President Donald Trump said Saturday that U.S. military and law enforcement personnel had carried out an overnight operation in Venezuela during which they arrested the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, also declaring Washington in control of the South American nation.
“Late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States armed forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela,” Trump said at a late-morning news conference from his Florida home. The operation featured, he said, “overwhelming American military power — air, land and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault.”
“In just a short period of time, all Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with us [and] law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night,” Trump said, adding that Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was also arrested and detained.
[Related: Congress poised to weigh in on Venezuela campaign]
The president did not lay out the administration’s full legal rationale for the risky operation in Caracas, but he did invoke the “Monroe Doctrine” by arguing that disarming and removing the Maduro government was important for Western Hemisphere stability. In 1823, President James Monroe declared that the Western Hemisphere was closed to further European colonization and warned that any European effort to interfere in the affairs of nations in the Americas would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.
“Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten us,” he said. “They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border. All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries. … It dated to the ‘Monroe Doctrine.’”
A White House official, in an email sent moments before Trump began speaking, called the mission a “law enforcement operation” that was “conducted by the Department of War and the DEA, at the request of the Department of Justice.” Maduro and his wife were arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, not U.S. military personnel, the official said.
Speaking at the news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Maduro was given “many” offers to leave power but declined. He argued that Maduro was not the legitimate leader of Venezuela, labeling him a “fugitive of American justice.”
Democratic lawmakers fanned out on social media and cable news networks to bemoan the operation as illegal. Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who sits on the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary committees, called Trump a “rogue president” during an interview Saturday on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC.
[Related: US capture of Maduro rests on criminal case]
In one major twist, Trump declared that U.S. officials would “run” Venezuela until a new leader — one that he trusts — takes power. As he did not name any specific American or Venezuelan officials who would be involved in governance, he did not rule out inserting U.S. military personnel to maintain order. He said only that there would be “a group of people running it” for an unspecified “period of time.”
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” he said, flanked by Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Protesters gather outside the White House in Washington on Saturday morning. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
In another twist, Trump made clear his decision to remove Maduro was also based on his frustration with Venezuelan oil production.
“As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing, by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place,” said Trump, who previously attacked his predecessors’ Middle East military operations, arguing they had foolishly sought access to untapped oil reserves.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he said. “And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so.”
Trump did not appear to be preparing to ask Congress for new dollars to help govern the country, declaring, “It won’t cost us anything, because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial — so it’s not going to cost us anything.”
American oil companies will be “reimbursed” for any work they do there, Trump said. “We’re in the oil business. We’re going to sell it to them,” he said, referring to Venezuelan oil reserves. “So we’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries.”
Second strike?
Additionally, the U.S. commander in chief sent mixed signals about a second round of military strikes on Venezuela.
“We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” he said. “We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary. But now it’s probably not. The first wave … was so successful, we probably don’t have to do a second, but we’re prepared to do a second wave — a much bigger wave, actually.”
A picture appearing to be of Maduro was posted to the president’s Truth Social account shortly before his news conference began. The ousted leader was wearing a grey sweatsuit and dark sunglasses, and was holding an open water bottle in his cuffed hands.
The so-called congressional Gang of Eight were notified, “as a courtesy,” once the operation began, the White House official said. That group is composed of the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the chairs and ranking members of the Intelligence committees of both chambers.
The White House official did not answer questions submitted by email Saturday on the legal underpinning for U.S. military strikes on targets around Venezuela or whether the White House would seek new Pentagon monies to replace the munitions, fuel and other resources that were expended overnight.
“Maduro and his wife have been indicted in the Southern District of N.Y., where they will face justice,” the White House official said.
Earlier Saturday, Trump provided yet another glimpse into how he views such moments, telling Fox News, “If you would have seen what happened, I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show.”
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