At a Saturday morning press conference from the Tea Room at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump—flanked by Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan ‘Razin’ Caine—laid out new details of the U.S. special forces operation that culminated in the arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
“A lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people,” Trump told The New York Times in a 4:30 a.m. ET call that reportedly lasted less than a minute. “It was a brilliant operation, actually.”
Trump’s message was unmistakable: this administration isn’t interested in empty rhetoric or endless diplomatic hand-wringing. It’s about decisive action. The president praised the precision and professionalism of U.S. forces, underscoring that America will no longer tolerate narco-dictators, human-rights abusers, or hostile regimes thumbing their noses at U.S. interests. Joined by his national security team, Trump framed the operation as a clear warning to authoritarians everywhere—America is back, and consequences are no longer theoretical.
“He was in a house that was more like a fortress than a house,” Trump said an interview with Fox News. “It had steel doors, it had what they call a safety space where it’s, you know, it’s solid steel all around. He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum rushed so fast that he didn’t get into there.
Named “Operation Absolute Resolve,” the commander-in-chief called the joint action between U.S. special forces and federal law enforcement an “extraordinary military” action and revealed that “air, land and sea” were used to the launch the highly successful mission.
“Overwhelming American military power — air, land and sea — was used to launch a spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II,” he said.
Trump added that all Venezuelan military forces were rendered incapacitated during the operation. Better still, he said, not a single U.S. service member was killed, and no American military equipment was lost in the mission.
It was a stark contrast to the era of half-measures and apologies under Obama and Biden:
Regarding what happens next in Venezuela, Trump declared that the United States is “going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition” of power.
According to Trump, U.S. oil companies will move into Venezuela and invest billions of dollars to repair the damaged oil infrastructure. “We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country,” he said.
What happens if Venezuelans resist U.S. actions? We’ll “stage a second, larger attack, if needed,” said the president. He noted that the objective is to make the people of Venezuela “rich, independent, and safe.” He concluded: “We want peace, liberty, and justice.”
Shortly before the press conference began, President Trump released the first photo of Maduro in U.S. custody aboard the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship.
U.S. military special forces—working alongside U.S. law enforcement—carried out a daring raid in Caracas to apprehend Maduro and his wife while they slept. Trump said he offered initial details at the time, framing the operation as swift, precise, and decisive.
“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolás Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” Trump said on his Truth Social media platform. “This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.”
January 3 is shaping up to be a consequential date in U.S. foreign policy history. It was on January 3, 1989, that Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega finally surrendered to U.S. forces after trying—and failing—to hide from American power. And it was January 3, 2020, when Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani was eliminated in a decisive U.S. military strike.