WASHINGTON — After months of growing military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump ordered a brazen operation into the South American country to capture its leader and whisk him to the United States where his administration planned to put him on trial.
In a Saturday morning interview on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Trump laid out the details of the overnight strike, after which he said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship. Later Saturday, Trump and other officials gave more details during a news conference from his Florida residence.
Maduro was in a ‘fortress,’ Trump says
Trump described Maduro as being “highly guarded” in a presidential palace that was “like a fortress.” Maduro had nearly made it to a safe room inside it, Trump told reporters, although “he was unable to close it.”
American forces were armed with “massive blowtorches,” which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked himself in the room, Trump said earlier.
“It had what they call a safety space, where it’s solid steel all around,” Trump said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared.”
US military prepared for months
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and the clothes he wore.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again, and again,” Caine said, saying his forces were “set” by early December. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Earlier, Trump said U.S. forces had practiced their extraction on a replica building.
“They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.
‘We turned off all the lights’
Trump said the U.S. operation took place in darkness, although he did not detail how that had happened. He said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” the capital of Venezuela. At the news conference, he said the city’s lights “were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have.”
“This thing was so organized,” he said. “And they go into a dark space with machine guns facing them all over the place.”
At least seven explosions were heard in Caracas. The attack, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as part of “massive joint military and law enforcement raid,” lasted less than 30 minutes.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who under law takes power, said some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed.
Trump says ‘a couple of guys injured’
Trump said a few U.S. members of the operation were injured but he believed no one was killed.
“A couple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape,” he said.
The Republican president said the U.S. had lost no aircraft, but that a helicopter was “hit pretty hard.”
“We had to do it because it’s a war,” he added.
In his news conference, Trump did not mention the injuries or helicopter damage, stressing that no American lives had been lost. Caine said the helicopter that was struck was able to safely fly on its return.
The weather was a factor
Trump said U.S. forces held off on conducting the operation for days, waiting for cloud cover to pass because the “weather has to be perfect.”
“We waited four days,” he said. “We were going to do this four days ago, three days ago, two days ago. And then all of a sudden it opened up and we said, go. And I’ll tell you, it’s, it was just amazing.”
Caine said that on Friday night, “the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could move through.” He said helicopters flew low to the water to enter Venezuela and were covered above by protective U.S. aircraft.
Operation ‘Absolute Resolve,’ by the numbers
Caine detailed the aircraft and U.S. forces involved in the operation, which he said was named “Absolute Resolve”:
—more than 150 aircraft launched from across the Western Hemisphere, including F-18, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, B-1 bombers and drones.
—Trump gave the go-ahead at 10:46 p.m. EST Friday.
—U.S. forces reached Maduro’s compound at 1:01 a.m. EST Saturday and were back over water headed away at 3:29 a.m. EST.
—U.S. service members involved in the operation ranged in age from 20 to 49
Where is Maduro now?
Trump said that Maduro and Flores were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship and would go on to New York to face charges. He later posted on Truth Social a photo of the Venezuelan leader, wearing in a gray sweatsuit, protective headphones and blindfold. The caption said: “Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima.”
The Justice Department released an indictment accusing the pair of having an alleged role in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Months of escalating actions
The raid was a dramatic escalation from a series of strikes the U.S. military has carried out on what Trump has said were drug carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. There had been 35 known strikes that killed at least 115 people.
On Dec. 29, Trump said the U.S. struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.” The CIA was behind the drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels. It was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began its strikes in September.
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Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina.