Trump strikes Venezuela

Sky News, the full story first. Hi, Mark. I'm sitting here in New York, coldest place on the planet. Where are you? I'm in Caracas, James. First in. Yeah, I wish. Caracas, West Country. There is never a right time to take a holiday in this business, is there? There really isn't, especially when you are covering Donald J. Trump, who throws up surprises left, right and centre. I am not in Caracas. I am on holiday in the UK.

but for this evening and maybe a few more over the course of the week. I won't be on holiday, but James, I've managed to bring my Trump 100 microphone all the way to the UK on holiday with me. You, on the other hand, what is that thing you're holding? I know you put me to shame. I've got the old lip mic. I look like I'm commentating on a snooker match. So, you know, for those of you watching in black and white, the browns behind the pink. Good to see you, Mark. Sorry to ruin the holiday.

I'm James Matthews in New York City. And I'm Mark Stone in the UK this evening. I've been spending the day at the Metropolitan Detention Centre, the MDC, now housing the VIP Nicholas. Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. 20 hours it took them from the moment of capture to incarceration pre-trial. A journey by ship, plane, helicopter and by vehicle. All of it high security.

for the high profile accused yeah an absolutely head-spinning weekend hasn't it been james that we all knew that president trump had something planned for venezuela we and many many other people have been speculating on what that might be as an American armada floated off the coast for many months. But I don't think any of us quite had.

This past weekend and what unfolded on our bingo cards for the first weekend of 2026, did we? Yeah, on the podcast today, we'll look at what happened and what happens next. to the Venezuelan president, and to Venezuela itself. Now, James, you're in New York because Monday morning is the day when we will see the current leader of a sovereign country face a Manhattan court, Nicolas Maduro, captured by US forces in the early hours of Saturday morning, extracted from Venezuela.

detained in a New York federal prison where you have spent much of Sunday, and he will face the full force of US justice over the course of the days ahead. We'll get to all that in a moment. But first of all, let's back up and explain a dizzying 48 hours in Donald Trump's America. Yeah, news broke very early on Saturday morning. One minute past two was the precise time that the Americans descended on the compound.

of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. 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 a assault like people have not seen since World War two It was quite the textbook military operation. The Americans, they used cyber technology to put the lights out in Caracas, and they sent the helicopters in, helicopters among something like...

150 aircraft that were involved in this operation and it went very much according to plan. They descended on Maduro's compound. He tried to make a break for it. say the Americans, try to get to a safe room, still reinforced, but they caught him just as he was trying to close the door. In the words of the president, he was...

Bum rushed so fast, the immortal line from Donald Trump. It's remarkable, James, how fast things moved. I actually saw in your news report how 24 hours before he was taken by the Americans... Maduro was greeting a delegation from China in the opulence of his presidential palace. 24 hours later, he would be in the custody of the Americans. Absolutely extraordinary.

mentioning China, you have to wonder, what do the Chinese and the Russians make of what has happened, what has unfolded? Remember how close they are to the Venezuelans, and that was one. irritation, one justification for the Americans doing what they have done. They don't like China and Russia in their backyard and they see the Western Hemisphere as their backyard. So clearly...

for both those countries, things get a bit more tricky now because they'll be less able to operate, less able to take Venezuelan oil. But at the same time, you kind of got to wonder, in the case of China, given that America has just completely... overridden international law and all norms and all conventions. Surely the Chinese might now say, well, we can do exactly the same in Taiwan. Let's see. Or is Trump's unpredictability...

and the way he reacts to things, going to actually put the brakes on Beijing. I doubt it actually, because they will... Watch what Trump does and his obsession with spheres of influence, and they may well decide and judge that their own backyard is not something that Donald Trump is very bothered with.

In pure military terms, James, it appears to have been an absolute textbook operation. Extraordinary stuff. I imagine in Hollywood, there are movie producers salivating at the chance to recreate this military maneuver. of an extraordinary proportion. I mean, there's no doubting that. I think where the questions come, massive, massive questions are of the justification, the methods, and of course, the legality of all of this. And we will try and get into some of that in today's episode.

I'm sure, in many other episodes to follow over the weeks and months ahead, because so early on in this new year, it, I think, has set itself as being a dominant story. for the 12 months ahead. In terms of what we know happened on the ground, well, Venezuelan officials have claimed that at least 80 people

including military personnel and civilians, were killed in the operation. That's according to the New York Times. Through their sources, neither the US or the Venezuelan government have confirmed that figure. Trump said on Saturday that no US troops... had been killed in the operation, although he did seem to suggest that some were injured.

And as we started to hear about the bombings in the early hours of Saturday morning, we also started to get word that the Americans had managed to capture the president, Nicolas Maduro. Trump posting on Truth Social that Maduro and his wife were in U.S. custody. Yeah, you mentioned social media, Mark. Clearly, this was a story that flew in terms of coverage. And you mentioned Hollywood salivating over

how this played out. It very much looked like Team Trump was salivating over it. There were still images issued from this Situation Room. It looked makeshift in Mar-a-Lago, of course, which is where Trump... has been for the holiday period. A makeshift skiff, as they call it. That would be the term. But inside this skiff, which sort of curtained off, wasn't it, inside one of the rooms, you saw the key players, Pete Hegseth.

He was actually looking into a laptop. Over his shoulder, you saw a big TV monitor. they were clearly looking at X, formerly known as Twitter, complete with, in the search bar, the word Venezuela. So, you know, as the helicopters flew in, clearly they were watching this story flying on. social media and fly it did i mean as a multimedia event you know we saw the pictures of the helicopters yeah the flash bang the success all around really of this u.s operation and of course

that followed the journey to the United States of Maduro. We didn't see him for a while. He was taken to the USS Iwo Jima, transported to Guantanamo Bay, stuck on a plane. And then, of course, I landed at Stewart International Air Base. And that's when we saw the perp walk, the presidential perp walk, initially coming off a plane.

You just saw this huddle of individuals and in the middle, quite a tall man with a hoodie on, shuffling as if he was shackled at the ankles and handcuffed. And that clearly was the man himself, Maduro. Yeah, you mentioned the skiff, the sort of makeshift situation room that they put together in Mar-a-Lago. We've seen these images from these rooms on many occasions over the course of history, haven't we? We've seen presidents there for big moments.

Like the killing of Osama bin Laden, that was a moment where we got a glimpse of the president of the time and his key individuals around the table watching it unfold. Kind of bizarre on the face of it that they had X on the screen. But I suppose that does give you a sense of the fact that even at the top of the administration, they're trying to get as much information out of Caracas as this is unfolding as they can. And obviously social media.

media plays its part in terms of images coming out of the country as their operation is unfolding. But what's also become clear, and will continue to become clear, I think, in the days ahead, is how sophisticated an operation this was. I mean, they had been following Maduro for many, many months. They had had stealth drones in the skies, so they tell us, monitoring his movements. They had been building up a...

pattern of his behavior over many, many months in order to work out where he would be. Not only that, they claim to, and we have to take the administration's word for all of this. And incidentally, we haven't had any Pentagon news conferences like we might expect in such a situation like this. They say that they had an informant on the inside, someone from Maduro's inner circle who was helping them, a snitch who was helping them, and that clearly played its part in what was militarily.

as we've been saying, a quite remarkable operation. James, your pal Pete Hegseth, who you had a little dig at in our holiday podcasts, he was clearly central to all this. Careful, don't put me on the list. Defence Secretary, of course, he was in Mar-a-Lago in that. makeshift skiff and he was then at the news conference the day after where he borrowed one of his own phrases from a few months ago remember where he said fafo f around and find out

Well, at the news conference, he said that Maduro had effed around and he did find out. Nicolas Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance. Until they didn't and until he didn't. He effed around and he found out. And speaking to CBS News a day after, Hegseth had a broader message. Is it about freedom or is it about oil? At the press conference today, President Trump seemed to indicate that both were a factor. Freedom, security.

prosperity. Of course, there are what was done by Venezuela against American oil interests and oil companies is well understood and never should have happened. And President Trump is willing to recapture that. But it's also the security of our hemisphere. If people understood what Venezuela

was trafficking in with other adversaries, weapons they were trafficking. And then, of course, the drugs and the cartels, the poisoning of the American people, the violence, trendy Iraq war that have been brought to our shores. All three of those combined together in this bold and courageous action from President Trump. He takes nothing off the table. So what happens next will be in the hands of Venezuelans to decide. But ultimately, America will benefit security wise.

And with prosperity, we believe the Venezuelan people can as well. Yeah, the Americans say they gave Maduro a chance, don't they? And indeed, negotiations, they say, were taking place with him to surrender right up until something like 10 days. But there came the point where Trump closed the door.

on that and sent the troops in with his parting words good luck and god speed this operation it took several days actually for it to take place because they had weather issues on what would have been days to go in that's why it was delayed but there was a break in the weather and that's when they were sent in in terms of extreme measures yeah i suppose in this instance mark it is extreme isn't it it was extreme in iran

And with al-Baghdadi, Donald Trump was very keen actually to run through those greatest hits of his when he gave the debrief news conference. I suppose when you talk about extreme actions. If we're talking about the big league, we talk about Russia, China, perhaps the bigger problems that America faces long term on the global stage. But Donald Trump is a man who picks his fights carefully and clearly thought this was a fight.

that he could win. What he did on day one, it was textbook. It was clearly a great result for the US militarily. Day two is the big question and the days to come because... The politics are extremely uncertain. There doesn't seem to be a political plan in place, certainly not one put in place by the Americans.

that they can safely carry forward confidently carry forward because everything we hear from the trump administration over the course of the past 48 hours doesn't square with what we're hearing from venezuela and that's an issue because that smacks of imperialism. And already the noises we're hearing from the interim president in Venezuela talking about how this is a breach of international law, this is an atrocity.

We won't be colonized. And that sentiment echoed by the military in Caracas, that doesn't square with the Americans' intentions for that country. I guess the key question that was... kind of was the first my first question was you know what happens now they haven't exactly carried out regime change because they've only taken out the leader

the regime still exists. Trump obviously asked the obvious question in the news conference, which we were all tuned into, who runs the country now? And his answer was surprising. 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. The president is on his way back up the East Coast from Mar-a-Lago, where he spent an eventful Christmas and New Year.

to the White House. He'll be back at the White House by the time you listen to this. And he made these remarks to reporters on his journey back. The next question is who's in charge of Venezuela right now? Have you spoken to... the newly sworn in president there, Rodriguez. And what are your thoughts on the entire situation when you said the U.S. would run Venezuela? We're dealing with the people. We're dealing with the people that just got sported.

Don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial We're in charge Staggering stuff, I thought. Once again, Donald Trump saying the quiet stuff out loud. Who's going to run the country? Well, we are, so he said. But, you know. that raises many, many more questions. I mean, how precisely is that going to work? Rubio, interestingly, he was brought to the microphone. He did this Sunday morning round of interviews and...

It was put to Rubio, you know, what is going to happen? What are you going to do? Are you going to run Venezuela? And, you know, his answers were illuminating without being definitive. What he said was, look. We can't have this country being a crossroads for our adversaries, as he put it, drug runners, adversaries who exploit Venezuela's oil wealth. He said that he was hoping for a holistic...

And he said that he reckoned there would be compliance in Venezuela on the back of what they had seen happening to their sitting president. One wonders if that's more on hope than expectation because of the reaction we've had in Venezuela. And it's interesting, you know, that Delce Rodriguez, she's in a tricky position because she's got the Americans issuing diktats.

