A narrow, brick-sided alley runs between the Republican Party headquarters in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, and its parking lot. The building also served as Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign headquarters in the city of Scranton, and the alley is where I came across a man in his 70s, and his wife, as they were heading back to their car.
They had come out that morning, the Saturday before Election Day, to aid Trump’s election by curing ballots and “cleaning voter rolls” — one facet of the lingering “stolen 2020 election” conspiracy theories that Trump’s imminent victory would soon put to bed. When I asked why they thought Trump’s election was important, they offered a few reasons. But, they said, it was also out of concern for someone they knew, a 24-year-old who could be at risk if the United States were sucked into a military conflict.
This was not an uncommon sentiment among Trump’s 2024 supporters. Often expressed with the shorthand “no new wars,” many backers of the former and future president embraced his claims that he’d been the first president in a long time not to commit the military to armed conflict.
The thing about the “no new wars” line, though, is that it was neither a central element of Trump’s rhetoric nor presented in the way that a lot of his followers understood it.
This context is useful when considering polling released earlier last week by CBS News. Conducted by YouGov, the poll found that most Americans oppose taking military action in Venezuela, something that the administration and its allies have moved from hinting at to talking about openly. It is the sort of conflict that a president and party that objected to new wars would presumably oppose — but it’s one for which Trump’s team is preparing and one that has the support of nearly six in 10 Republicans.
This is a preview of Philip Bump's latest column. Read the full column here.
