“It’s a war.” President Donald Trump went on Fox News this morning to describe some details of how American soldiers captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, with no deaths on our side.
“It was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did. There’s nobody else could have done anything like it,” Trump boasted of our troops. “I was told by … military people that there’s no other country on earth that can do such a maneuver.” He detailed how Americans penetrated Venezuelan territory and stormed Maduro’s fortress, capturing the dictator who has fueled the drug war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Trump clarified of the operation that “we were going to do this four days ago, but the weather was not perfect. …. 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.”
🚨 President Trump reveals the U.S. military had been on standby for days, waiting for the perfect weather conditions to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. pic.twitter.com/I1YbYSE9vn
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) January 3, 2026
In understandable enthusiasm, Trump told Fox, “[Maduro] was in a very highly guarded — like a fortress, actually. He was in a fortress. You know, that we had nobody killed was amazing. I think we had nobody killed, I have to say, because a couple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape, but that we had nobody killed, that we lost no aircraft, you know, everything came back. We got it all back. One of them was hit pretty hard, a helicopter, but we got it back. But it just was the right time to do it.”
The president stated emphatically of the drug trafficking crisis, “We had to do it because it’s a war. We’re losing 300,000 people a year. We don’t lose that much in a war.”
For Our VIPs: ICE Emphasizes the Impact of Sanctuary Districts Defying Detainers
After highlighting the mass tragedies of the drug war, Trump went back to the capture of Maduro and his fortress. “It had what they call the safety space, it had steel doors… 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 that. We were prepared. We had, you know, massive blow torches and everything else that you need to get through that steel, but we didn’t need it. He didn’t make it to that area of the house.”
The operation, Trump emphasized, “was very complex, extremely complex, the whole maneuver, the landings, the number of aircraft, which were a massive number, the number of helicopters, a different type of helicopters, different type of fighter jets. We had a fighter jets for every possible situation. And they just broke in, and they broke into places that were not really able to be broke into, you know, with steel doors that were put there for just this reason, and they got taken out in a matter of seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Asked about the future of Venezuela, Trump said that has not been officially determined. “We can’t take a chance of letting somebody else run and just take over where he left off. So we’re making that decision now. We’ll be involved in it very much, and we want to do liberty for the people. We want to, you know, have a great relationship. I think the people of Venezuela are very, very happy because they love the United States. You know, they were run by essentially a dictatorship,” Trump said of Maduro’s regime.
God bless all our brave military and the federal employees who made this operation such a smashing success.
Editor’s Note: Support and follow PJ Media’s coverage of international affairs and other key news in this new year. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
