January 3, 2026: Statement on U.S. Action in Venezuela

Transcript

Okay. Thank you very much. This is big stuff. We appreciate you being here. Late last night and early today, at my direction, the United States Armed Forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault, and it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II. It was a force against a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator, Nicolas Maduro, to justice.

This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history. And if you think about it, we've done some other good ones like the attack on Soleimani, the attack on al-Baghdadi, and the obliteration and decimation of the Iran nuclear sites just recently in an operation known as Midnight Hammer, all perfectly executed and done.

No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday or frankly in just a short period of time. All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military working with U.S. law enforcement successfully captured Maduro 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. But captured along with his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom now face American justice. Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. It's Jay Clayton for their campaign of deadly narco terrorism against the United States and its citizens.

I want to thank the men and women of our military who achieved such an extraordinary success overnight with breathtaking speed, power, precision, and competence. You rarely see anything like it. You've seen some raids in this country that didn't go so well. They were an embarrassment. If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to the Jimmy Carter days, they were different days where a respected country again, maybe, like never before. These highly trade warriors operating in collaboration with U.S. law enforcement caught them in a very ready position. They were waiting for us. They knew we had many ships out in the sea. We were just sort of waiting.

They knew we were coming. So they were in what's called a ready position, but they were completely overwhelmed and very quickly incapacitated. If you would have seen what I saw last night, you would have been very impressed. I'm not sure that you'll ever get to see it, but it was an incredible thing to see.

Not a single American service member was killed, and not a single piece of American equipment was lost. We had many helicopters, many planes, many people involved in that fight. But think of that not one piece of military equipment was lost. Not one service member was more importantly killed. The United States military is the strongest and most fierce of military on the planet by far.

With capabilities and skills, our enemies can scarcely begin to imagine. We have the best equipment anywhere in the world. There's no equipment like what we have. And you see that even if you just look at the boats, we've knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by sea, 90 percent. Each boat kills, on average, 25,000 people. We knocked out 97 percent. And those drugs mostly come from a place called Venezuela. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.

So 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. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. 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, decades of that. We're not going to let that happen.

We're there now, and what people don't understand, but they understand, as I say this, we're there now. But we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place. So we're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place. As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place.

We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.

So we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so. We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary. But now, it's probably not. The first wave, if you'd like to call it that, the first attack was so successful, we probably don't have to do a second. But we're prepared to do a second wave, a much bigger wave, actually.

This was pinpoint, but we have a much bigger wave that probably won't have to do. This partnership of Venezuela with the United States of America, a country that everybody wants to be involved with because of what we were able to do and accomplish will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe. And it will also make the many, many people from Venezuela that are living in the United States extremely happy. They suffered. They suffered. So much was taken from them. They're not going to suffer anymore.

The illegitimate dictator, Maduro, was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States. As alleged in the indictment, he personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel De Los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans and many, many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years of Americans died because of him.

Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil. Right now, they're on a ship. They'll be heading to ultimately New York. And then a decision will be made, I assume, between New York and Miami or Florida. But we have people where the overwhelming evidence of their crimes will be presented in a court of law.

And I've seen it. I've seen what we have. It's both horrible and breathtaking that something like this could have been allowed to take place. For many years after his term as president of Venezuela expired, Maduro remained in power and waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States of America, threatening not only our people, but the stability of the entire region.

And you all saw it. In addition to trafficking gigantic amounts of illegal drugs that inflicted untold suffering and human destruction all over the country, all over, in particular, the United States. Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang, Tren de Aragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide. And he did indeed. They were in Colorado. They took over apartment complexes. They cut the fingers off people if they call police. They were brutal, but they're not so brutal now.

And I just have to congratulate our military, Pete and everybody and our National Guard because the job that they've done, whether it's in Washington, D.C., where we have a totally safe city where it was one of the most unsafe cities anywhere in the world, frankly. And now, we have no crime in Washington, D.C. We haven't had a killing. We had the terrorist attack a few weeks ago, a little bit of a different kind of a threat, but we haven't had a killing in a long period of time, six, seven months. We used to have, on average, two a week in Washington, our capital. We don't have that anymore.

The restaurants are opening. Everyone's happy. They're going. They're walking their daughters. They're walking their children, their wives. They walk to restaurants. Restaurants are opening all over Washington, D.C. So I want to thank the National Guard. I want to thank our military. And I want to thank law enforcement. Been amazing. And they should do it with more cities. We're doing it, as you know. And we're doing it in Memphis, Tennessee, right now. And crime is down. We've just sort of started a few weeks ago, but crime is down now 77 percent.

