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OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
12:33 PM – Saturday, January 3, 2026
President Donald Trump announced that the United States would remain in control of Venezuela while holding a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida following the “amazing” capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump stated. “And it has to be judicious because that’s what we’re all about. We want peace, liberty and justice for the great people of Venezuela and that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country, it’s their homeland.”
“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind, and decades of that,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
Overnight on Friday, “Operation Absolute Resolve” was carried out in Caracas against the socialist president of Venezuela and his wife.
The U.S. is poised to initiate a second “much bigger wave” of attacks on Caracas, though Trump believes the first was so successful that this may not be necessary.
On Truth Social, Trump shared an image of Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima, headed for New York, providing Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez the proof of life she demanded. Maduro wore a grey Nike tracksuit and held a water bottle in the picture.
Trump also reported that he will authorize U.S. oil companies to take over Venezuela’s oil infrastructure during the occupation to help Venezuela to reach its potential for oil production and “start making money for the country.”
The president praised the U.S. military’s execution of the “spectacular assault,” which he described as “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.”
“Not one piece of military equipment was lost,” he reported. One aircraft was damaged, the press conference revealed, but remained flyable.
The U.S., whose crewmembers ranged from ages 20 to 49, sustained no deaths in the seizure of the socialist dictator and his wife, who “now face American justice,” having been indicted in the southern district of New York in 2020 “for their campaign of deadly narcoterrorism.”
Maduro and Flores will stand trial in New York on charges of leading the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), “which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the death of countless Americans.”
In capturing Maduro, Trump explained that the U.S. “knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by sea.”
In addition to charges of narcoterrorism, “Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said.
“They stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. … Massive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies and we didn’t do anything about it,” he remarked. “I would have done something about it.”
The country also hosted “foreign adversaries” and acquired “menacing offensive weapons,” which they used during Maduro’s capture, which Trump asserted were actions “in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy … all the way back dated to the Monroe Doctrine.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth took to the podium to praise the “flawlessly executed” mission, observing that Maduro had “effed around and he found out.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Daniel “Raizin” Caine gave insights into the “unprecedented operation,” which involved various intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), in addition to more than 150 aircraft.
The joint forces emphasized “choosing the right day to minimize the potential for civilian harm and maximize the element of surprise.”
At the time of the attack, Maduro attempted to seek shelter in a “safe place” reinforced with steel. Trump explained that he was in the doorway when he was seized.
He noted that it wasn’t really safe because had Maduro been able to close the door, U.S. forces would have blown through it in “about 47 seconds … regardless of how thick the steel was.”
Asked how running a foreign country aligns with his administration’s “America First” agenda, Trump answered, “We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors, we want to surround ourselves with stability, we want to surround ourselves with energy. We have tremendous energy in that country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves, we need that for the world.
Trump’s message to the Venezuelan people was: “You’re going to have some of the riches that you should have had for a long period of time that was stolen from you. But you’re going to have peace and you’re going to have safety, you’re going to have justice, you’re going to have a country. You’re going to have a real country, you’re going to have potentially a great country.”
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