President Donald Trump billed strikes on Venezuela earlier this month as being about drugs, gangs invading the United States and law enforcement – i.e. arresting indicted leader Nicolás Maduro. But of late, he seems conspicuously preoccupied with the country’s oil wealth.
And the American people seem to have noticed. A CBS News poll last week showed many Americans thought the administration’s goals in Venezuela were about oil (59% saying the goals were “a lot” about access to oil) or about expanding US power (51%) – more so than drugs (38%), an invasion of gangs and terrorists (37%) or enforcing the law (31%).
That’s pretty stunning. It took years for the idea to take hold that George W. Bush’s administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses (about weapons of mass destruction); Americans are already largely there when it comes to Venezuela.
Now, could similar foreign action be happening for the second time in early 2026 – this time in Iran?
Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran January 9.Khoshiran/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Trump has repeatedly in recent days floated a military intervention to, in his words, “rescue” Iranian protesters targeted and killed by the regime.
But at home, Trump has wielded a very selective view of the sanctity of protests and free speech – as the last week in Minneapolis has shown.
Trump, who already struck Iran’s nuclear program last year, has for the past 10 days played up the protests there and pledged to defend the protesters if need be.
He said on January 2 that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he added on social media.
Trump echoed this to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week, saying: “I’ve told them that if they do anything bad to these people, we’re going to hit them very hard.”
The protest death toll has now topped 500, according to a US-based human rights group. And Trump said late Sunday night aboard Air Force One that his administration was studying the causes of death and would “make a determination” about how to proceed.
But the president’s record when it comes to inviolability of protests and free speech is rather inconsistent – and often seems to depend largely on whether he agrees with the protesters’ message.
Federal agents gather next to a vehicle with a bullet hole in the windshield after its driver was shot by a US immigration agent in Minneapolis on January 7.Tim Evans/Reuters
Trump and his administration last week leapt to paint the woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis as a dangerous provocateur engaged in “domestic terrorism” – despite a lack of evidence that Renee Nicole Good deliberately targeted the agent with her car. CNN has been unable to determine whether Good was involved in a network of activists trying to intervene as immigration raids unfold.
Social media has for months featured widely shared videos of federal agents getting aggressive not just with their targets, but also with apparently peaceful protesters, as CNN reported last month. We’ve also seen such scenes as protests have increased in Minneapolis in recent days.
The New York Times asked Trump about aggressive tactics being used against protesters in an interview last week, and he appeared largely unbothered – repeatedly dodging the question.
“Well, I think that ICE has been treated very badly,” he responded.
This is a familiar dynamic with the president.
Protesters march along Pennsylvania Avenue during the second “No Kings” protest on October 18, 2025, in Washington, DC.Nathan Howard/Getty Images/File
When millions protested against him at “No Kings” rallies across the country in October, Trump and top Republicans previewed the demonstrations by repeatedly and baselessly deriding those involved as antifa, terrorist sympathizers and even terrorists themselves. Some even predicted significant unrest – this despite previous “No Kings” protests having featured very little violence.
And sure enough, the latest protests were almost wholly peaceful.
A month earlier, Trump floated a federal crackdown on left-wing groups, baselessly accusing them of having something to do with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. (This despite federal law enforcement having said the suspect, Tyler Robinson, appears to have acted alone.)
Trump and some top administration officials at the time repeatedly suggested the possible need to scale back free speech protections.
Also this year, Trump has exaggerated violence at anti-ICE protests and in other contexts in order to justify his domestic deployments of troops. Judges, including Republican-appointed ones, repeatedly rejected those claims.
And earlier this year, he described some protests as “illegal” and targeted legal immigrants who expressed pro-Palestinian views for deportation.
Further back, Trump has also said criticizing judges should be illegal (despite his own history of regularly criticizing judges). He’s advocated the criminalization of flag-burning and even suggested NFL players who didn’t stand for the national anthem “shouldn’t be in the country.” He’s labeled protests he didn’t like as “insurrection.”
Trump’s former defense secretary said he advocated shooting protesters in the legs during his first term. And around the same time, as racial-justice protesters took to the streets across the country in 2020, Trump promoted a video of a supporter saying, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
Finally, there are some older comments that are particularly relevant today.
While Trump is building himself up as a potential savior for protesters in Iran, he’s repeatedly spoken as if repression is just something that strong countries do to their citizens.
Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News.Fox News
Perhaps the most infamous example was Trump being asked in 2017 about Russian President Vladimir Putin killing his enemies. (“You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump said.)
But even more striking than that were Trump’s comments in 1990, well before he first ran for president, about China’s handling of Tiananmen Square demonstrators.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump told Playboy back then. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
Trump in the same interview cited “demonstrations and picketing” in the Soviet Union and said then-President Mikhail Gorbachev was “not a firm enough hand.”
Trump claimed during his 2016 campaign, when these comments resurfaced, that he hadn’t been advocating China’s crackdown in Tiananmen Square. But it’s hardly the only evidence that he often avoids judging these things through a consistent, pro-civil liberties lens. His lens is instead regularly about power and whether he likes what the protesters are saying.
Which makes it a little difficult to believe his motivation in Iran is precisely what he says it is.
Trump is pledging to ‘rescue’ protesters in Iran. He has a selective view of the sanctity of protests. Egypt Independent.
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