And the governor of Louisiana called, great person, and he wanted us to help him, as you know, in a certain very nice part of Louisiana. And we have done that. It was a rough section, and we have crime down. I understand it's down to almost nothing already after two and a half weeks. New Orleans, it's down to almost nothing. And we've only been there for two and a half weeks. Can't imagine why governors wouldn't want us to help. We also helped, as you know, in Chicago. Then crime went down a little bit there. We did a very small help because we had no working ability with the governor. The governor was a disaster, and the mayor was a disaster, but it knocked down crime.

But we're pulling out of there when they need us. We'll know. You'll know. You'll be writing about it. And likewise, Los Angeles, where we saved Los Angeles early on, where the head of the police department made a statement that if the federal government didn't come in, we would have lost Los Angeles. That's long after the fires. That's when they had the riots in Los Angeles. We did a great job. Got no credit for it whatsoever, but that's okay. It doesn't matter. We don't need the credit. But we'll be pulling out when they need us. They'll call, or we'll go back if we have to. We'll go back. But we did a great job in various cities.

But the thing, the place that we're very proud of is Washington, D.C., because it's our nation's capital. We took it from being a crime-ridden mess to being one of the safest cities in the country. But the gangs that they sent raped, tortured, and murdered American women and children. They were in all of the cities. I mentioned Tren de Aragua. And they were sent by Maduro to terrorize our people. And now, Maduro will never, again, be able to threaten an American citizen or anybody from Venezuela. There will no longer be threats.

For years, I've highlighted the stories of those innocent American whose lives were so heartlessly robbed by this Venezuelan terrorist organization. Really one of the worst. One of the worst. They say the worst. Americans like 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray from Houston, beautiful Jocelyn Nungaray, what happened to her? As you know, they kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered by Tren de Aragua animals. They murdered Jocelyn and left her dead under the bridge. There was a bridge, a bridge that will never be the same to so many people after seeing what happened.

As I've said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives. And they came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They came from prisons and jails. The reason I say both, they sound similar actually. Prisons a little bit more, a little bit more hostile, a little bit tougher. A mental institution isn't as tough as an insane asylum, but we got them both. They sent from their mental institutions, they sent from their jails prisons. They were drug dealers. They were drug kingpins. They sent everybody bad into the United States. But no longer.

We have now a border where nobody gets through. In addition, Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms costing us billions and billions of dollars. They did this a while ago, but we never had a president that did anything about it. They took all of our property. It was our property. We built it. We never had a president that decided to do anything about it. Instead, they fought wars that were 10,000 miles away.

We built Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill. And the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. Considered the largest theft of property in the history of our country. Massive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies, and we didn't do anything about it. I would've done something about it. America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people or drive us back into and out of our own hemisphere. That's what they did. Furthermore, under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten U.S. interest and lives. They used those weapons last night. They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border.

All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries, and not anymore. All the way back, it dated to the Monroe Doctrines. The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the Donroe document. I don't know. It's Monroe Doctrine. We forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don't forget about it anymore. Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won't happen.

So just in concluding, for decades other administrations have neglected or even contributed to these growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region, and our home region is very different than it was just a short while ago. We did this in my first term. We had great dominance in my first term, and we have far greater dominance right now. Everyone's coming back to us. The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security. These are core to our national security. Just like tariffs are, they made our country rich and they've made our national security strong, stronger than ever before.

But these are the iron laws that have always determined global power, and we're going to keep it that way. We will secure our borders. We'll stop the terrorists. We will crash the cartels, and we will defend our citizens against all threats, foreign and domestic. Other presidents may have lacked the courage or whatever to defend America, but I will never allow terrorists and criminals to operate with impunity against the United States. This extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives. Very importantly, the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect. The American Armada remains poised in position, and the United States retains all military options until United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied.

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 fair, even to their people. The dictator and terrorist Maduro is finally gone. In Venezuela, people are free. They're free again. It's been a long time for them, but they're free. America is a safer nation this morning. It's a prouder nation this morning because it didn't allow this horrible person and this country that was doing very bad things to us. It didn't allow it to happen, and the Western Hemisphere is right now a much safer place to be.

So I want to thank everybody for being here. I want to thank General Raizin Caine. He's fantastic man. I've worked with a lot of generals. I worked with some I didn't like. I worked with some I didn't respect. I worked with some that just weren't good, but this guy is fantastic. I watched last night one of the most precise attacks on sovereignty. I mean, it was an attack for justice. I'm very proud of him and I'm very proud of our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who I'm going to ask to say a few words. Thank you very much.