According to a recent poll conducted by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail, a greater number of Americans back President Donald Trump’s decision to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro than those who oppose it.

The survey revealed that 43 percent of registered voters are in favor of the military action initiated on January 3, while 36 percent express opposition.

As expected, support varies significantly along party lines. Republicans overwhelmingly endorse Trump’s move, with 78 percent in favor and only 8 percent against.

In contrast, only 17 percent of Democrats support the military intervention, whereas a substantial 57 percent stand in opposition.

Among Independents, who play a crucial role in the upcoming midterm elections, opinions are evenly divided.

Independents Split on Maduro Capture 

Independents, a key constituency in this year’s midterm elections, were split evenly between the camps. 

Thirty-nine percent of independents supported Trump’s decision to capture Maduro and bring him to the United States to stand trial, while 38 percent of independents opposed the move.

A majority of American voters viewed the operation as a success.

Fifty-four percent of voters thought it went well, with only 15 percent rating the mission as a failure. 

Another 31 percent of voters were unsure. 

Republicans were overwhelmingly positive about the mission, with 83 percent rating it as a success.

Only a third of Democrats, 33 percent, felt the same way.

GOP Nearly Unanimous in Backing Operation 

Just 4 percent of GOP voters viewed the operation, which took place overnight Saturday while Trump was still at his Mar-a-Lago resort, as a failure. 

Democrats were more willing to say that they were unsure about the outcome of the mission than to say it failed.

On the Democratic side, 43 percent said they were unsure about the success of the military operation, while 25 percent said it was an outright failure.

During his Mar-a-Lago press conference on Saturday, Trump said that no American military members were killed during ‘Operation Absolute Resolve.’ 

Still, Democrats in Congress want Trump to ask for permission to get the U.S. military more involved – with Virginia Senator Tim Kaine planning to bring a war powers resolution to the Senate floor Thursday, which would bar further intervention without congressional authorization. 

Trump’s ‘Running Venezuela’ Remark Raises Alarm 

Trump said that the U.S. would be ‘running’ Venezuela for the immediate future, signaling that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would take charge. 

That statement received raised eyebrows from Democratic voters, with 85 percent expressing concern and just 7 percent expressing little to no concern.

A majority of Republicans, on the other hand, shrugged off Trump’s statement. 

Overall, 52 percent expressed little to no concern. 

At the same time, part of MAGA ideology has been to be against ‘forever wars,’ with 40 percent of Republican voters expressing some concern over Trump’s decision to get involved in ‘running’ Venezuela. 

The poll was conducted on January 5 and 6 among 999 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent. 

Bondi forced to admit Trump’s Maduro claim is fiction 

Justice Department prosecutors under Pam Bondi were forced to admit that the central claim Trump used to lay the groundwork for ousting Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro was a fiction. 

The president for months has promoted the claim that Maduro was the leader of a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles.

Now DOJ prosecutors say the organization doesn’t exist. 

Prosecutors still accused Maduro in a New York courtroom on Monday of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but they distanced themselves from the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual cartel. 

According to the New York Times, the revised indictment claims Maduro ran a ‘patronage system’ and a ‘culture of corruption’ fueled by profits from narcotics.   

The claim originates from a 2020 grand jury indictment against Maduro written by the DOJ. 

Trump’s State Department and Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization last year as the administration sought to pressure the ouster of Maduro’s regime. 

Experts in Latin America, however, have pointed out that Cartel de los Soles is actually a slang term invented by Venezuelan media in the 1990s to describe officials who take drug money as bribes. 

The revised indictment against Maduro now concedes that point against the now deposed dictator. 

The old indictment refers to the Cartel de los Soles 32 times and claims Maduro is the leader of the organization. 

The revised document now only claims Maduro upheld the patronage system along with his predecessor and mentor, President Hugo Chávez. Over the last several months, Trump has referred to Maduro as a drug cartel leader and accused his regime of trafficking deadly fentanyl into the United States. 

The Pentagon has also gone on a lethal campaign of targeting alleged drug boats coming from Venezuela, leading to over 80 deaths. 

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Trader makes fortune after betting Maduro was about to be ousted 

A mysterious trader has made a fortune after betting on the removal of the Venezuelan president hours before he was captured. 

The wagers took place on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based predictions market that allows users to bet on the outcome of events. 

The unnamed user, whose default screen name was a blockchain address made up of a string of numbers and letters, created their account just last month. 

On December 27, they bought $96 worth of contracts that would pay off if the US invaded Venezuela by January 31, according to Polymarket data.  

Over the next week, they continued buying thousands of dollars worth of similar contracts that would yield large payouts. 

On January 2, between 8.38pm and 9.58pm, the user more than doubled their overall wager, betting more than $20,000 on the same kinds of contracts they had been purchasing since the end of December. 

At 10.46pm, less than an hour after the final bets were placed, President Trump ordered the military operation. 

Around 1am, the first reports of explosions rocking Caracas began to spill in. Observers have speculated that the well-timed wager was a result of insider trading. 

The contracts the user had purchased were priced at a measly eight cents apiece, which meant the general consensus among Polymarket betters was that there was just an eight percent chance of the US invading Venezuela and capturing Maduro.

Prediction market platforms, such as Polymarket, are meant to offer information aggregation and crowdsourced forecasting that leverage the power of the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to offer more accurate predictions than traditional polling. 

Prediction markets famously forecasted the result of the 2024 presidential election more accurately than polls. On Polymarket, Trump was slated as having a 60 percent chance to win the election, while polls had the race closer to 50-50 odds. 

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