The United States will run Venezuela until a transition government takes power, President Trump announced Saturday, hours after US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn raid on Caracas.
“We’re going to run it, essentially, until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference. He added he wasn’t “afraid of boots on the ground.”
Trump called the operation “an assault like people have not seen since World War II” and “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and confidence in American history.”
He dubbed it “Operation Absolute Resolve.” Then he posted a photo to Truth Social of Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima, heading to New York to face narco-terrorism charges.
Maduro had tried to cut a deal in his final days. Trump refused. “I didn’t want to negotiate,” he said. “I said, ‘Nope, we got to do it.'”
Trump made clear he intends to tap Venezuela’s oil—the world’s largest reserves. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country,” he said. That wealth, he added, goes to Venezuelans “and also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had a message for the world: “He effed around and he found out.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba should be concerned—Venezuela’s spy agency was “basically full of Cubans,” he said.
Trump watched the raid in real time from Florida. He said the US suffered no deaths. “A couple of guys were hit, but they came back in,” he said. “We were prepared to do a second wave.”
This is a developing story.
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