“It Was Dark and Deadly”: Trump Says U.S. Forces Seized Maduro in Caracas

AI generated image of President Trump, President Maduro and wife, Cilia © ChatGPT

By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT

United States President Donald J. Trump shocked the world with an announcement that he had ordered the armed capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on the night of 2nd January 2026. Speaking to the press, President Trump stated that “late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States armed forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela.”

Describing the attack, Trump revealed that Maduro was captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, in the dead of night. “It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark, and it was deadly,” he said.

On the whereabouts of Maduro and his wife, Trump noted that they “are on a ship” and would be heading “ultimately to New York,” after which a decision would be made “between New York, Miami, or Florida.”

Trump labelled President Maduro an “illegitimate dictator and kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States.”

Image of U.S. airstrikes on Venezuela

In August 2025, the United States increased the reward to up to $50 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro. Following its latest military operation in Venezuela, the U.S. has now secured its target. President Trump boasted of U.S. military might, describing the operation as “an assault that people had not seen since World War II.”

He compared the attack to operations that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the recent strike on Iran’s nuclear site. Trump claimed that “not one piece of military equipment was lost, and more importantly, not one service member was killed” during the operation.

President Trump has repeatedly accused President Maduro of being a narco-terrorist. To counter this threat, the Trump administration has carried out attacks on boats suspected of trafficking drugs to the United States. Drone strikes on these vessels have allegedly killed civilians, sparking international criticism.

These actions have led members of the U.S. Congress to call for the “immediate firing” of U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, whom some have labelled a “war criminal.” The strikes, reportedly beginning in September 2025, have been widely criticised as violations of international law, with some observers describing them as crimes against humanity.

Despite the criticism, President Trump praised the boat strikes, claiming a 97 percent success rate against vessels trafficking narcotics to the United States. He asserted that “each boat kills on average 25,000 people” and that “those drugs mostly come from a place called Venezuela.”

Addressing Venezuela’s future, Trump declared that “we’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” He added that the United States did not want to “have somebody else get in and end up with the same situation we’ve had for a long period of years.”

Trump also criticised Venezuela’s oil industry, stating that it “has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time,” and that production had been “almost nothing in comparison to what they could have been pumping.”

To reverse this, Trump said the United States would bring in “very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world.” He claimed these firms would “spend billions of dollars, fix the broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

His speech also carried an ominous warning that further attacks could follow if Venezuelan military or political leaders attempted to interfere with U.S. operations. Trump warned that “all political and military figures in Venezuela should understand what happened to Maduro can happen to them. And it will happen to them if they aren’t just and fair to their people.”

He concluded by declaring, “The dictator and terrorist Maduro is finally gone. People are free — they are free again.”

While President Trump described the initial operation as a success, he did not rule out further military action. If necessary, he said, the United States was “ready to stage a second and much larger attack.” He added that any second wave would be “a much bigger wave, actually.”