After Trump promised 'no new wars,' Venezuela escalation could test MAGA's tolerance, analysts say

President Donald Trump’s political base has offered little resistance to his escalating pressure campaign on Venezuela.

President Donald Trump’s political base has offered little resistance to his escalating pressure campaign on Venezuela, even as he edges closer to the kind of military confrontation he has long criticized elsewhere.

After he won last year, Trump declared in his victory speech that he was “not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars,” praising the “strong” U.S. military that, "ideally, we don’t have to use.” And this year he denounced decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, decrying “Western interventionists” who had given other countries “lectures on how to live.”

That stance has been tested as his administration seized an oil tanker, with Trump suggesting the U.S. could carry out land operations aimed at removing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The administration’s campaign has already resulted in more than 26 boat strikes, killing at least 98 people, including a “double tap” strike now under congressional scrutiny.

On Tuesday, the president said he was ordering a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers to and from Venezuela, accusing its government of using oil revenue to finance illicit operations, such as “drug terrorism.”

The unfolding campaign has become a test of whether Trump’s political coalition will tolerate the use of force so long as it stays targeted and does not produce American casualties, political analysts and administration allies said in interviews with NBC News.