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by WILL FOLKS
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In a stunning special operation with seismic geopolitical reverberations, American military and law enforcement assets participated in a coordinated action in Venezuela early Saturday morning (January 3, 2026), U.S. president Donald Trump announced.
The operation resulted in the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Both Maduro and Flores have reportedly been taken aboard a United States military vessel for transport to New York, where they will await trial on narco-terrorism charges. Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez confirmed Maduro was “missing” and demanded “immediate proof of life” from the American government.
“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 announced on his Truth Social platform. “This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.”
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said it was “just the right time” to launch the operation due to surging drug overdose deaths in the United States.
“We had to do it because it’s a war,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re losing 300,000 people a year. We don’t lose that much in a war, okay?”
Trump’s estimate of overdose deaths has been challenged, with the most recent data (.pdf) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating 105,000 annual overdose deaths.
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President Trump Holds a Press Conference, Jan. 3, 2026 https://t.co/5ykCqSNuNa
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 3, 2026
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“He was in a house that was more like a fortress than a house,” Trump told Fox in describing the raid. “It had steel doors, it had what they call a safety space where it’s solid steel all around… He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum rushed so fast that he didn’t get into there.”
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi confirmed Maduro and Flores had been indicted on multiple drug and terror charges in New York and would soon “face the full wrath of American justice on American soil.”
“Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York,” Bondi wrote on X. “Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”
“On behalf of the entire U.S. DOJ, I would like to thank President Trump for having the courage to demand accountability on behalf of the American People, and a huge thank you to our brave military who conducted the incredible and highly successful mission to capture these two alleged international narco traffickers,” Bondi added.
In a follow-up address from his Mar-a-Lago winter residence in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump hailed the “extraordinary military operation” that brought “outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice.”
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— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 3, 2026
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“Overwhelming American military power – air, land and sea – was used to launch a spectacular assault,” Trump said. “It was an assault like people have not seen since World War II.”
Trump described the attack as an operation against a “heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas.”
“This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history,” Trump said. “No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday.”
Prior to Saturday’s raid, Maduro had led Venezuela since 2013 when he won a special election following the death of former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. The legitimacy of his rule has been repeatedly challenged, however, with international observers contending he stole the 2024 presidential election from challenger Edmundo González.
His capture and arrest marks a dramatic reset in the balance of power in South America – and comes just weeks after Trump warned of impending consequences for the brash dictator.
“He doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States,” Trump said last October.
Now Maduro is experiencing the “find out” component of that statement…
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Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base home to the Army Aviation also seems to have got hit in Caracas.pic.twitter.com/3D09lCzwGs
— SA Defensa (@SA_Defensa) January 3, 2026
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Saturday’s raid began at approximately 1:00 a.m. EST (or 2:00 a.m. in Caracas). Numerous communications and military targets were struck, including the Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base and Fort Tiuna, two important Venezuelan military installations. American forces also reportedly bombed the Museo Histórico Militar, where the remains of Chávez were located.
Two days before Christmas, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago residence “it would be smart” for Maduro to step down.
“That’s up to him what he wants to do,” Trump said at the time. “I think it’d be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re gonna find out. If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough.”
Prior to Saturday’s raid, American forces had begun to coalesce in the region. Nearly three dozen strikes against suspected narco-traffickers had already been conducted – and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) assets had begun seizing oil tankers as part of an American blockade.
Meanwhile, the Gerald R. Ford nuclear-powered aircraft carrier deployed to the region in November of last year.
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Just hours before he was captured, Maduro met with a delegation of Chinese leaders led by special envoy Qiu Xiaoqi at the Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas. Both China and Russia have condemned the American action.
While the stated purpose of Trump’s raid was stemming the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, the action sends a clear message to China – and Russia – that support for socialist dictators in the western hemisphere will not be tolerated.
That’s an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, an American foreign policy which opposes the intervention of foreign powers in the affairs of the western hemisphere. In the era of president James Monroe – for whom the doctrine was named – the foreign powers were European colonial powers.
Today, it’s China and Russia.
Trump’s critics questioned both the legality of the raid – and his decision not to contact congressional leaders ahead of time. That prompted a staunch defense from vice president JD Vance.
“Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism,” Vance wrote on X. “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
Legal scholars also defended Trump’s action – referring to parallels between the December 1989 attacks which led to the capture and criminal indictment of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
“This operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega,” noted Jonathon Turley. “There is precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.”
“Legally, Trump has the upper hand in this case,” Turley added. “Maduro will replay the arguments from the Noriega case. However, he presents an even weaker case on the merits under the controlling precedent than did Noriega.”
Of particular interest? Noriega surrendered to American authorities on January 3, 1990 – thirty-five years to the day of the raid that captured Maduro. A former asset of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Noriega was convicted of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in a federal trial in Miami, Florida in April 1992. In early July 1992, he was sentenced to forty years in federal prison. That sentence was later reduced to 17 years, and he was ultimately released from federal custody in 2010. After a brief imprisonment in France, he was extradited to Panama and imprisoned there until January 2017. He died five months later under house arrest due to complications from a brain hemorrhage experienced during surgery to remove a tumor.
