BREAKING NEWS UPDATE:
The United States will “run” Venezuela until a leadership transition is able to take place, President Donald Trump said Saturday, hours after the U.S. military ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
Trump provided few details of how the U.S. would lead the Latin American country. He did say U.S. oil companies will spend billions of dollars in Venezuela to “fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
His comments came after the U.S. staged an overnight raid of Venezuela, capturing Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, who are now en route to New York to face trial for several charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy against the U.S.
ORIGINAL STORY:
President Donald Trump on Saturday morning celebrated the capture of Nicolas Maduro, hailing the operation as an “amazing job” by the U.S. military after the Venezuelan president unsuccessfully tried to negotiate.
“I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” the president said in an interview on Fox News hours after he posted on Truth Social that the U.S. had successfully carried out a large-scale strike against the Latin American nation.
The dramatic turn of events caps a months-long pressure campaign by the Trump administration against Venezuela, which began in September with military strikes in the Caribbean Sea to kill alleged drug traffickers on boats. At that time, Trump said the U.S. was focused on stopping the flow of drugs and “not talking about” regime change, a point that drew skepticism from Democrats as well as conservative MAGA voices who oppose foreign intervention by the U.S.
“We did a great job. We’re stopping drugs from coming into this country,” Trump said, a point his closest allies repeated Saturday in defense of the raid.
In his interview with Fox, Trump said Maduro hoped to negotiate in the final days before U.S. forces captured him, and that the two men had spoken.
“He wanted to negotiate at the end and I didn’t want to negotiate,” Trump said. He told Maduro that he had to “give up” and it was “close, but in the end … we had to do something that was much more surgical, much more powerful.”
The overnight raid stunned other global leaders, who responded Saturday with a mix of condemnation — particularly from those in the region — and some praise from allies.
Democrats on Capitol Hill quickly criticized the move, saying it was done without the authorization or consultation with Congress. But some Republican hawks, particularly those in Florida, praised Trump for his leadership.
Even Steve Bannon, a close Trump ally who has broadly opposed proposals for deeper U.S. military engagement in global crises, praised the move, calling the raids “bold and brilliant.”
The attack was initially planned to take place four days ago, Trump said, but the weather “was not perfect. The weather has to be perfect,” adding that there were no U.S. military fatalities or loss of aircraft during the strikes.
Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are expected to be indicted in New York, where prosecutors originally indicted him years earlier. Bondi said Maduro is being charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machineguns and destructive devices against the United States.
Trump told Fox that Maduro and Flores were flown out of Venezuela, onto the USS Iwo Jima, a U.S. Navy warship, and will be heading to New York.
U.S. officials are deciding now how to be involved in the selection of a new leader. “We can’t take a chance of letting somebody else run it and just take over what he left,” Trump said, “We’ll be involved in it very much.”
Trump wouldn’t say if the U.S. would support Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year and dedicated it to Trump.
The president is expected to deliver a press conference Saturday morning from Mar-a-Lago.
Ali Bianco contributed to this report.
