Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela after capturing Maduro in audacious attack
WASHINGTON— A daring overnight raid by elite US forces that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom in Caracas threw the country into turmoil on Saturday and raised international concerns about the future of Venezuela and President Trump’s decision to seize control of a sovereign nation.
Trump justified the stunning attack by accusing Maduro of sending “monsters” from Venezuelan prisons to the United States and claiming he was involved in the drug trade. But Trump focused more on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, accusing the Venezuelan government of stealing US oil infrastructure in the country decades ago, and promised that production would increase in the future under the control of the new US government.
The president has spoken little about democracy in Venezuela, ignoring the potential role of the long-standing democratic opposition in governing the country in the immediate aftermath of the operation. Instead, Trump said his team has been in contact with Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has been “very gracious” and “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to Make Venezuela Great Again.”
“We will govern the country until we can have a safe, appropriate and reasonable transition,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our largest U.S. oil companies anywhere in the world come in, spend billions of dollars, fix badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
“We are not afraid of boots on the ground,” he added.
President Trump, along with Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaks to the media following U.S. military operations in Venezuela on Saturday.
(Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The president did not offer a timeline for how long the transition would take or which Venezuelan groups he would support to assume leadership.
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado said on Saturday that she and her team are ready to take control of Venezuela.
“The hour of freedom has come,” he wrote on social media. “We are ready to defend our authority and take power.”
But Trump made a surprising statement to reporters on Saturday, saying he did not believe Machado had the “respect” needed to lead the country.
Trump instead focused on how the United States intends to govern Venezuela in the immediate aftermath, saying American oil companies were prepared to attack the oil-rich country and “unearth tremendous amounts of wealth.”
“This wealth goes to the people of Venezuela and people outside of Venezuela who were once in Venezuela, and it goes to the United States as compensation for the damage that this country has done to us,” Trump said.
The operation began with explosions across Caracas as more than 150 US aircraft, including F-35 fighter jets, B-1 bombers and remote-controlled drones, cleared Venezuelan air defenses to make way for the interdiction team, which included US law enforcement. Chief of Staff Dan Caine told reporters that power was out in much of the city during the attack.
U.S. officials said a Delta Force unit entered Maduro’s heavily fortified compound at 2:01 a.m. local time and caught him and his wife trying to escape to a safe room. Only one helicopter in the US fleet was hit by Venezuelan fire, but was able to continue flying throughout the mission. Caine said no U.S. personnel were killed.
Trump, who months ago ordered the CIA to begin monitoring Maduro’s movements, said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning that he watched the operation “literally as if I were watching a television show” from a room at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.
From there, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, boarded the ship Av. General Pam Bondi said Maduro would face “the full wrath of American justice” for his alleged ties to illegal drug trafficking.
“I wish you could see the speed and the violence,” Trump told Fox. “Great job.”
The atmosphere was tense in Caracas on Saturday. Long queues formed at supermarkets and pharmacies as shoppers fearful of uncertainty stocked up on essentials.
Maduro’s supporters gathered throughout the city, many carrying weapons but unsure of what to do next. There were mixed reactions to the US operation in Latin America. While Trump’s right-leaning allies, including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, supported the US attack, leftists generally condemned it.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the “assault on the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America” and said he had ordered the deployment of Colombian armed forces along his country’s 1,300-mile border with Venezuela.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the United States had “crossed an unacceptable line” and likened the act of impeaching Maduro to “the world’s darkest moments.” [U.S.] intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Trump, meanwhile, boasted that the US operation in Venezuela would help the US reassert its dominance in Latin America.
“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said. “We are reasserting American power very strongly in our own region.”
