In September 2021, I argued vociferously that Joe Biden's disgraceful bug-out of Kabul would permanently damage his standing with the American electorate. The humiliation of getting chased out by the Taliban in a chaotic rout ended up sticking to Biden like a yellow stain that no detergent could touch.
I wrote at the time:
Biden’s polling crash is clearly being driven by Afghanistan, not the pandemic. It’s opened up Katrina-sized hole in the myths of Biden’s competence and his compassion. Abandoning Americans behind Taliban lines is not something one just shrugs off, and just as Hurricane Katrina did with George W. Bush, the Afghanistan disgrace appears to have triggered a cascade effect on confidence in Biden. Bush and the GOP didn’t recover from that cascade, and Biden seems even less capable in reversing it.
Biden's approval ratings before the Kabul bug-out had been significantly positive. After August 2021, they shifted to significantly negative and stayed that way for the rest of his presidency. Just as I predicted, it turned into an inflection point. Even Hunter Biden eventually admitted that it was an utter disaster, both militarily and politically.
If military and strategic incompetence can create a permanent crater on job approval, what impact could a demonstration of military and strategic mastery have? Brad Todd argued on CNN yesterday that Donald Trump has a real opportunity for a transformative boost with his success in seizing Nicolas Maduro, but that he has to stick the landing for it to work:
This is correct. There is a very big difference between the "very online right" and the people who decide elections. It is something I have been shouting in the wind on X for over a decade about the very online left when they dominated this site. https://t.co/bWrXfe5kzB
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) January 7, 2026
MEGYN KELLY, PODCAST HOST: I'm going to stay on the yellow light for this. I'm not in the green light territory. I'm not in the red light territory either. But I am staying in the yellow light territory for now. I have seen what happens when you cheerlead unabashedly U.S. intervention in foreign countries, thinking it's for our good and for the national, the international good, only to wind up with what we've called quagmire.
HUNT: Interesting coming from that kind of voice. I mean, to Jonah's point, I mean, the president seems to own this totally.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You're seeing a lot of what I'm going to somewhat derisively call new right commentators not know which way to go right now. And, you know, the one hand, this is the most strikingly successful American military operation in any of our memories. And I flash back comparing this one to what happened with Joe Biden's exit from Kabul, it's just night and day different and --
HUNT: Which was the beginning of his slide --
TODD: His numbers never recovered from it. His numbers never recovered from it.
HUNT: Yeah.
TODD: Now, the President Trump's goal is to try to make this be the springboard to his numbers recovering in a similar way. I think he's going -- to do that, he's going to have to enunciate a plan for how -- what success looks like next and how we get out. And to Lulu's point, you know, there are a finite number of people in any country trained to be soldiers. If you don't pay them to be soldiers, someone else will pay them to be soldiers. And so, I think it's not a stupid idea to be paying them to be soldiers right now that are not overthrowing the government. He's going to have to enunciate a plan by which we have a new democratic, elected government in Venezuela that will be an ally of ours. And at what point? That means we can extract ourselves.
Let's address Salena's point first. She's right about the over-estimated strength of the online commentariat, at least when it comes to "thought leadership." The collapse of Woke Inc should be evidence enough of that. However, Kelly's point does reflect a broader consensus in the electorate regarding skepticism of military adventurism, especially in regime-change missions. Trump's rise in 2015 came in no small part from the rejection of "neo-conservatism" by the populist Right. The strikes on Iran's nuclear program in June 2025 didn't cross those lines, but the attempt to change the regime in Venezuela arguably does, and it won't just be the "very online right" that will want to wait and see how closely this parallels previous adventures like Iraq and Libya.
To Brad's point, it's theoretically possible that this could be a positive and lasting inflection point for Trump. Democrats clearly worry about that potential, which is why they have largely attempted to ankle-bite Trump in the aftermath of Maduro's seizure. However, Americans have a base expectation of not just competency but of domination from our military. Biden failed that expectation drastically, which is what make Kabul so disastrous for his presidency and his legacy. The Maduro operation was so well executed that it should redound to Trump's benefit, but will that last on its own?
It will likely take more than just Maduro in chains to make that a reality. The best bet for Trump, therefore, is to remain bold and to deliver a long-term positive change in the region with this action. That means getting rid of the rest of the regime, one way or the other, and liberating Venezuela from its tyranny for good. If all Trump accomplishes with this mission is trading Nicolas Maduro for Delcy Rodriguez, no one will remember the masterful military mission (outside of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Havana). It will become a footnote with the American electorate.
If Trump wants an inflection point, both for himself and the Western Hemisphere, he'd better follow through. And he'd better do so successfully.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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