Donald Trump has long been making threats and issuing warnings to the Venezuelan regime. On Saturday, Jan. 2, Trump orchestrated the most direct intervention by the U.S. in Latin America since President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama in 1989.
The FIFA Peace Prize winner announced the news on Truth Social, saying, “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country.”
Trump has long accused Maduro of running a narco-state and rigging elections. The campaign initially involved lethal strikes against Venezuelan boats that the administration believed were carrying narcotics bound for the United States. The strikes were controversial in practice, particularly after a report emerged of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth allegedly giving the direct order to “kill them all” after one of the boats was found to have a few survivors. Since then, the focus has shifted to whether the methods used by the military in attempting to intervene in Venezuela were justified and legal.
President Nicolas Maduro has long been the number one critic of the Trump administration’s intervention in the country he has led ever since he was handpicked by Hugo Chavez as successor in 2013. But within the international community, Maduro remains an unreliable narrator — and much of what he says has been taken with a grain of salt.
In Venezuela, according to Western powers, the sober voice in the room has remained Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado. In a press conference just days before the invasion and subsequent toppling of the Venezuelan government, Machado was asked whether she supported a U.S. invasion of Venezuela. Machado argued that Venezuela had already been invaded by Maduro and his international cronies of drug dealers and terrorist groups.
According to Reuters, Secretary Marco Rubio announced that with Maduro in U.S. custody, he expects no further action in the nation’s capital, Caracas. Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, however, criticized the invasion, saying, “Free, independent and sovereign Venezuela rejects with all the strength of its libertarian history the presence of these foreign troops, which have only left behind death, pain and destruction.”
Nervous Venezuelans were kept up all night by explosions that rocked Caracas from about 2 a.m. Black smoke and aircraft filled the sky as Venezuelan troops were deployed on the ground. The situation did not last long, however, as after the U.S. army arrested Maduro and his first lady, they were immediately flown back to the United States, ending the operation. Attorney General Pam Bondi took to X to announce that Maduro will soon be arraigned in court for “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”
Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) January 3, 2026
Venezuelan allies Iran, Cuba, and Russia have urged the UN to intervene in what they term “unlawful aggression.” Tehran called it “a blatant violation of national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Published: Jan 3, 2026 05:45 pm