U.S. will run Venezuela after military seized Maduro, President Trump says

0:00Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are in U. The couple was seized in an aggressive U.S. military operation that began in the early morning hours of January 3rd. It took American forces just over two hours, 150 aircraft, and the dismantling of Venezuela's air defenses. So how did this happen? And what happens next? We broke all this down on NPR's National Security Podcast Sources and Methods, and we're going to share that episode in today's feed.

0:39It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

0:51It's Consider This from NPR. After months of threats, months of warnings, seizing of alleged drug boats, targeting oil tankers, tensions between the United States and Venezuela have now come to this. Overnight, President Trump ordered American forces to enter Venezuela and capture leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. The two are now being extradited to New York, where they will face charges related to alleged drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracies. Meanwhile, President Trump this morning said this. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.

1:34So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. Just stunning to hear those words. We are going to run the country. Here to help me try to make sense of it, Greg Myrie, who covers national security. Hey, Greg. Hi, Mary Louise. And Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey, Tom. Hey, Mary Louise. Tom, you start with what we know. How did all this unfold? Well, Trump gave the order last night around 11. The operation called Absolute Resolve started around 1 a.m. Eastern time. U.S. airstrikes took out Venezuelan air defenses.

2:13You know, those were likely explosions we could see from local videos. And then a U.S. special operations unit arrived at Maduro's house by helicopter. flying just 100 feet above the ground. This was Delta Force? It was Delta Force. They went into the house, and Maduro tried to flee through the steel door into a safe room. Both he and his wife were taken. No sense of any gunfire until the helicopters were leaving, and one took some fire, but officials said it was flyable. A few skirmishes as the helicopters were leaving, and they engaged in defensive fire. No U.S. casualties, and no word yet, Mary Louise Unvenis, Wayland casualties.

2:50It was all over in about two and a half hours. Maduro and his wife were taken by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima, and then they're now in New York, where an indictment is charging them, along with Maduro's son and two officials, with narco-trafficking. This was a huge operation, 150 aircraft, everything from F-35s to B-1 bombers to drones to surveillance aircraft. And officials said it was done with complete surprise. Yeah, that's one follow up on that, the complete surprise element, because there have been all these questions about U.S. intelligence and how good it was, how much we knew about Maduro's movements.

3:28Do we know how they found him? Well, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Cain said they knew his location, likely through intelligence sources. And Trump had already said a few weeks ago, remember, the CIA was on the ground. So General Cain mounted what's called a pattern of life for some time. He said we knew how he moved, lived, traveled, ate, so they were watching him steadily. And Cain said the National Security Agency was involved, so they were intercepting communications, phone calls. And he also said the National Geospatial Agency was involved as well, which provides photos from its satellites.

4:04So they likely had a very complete picture of where he was and what he was doing around the clock. Now, we're told the U.S. has been planning and training for this operation for months, and it included building a mock-up model of Maduro's home. And as you know, Mary Louise, covering Intel, this is common for operations like this. The Navy SEAL Team 6 did something similar before they assaulted Osama bin Laden's compound back in Pakistan in 2011. I have seen that model. The former CIA director Bill Burns used to keep it in his office on the seventh floor at headquarters at Langley. Greg Myrie, just to sum up here, we have an American president, President Trump, who has sent troops to another country, a sovereign country, arrested its leader, spirited him out of the country.

4:52Is this legal? Well, you certainly have a lot of folks saying no, especially Democrats in Congress. The Democrats say Congress needs to authorize war and the use of military force. And we've seen this stream of statements today from Democrats saying things like Trump's action is an illegal escalation. He's trampling the Constitution. It's an abuse of power. Now, Trump's team is trying to portray this as a military action, which was part of a law enforcement operation. Maduro was indicted in 2020 on drug trafficking and other charges. They updated that indictment today. Exactly. And this was just an effort to bring him to justice in the U.S.

5:34But obviously, this is much larger than just a legal case. A foreign leader has been ousted. And as we noted, Trump says the U.S. will be in charge of the country for some indefinite time. Yeah, that tees up my next question, which is how is that going to work? The U.S. running Venezuela for some indefinite period of time? Yeah, very unclear at this point. Now, Trump said it would be done with some of those standing with him at the news conference. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pentagon Chief Hegseth, working in coordination with the leaders or people in Venezuela. Now, Trump does have this reputation of declaring victory and then moving on in other sorts of endeavors.

6:13But he did acknowledge rebuilding Venezuela would be a challenge. He said, you know, if the U.S. just left, there would be zero chance of it coming back. And so Trump has been, you know, much more aggressive with the military in this term by sending troops always seem to be a red line. But this time it didn't seem to bother him. As we've noted, he said, I'm not afraid to put boots on the ground. We don't mind saying it. That's what we need. But, you know, the troops aren't there right now. And the U.S. doesn't have diplomats there. The U.S. embassy has been closed since 2019. Since Trump's first term.

6:50So how is the U.S. going to run a country when it really doesn't have a presence, at least at the moment? What about the question of how actual Venezuelans feel about this? Are they likely to welcome U.S. boots on the ground, whatever that may end up looking like? Yeah, that seems a question that's almost impossible to answer clearly. And it's why it's so risky and it's so uncertain. You know, the country is in terrible shape. The economy has effectively collapsed. They had a presidential election in 2024. before voters appeared, according to independent monitors, to overwhelmingly go against Maduro and his party, vote against him.

7:26They say he rigged the election. So there are certainly a lot of Venezuelans who are probably very happy to see him go. But he had his supporters. He has a lot of people who depended on him for their benefits. What will the military do? So it doesn't automatically mean that most or all Venezuelans are going to be supporting a new government. Mary Louise, if I could just add, Trump and others have said that the Venezuelan vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, would cooperate with the U.S., but we haven't heard from her, really. And then more importantly, we have not heard from any Venezuelan military leaders.

8:09Now, what will they do? Will they stand down? Could the army splinter? Could you have some sort of guerrilla force within the military working on behalf of Maduro and his supporters? We're in a very tense situation. It has just started. We have no idea what the security situation will look like in Venezuela in the coming days and weeks. Yeah, all excellent questions. Greg, just a quick one to you. This is not a quick question, but if you can answer it quickly. Oil. Venezuela is broke. Oil is its one big valuable industry. What does this look like to have the U.S. going in? And does that help Venezuela get back on its feet?

8:44Well, it certainly could, but it just seems like a long-term process. The infrastructure has just degraded over time. It will need huge investments. This is a difficult thing to do. It's gone from about 3 million barrels a day a quarter century ago to a million barrels a day. So if it could restore that level of production, yeah, the country would have some money. It would have some income. It wouldn't necessarily guarantee prosperity for everybody, but it could be a big help. But that doesn't happen overnight. That is a multi-year process. And it's also important to note that Trump said there could be a U.S.

9:18military presence as they rebuild these oil facilities. Well, how many troops will that require? It's going to be a lot more than a small Delta Force unit to accomplish that in the coming days and weeks. That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and national security correspondent Greg Myrie. That was an excerpt of NPR's weekly National Security Podcast Sources and Methods. Now, if you liked what you heard, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for our regular Thursday episodes. To follow the latest on the U.S. operation in Venezuela, tune in to Consider This, Sources and Methods, turn on your radio, or go to NPR.org.

9:57This episode was produced by Avery Keatley and Karen Zamora. It was edited by Andrew Sussman and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

10:14It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.