This is a developing story…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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20 comments
The message sent to Russia and China is that the United States is a rogue nation as they are and that they are free to remove any leader of any regional country and install their own lackey to facilitate their neocolonialist agendas.
Both China and Russia have already done exactly that – may times. China has actually been successful at it more often than not. “Ho, Ho, Ho, Chi Minh, NLF is going to win” ring a bell? China uses its economic resources to silence free speech all over the world, China has used their leadership at the ICAO to cover for other autocracies.
No, Gustave, What the bad orange man did was put China and Russia on notice that we’ll follow the Monroe Doctrine and do it better than either of them can.
Tell me you don’t understand the Monroe Doctrine without telling me you don’t understand…
I speak of the Monroe Doctrine as espoused by Monroe, not reinterpreted by the weenies in the 1890s and the socialist FDR.
According to Trump this is the “Don-Roe Doctrine”.
“Gretchen Murphy, a professor at the University of Texas, described Trump’s reference to the doctrine as in line with how it had been used by his predecessors, including Roosevelt, who she said “claimed that the Monroe Doctrine could be extended to justify interventions that instead of defending Latin American nations from European intervention, policed them to make sure their governments acted in U.S. commercial and strategic interests.”
I think Trump is jumping on this familiar pattern — citing the Monroe Doctrine to legitimate interventions that undermine real democracy, and ones where various kinds of interests are served, including commercial interests, said Murphy, author of “Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire.”
Trump himself said “We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors, we want to surround ourselves with stability, and 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.”
So, per Trump, it seems this is, and will be about the oil, rather than the government or its people.
Enjoy your Kool-Aid Colonel.
Trump just posted a picture of himself with one foot on South America and one foot on our ally Canada! Trump is a dictator and wants to divide the world between he and his dictator buddies. This action was all about oil for his billionaire oil buddies who support his dictatorship. Unfortunately certain segments of our military appear to be complicit in his power grab.
The only difference between America and 1933 Germany is we have had decades of history, movies, and books about what happens when you turn your government over to a megalomaniac. Let’s hope enough of us have learned something from it.
One foot on South America and one on Canada, eh? Sounds like strategic placement to me. If his feet are thusly placed, that means his nuts are hanging over CONUS. That gives the Trumptards a good vantage point from which to lick his nuts, their favorite pastime.
Liberals head will explode today with TDS.
And MAGA turds will continue to make excuses for why the full Epstein files are not being released.
This has nothing to do with drugs, it’s all about oil. Why pardon the Honduran president 1 month who was legitimately tried and convicted of drug trafficking if he’s so anti-drug?
I guess that $1 billion donation Trump requested from the oil industry made its way into one of his shady crypto operations.
Funny to watch all the GQP hyenas clap and cheer for him when they would have had an aneurysm had anyone else done it. Good luck with the aftermath…
God Bless America. Make Venuzuala great again (like it once was before this 2 bit dictator ran it into the ground). Oil production is down 30 percent, the infrastructure is crap. Now our oil companies can go in and return a prosperous Venuzuala to the people. Thank God they have oil as it won’t cost us to support them.
President Trump is the greatest President we’ve ever had. I just wish you TDS people would get off his back and give him some damn credit.
One of your children’s lives might be saved by him choking off the drug trade as well but OK stay angry….
Nothing he is doing will affect America’s drug problem. In fact, once a few bribes are paid this whole criminal case will go away. Trump takes positions based on how much he can profit. Which is ironic. Because it is kind of like this blog…
Imagine being in a military where another country comes in, takes out all of your anti-aircraft sites, knocks out your communication, lands on the President’s house, captures and removes him and his wife, your entire military was able to put one bullet hole in one aircraft which did little to no damage, shoot one of the invaders with a minor wound and exit the border in 3 hours. There have to be a bunch of military leaders in Venezuela standing around with their thumb up their ass this morning with no idea of what happened or how to respond. It looks like the five flyable fighters (out of a total of 48) in the country all defected this afternoon.
“Big Stick Diplomacy” and “Yankee Imperialism” are back, not that they were ever gone.
Will and FITSNews are liars who get paid to lie. Nothing they write is actually journalism. Just lies and lobbying. Complete liars. I have made this accusation multiple times. Will never responds because he knows it is true. he gets paid to promote positions. He gets paid to tell lies. If he is not lying he should sue me. But he won’t because he is a lobbyist, and a liar, nothing you read here is the truth.
Yet you’re a top fan, oh the comedy of all these comments
Yep. Because I am not going to stop reminding all of you that Will is not a journalist and this is not journalism.
Who needs to read the article, all the comedy and entertainment is in the comments. It’s truly blissful not giving a shit about others opinions
Gotta love how GovCo creates Orwellian New Speak terms like “narco-terrorist” to demonize persons, institutions, or countries they happen to have a beef with.
Their twisting of terms and meanings knows no bounds.
Kind of like how a drug dealer caught with a weapon is charged with “Possession Of A Weapon While Committing A Violent Crime” when no violences occurred or was offered. They rationalize this by saying the suspect had a weapon while possessing drugs, and therefore the potential or intent was to commit violence. What bullshit!
Another reminder that if Trump is serious about stopping drug abuse and the people profiting from it, the Sackler family is right there.