Newsman: In a move that stunned the world, the United States bombed Venezuela and abducted President Nicolas Maduro. US President Donald Trump said Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro has been taken to the US custody.
“It was an incredible thing to see,” Trump said on Saturday. “If you would have seen what happened, I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. And if you would’ve seen the speed, the violence… it’s just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.”
In a news conference on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, US President Donald Trump praised the operation to seize Maduro as one of the “most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history”.
The US had also offered a $50m reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.
Florida Trump did not follow the mission from the White House situation room. Instead, he was surrounded by his advisers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he watched a live stream of the operation flanked by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. estate.
Donald Trump / TruthSocial A photograph posted by U.S. President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account shows U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sitting next to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine as CIA Director John Ratcliffe stands next to a screen showing posts on the X.com websiteDonald Trump / TruthSocial
After months of escalation and threats over Maduro’s alleged involvement in shipping drugs to the US, the Trump administration had increased pressure on Caracas with a military buildup in the Caribbean and a series of deadly missile attacks on alleged drug-running boats.
How was Maduro Abducted?
Newsman: The operation, named “Absolute Resolve”, was carefully rehearsed for months, according to General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spoke at Trump’s news conference. Trump also told Fox News that US forces had practised their extraction of Maduro 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.
At 11:46pm local time on Friday (03:46 GMT on Saturday), Trump gave the green light.
On Friday night, Caine said that “the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could move through”. About 150 aircraft were involved in the operation, taking off from 20 different airbases across the Western Hemisphere.
As part of the operation, US forces disabled Venezuela’s air defence systems, with Trump saying that the “lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have”, without elaborating.
Several deafening explosions rang out across Caracas, with Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, describing it as part of a “massive joint military and law enforcement raid”, which lasted less than 30 minutes.
US helicopters then touched down at Maduro’s compound in the capital at 2:01am (06:01 GMT) on Saturday, with the Venezuelan president and his wife then being taken into US custody.
There has been no readout on whether there was an exchange of fire in the chaotic scramble, or if they were taken without a struggle.
At 4:29am (08:29 GMT), just two and a half hours later, Maduro was put on board a US aircraft carrier, en route to New York.
After departing the USS Iwo Jima, US forces escorted Maduro onto a flight, touching down in New York’s Stewart Air National Guard Base at about 4:30pm (21:30 GMT).
The US strikes hit Caracas as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, according to the Venezuelan government.
While official casualty counts have yet to be released, an official told The New York Times on condition of anonymity that at least 40 people had been killed in the attacks.
According to Trump, a few US members were injured in the operation, but he believed no one was killed.
For months, US spies had been monitoring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s every move.
A small team, including one source within the Venezuelan government, had been observing where the 63-year-old slept, what he ate, what he wore and even, according to top military officials, “his pets”.
Then, in early December, a planned mission dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve” was finalised. It was the result of months of meticulous planning and rehearsals, which even included elite US troops creating an exact full-size replica of Maduro’s Caracas safe house to practise their entry routes.
The plan – which amounted to an extraordinary US military intervention in Latin America not seen since the Cold War – was closely guarded. Congress was not informed or consulted ahead of time. With the precise details set, top military officials simply had to wait for the optimal conditions to launch.
They wanted to maximise the element of surprise, officials said on Saturday. There was a false start four days earlier when US President Donald Trump gave approval, but they opted to wait for better weather and less cloud cover.
“Over the weeks through Christmas and New Year, the men and women of the United States military sat ready, patiently waiting for the right triggers to be met and the president to order us into action,” General Dan Caine, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, told a news conference on Saturday morning.
‘Good luck and godspeed’
The order from the president to begin the mission finally came at 22:46 EST on Friday (03:46 GMT on Saturday).
“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,” Trump himself told Fox & Friends on Saturday, hours after the overnight raid.
“He said to us, and we appreciate it… good luck and godspeed,” Gen Caine said. Trump’s order came shortly before midnight in Caracas, giving the military most of the night to operate in darkness.
What followed was a two-hour-and-twenty-minute mission by air, land and sea that stunned many in Washington and around the world.
In terms of scale and precision, it was virtually unprecedented. And it drew immediate condemnation from several regional powers, with Brazil’s President Lula da Silva saying the violent capture of Venezuela’s leader set “yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community”.
In recent months, thousands of US troops have deployed to the region, joining an aircraft carrier and dozens of warships in the largest military build-up in decades as Trump has accused Maduro of drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism, and blown up dozens of small boats accused of ferrying drugs through the region.
But the first signs of Operation Absolute Resolve were in the skies. More than 150 aircraft – including bombers, fighter jets and reconnaissance planes – were ultimately deployed through the course of the night, according to US officials.
“It was very complex, extremely complex, the whole manoeuvre, the landings, the number of aircraft,” Trump told Fox News. “We had a fighter jet for every possible situation.”
