink this: The AP poll found that 57% of respondents disapprove of how Trump is handling the situation in Venezuela. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll found nearly identical results (59% disapproval). The latest Quinnipiac University poll, meanwhile, found that 55% of Americans oppose taking over Venezuela’s oil sales, and that 57% oppose the U.S. running Venezuela until it is satisfied that the government there will operate the way the U.S. wants it to.
Greenland: The Quinnipiac poll found that 55% of the American public opposes trying to buy Greenland, while a whopping 86% oppose trying to take Greenland by military force. Similarly, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 4% think it would be a good idea “to use military force to take possession of Greenland from Denmark.”
Iran: The Quinnipiac poll found that 70% of Americans believe that the United States should not get involved in ongoing developments in Iran, while the Reuters/Ipsos poll similarly found that only 33% of the public approves of Trump’s policy toward Iran. Mexico: While Trump continues to talk about possible military strikes against drug cartels in Mexico, the Quinnipiac poll found that 57% of Americans are against the idea, while only 37% support such an offensive. Congress’ role: As the White House pursues an interventionist agenda abroad, it’s treated Congress as an afterthought, but the Quinnipiac poll found that 70% of Americans believe that presidents, as a general matter, should receive approval from Congress before taking military action against another country. If Trump is looking for good news in any of these national surveys, he won’t find any: When it comes to his foreign ambitions, most Americans just aren’t buying what he’s selling.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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