Donald Trump Says the U.S. Will ‘Run’ Venezuela After Maduro’s Ouster

The U.S. military captured the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during an operation carried out early this morning in the capital city of Caracas. At 1 a.m., residents of the city reported hearing explosions and aircraft. According to CNN, Maduro and his wife were sleeping in their bedroom when the Americans arrived to seize them.

At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said that the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” adding in the question and answer session that “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground” and that the focus would be on oil.

“We don’t want to be involved with having someone else get in,” Trumps said, “and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period.” Trump said a much bigger attack was also planned. “We actually assumed a second wave would be necessary, but now it’s probably not.” 

“This was pinpoint, but we have a much bigger wave that we probably won’t have to do,” Trump said. He added that U.S. oil companies would soon move in and “start making money for the country.”

Maduro and Flores were extracted from Caracas by helicopter, and they are believed to be on the USS Iwo Jima. According to Trump, Maduro will be taken to New York to face criminal charges. 

When asked who would be running Venezuela, Trump said: “We’re designating those people.”

Trump also said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president of Maduro’s illegitimate regime, and that “she’s willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” calling her “gracious.” Following the operation, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, widely regarded as the second most powerful figure in the Maduro regime, appeared publicly flanked by armed police while wearing a helmet and body armor. Vladimir Padrino López was the first senior official to publish a lengthy message on social media denouncing the operation.

The operation began with a coordinated effort to neutralize Venezuela’s air defense system, according to military analyst Daniel Blanco Paz. At least two Russian-made surface-to-air missile systems were destroyed, he said, paving the way for a broader wave of strikes that hit at least 20 military installations.

The strikes hit a combination of military bases, air defense installations, and sites linked to command and coordination within the armed forces. Blanco Paz says there were at least 13 casualties within the Venezuelan armed forces, including those killed, wounded, and missing. He added that only military targets appear to have been struck, and that there is no evidence of a coordinated Venezuelan response. There were no reported U.S. fatalities, but minor injuries were reported.

During this phase of the operation, a U.S. special operations unit reportedly advanced into Fort Tiuna, a well-defended military residential complex inside Caracas, where Nicolás Maduro was captured. Preliminary information suggests the unit landed near Maduro’s location, extracted him by helicopter without resistance, and withdrew shortly afterward.

In 2020, U.S. prosecutors accused Nicolás Maduro of directing a narcoterrorist conspiracy that linked senior Venezuelan officials with Colombia’s guerrilla groups in an effort to move large quantities of cocaine into the United States. That indictment alleged Maduro oversaw and later led the Cartel de los Soles, a network embedded in Venezuela’s state institutions that provided protection, logistics, and political cover for drug trafficking. Prosecutors claimed that Maduro negotiated multi-ton cocaine deals, laundered millions of dollars through state-backed projects, supplied armed groups with military-grade weapons, and interfered with investigations and extraditions to shield co-conspirators.

U.S. authorities have now unsealed a superseding indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that significantly expands those allegations. The new charges name six defendants, including Maduro; Cabello; former security chief Ramón Rodríguez Chacín; Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores; his son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra; and Héctor Guerrero Flores, the alleged head of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.

In July 2024, after losing a presidential election by a large margin, Maduro refused to relinquish power. According to scanned vote tally sheets published online by the opposition, opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won with 67 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Maduro. Venezuela’s electoral authority, which Maduro controls, rejected those results and has so far produced no evidence to support its claim that Maduro won the election.

During the press conference, Trump said that María Corina Machado, who won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring democracy to Venezuela, “doesn’t have the support or respect within the country” to lead.