After months of growing military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump ordered a brazen operation into the South American country to capture its leader and whisk him to the United States where his administration planned to put him on trial.
Trump, during a news conference Saturday at his Florida home, laid out the details of the overnight strike, after which he said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship.Maduro was in a ‘fortress,’ Trump says
Trump described Maduro as being “highly guarded” in a presidential palace that was “a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas.” Maduro had nearly made it to a safe room inside it, Trump told reporters, although “he was unable to close it.”
In an interview earlier Saturday morning on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Trump said that American forces were armed with “massive blowtorches,” which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked himself in the room. “It had what they call a safety space, where it’s solid steel all around,” Trump told Fox. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared.” Credit: Associated Press