But she's got the military, who they themselves, the army, have held a news conference. And their tone is very much one of defiance and resistance. So how that circle is squared has to be a mystery at this stage. And it's a recipe. you know, for a degree of chaos, certainly as resistance grows in Venezuela. You know, where does that take us? Yeah, I thought Marco Rubio's round of the Sunday shows was fascinating because it felt like a bit of a handbrake turn. He was kind of offering the...

context to what some might say was Donald Trump's madness the day before. So essentially, he was saying, don't panic. Don't get carried away. Maybe don't even take what the president said as being quite right. As Secretary of State, he was saying that the US is not at war with Venezuela, that it's only running the country in the sense that it has control of the country through the oil. He seemed to be suggesting, as you say, James, that all will be fine.

which reminded me a little bit of Iraq all those years ago. Remember 2003, they said that the streets of Baghdad would be lined with flowers for the liberating American army. Not so much as it happened to turn out. I'm reminded too of that quote by a predecessor of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Remember him, who famously said, if you break it, you own it.

And I think Marco Rubio will be dearly hoping right now that by removing Maduro, he hasn't actually broken Venezuela. Because if he has, then the Trump administration very much owns that massive problem.

Yeah, I'm just looking at my phone, Mark. There's an email come through from the White House in the last 10 minutes. It is headlined, Rubio, colon, this is our hemisphere and President Trump will not allow our security. That very much chimes with, I don't know if you heard him answering a question on Cuba. He was asked, will the Cuban government be the next target? And his answer was, it's in a lot of trouble. And that is the question.

Who's next on the shopping list of governments that aren't aligned with the Trump administration? You've got Venezuela ticked off, Cuba clearly in their sights. But what about other places? What about Colombia? You know, if Venezuela was targeted for drug running, what about Colombia, which is actually the drug cocaine exporter in chief? Venezuela, analysts will tell you, is more of a transit point.

If this is all about drugs, then, you know, if that logic applies to Venezuela, why not to other countries? And with a belligerent president who's clearly enjoying the results he had in Caracas. There has to be a concern of what happens next and where it happens.

Yeah, this, James, is not all about drugs. It never was. It never will be. The drugs thing is a sideshow. We know that because we know that very little fentanyl, which is the drug that is killing most Americans, very little, if any, of that comes from Colombia. and actually I'm reminded...

of something that we were reporting on, I wrote about, which I thought was about two months ago. I looked it up. It turned out it was only three weeks ago that Trump was talking about Venezuela. And he said the quiet stuff out loud then because he's suddenly in a kind of rambling late night address that he gave.

Dave, was it on social media? I can't even remember. He basically said up front, he said, this is about oil. This is about regime change. We are going to change the regime one way or the other. And we're going to install American oil firms back into. Caracas. I say back in because they were there once. America took a lot of Venezuela's oil in years gone by. Many of the refineries in places like Texas were built to refine Venezuelan oil.

Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez came to power. The American oil firms were kicked out. Trump wants all that back. But the other thing, James... that you mentioned, which is just so important, again, we've discussed it, is hemispheres. Hemispheres of influence. Trump is obsessed with it. It's why he cares less and less about Asia, because he doesn't see it as his hemisphere of influence and why he cares.

cares more and more about the Western Hemisphere. It's why he wants control one way or the other, either with compliant governments. or something else, of places like Venezuela, perhaps Colombia, perhaps Cuba. You're right, I thought Marco Rubio's answer on Cuba was fascinating and telling. And then what about Greenland? I mean, that was a bit of a joke, wasn't it, a few months back at the beginning of...

trump's second term nobody's laughing now all that talk about green and no one's laughing now and i was i was reading something that a guy who i i know pretty well used to follow closely when i was based in brussels he's a a close eu watcher and he said on x This is a guy called Midge Rachman, who's well worth following. He said on X today, as I've long argued, the Greenland risk is underpriced. A possible US intervention in Greenland is the biggest source of risk.

to the transatlantic alliance and intra-NATO and intra-EU cohesion, arguably far greater than those presented by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. His view is that Trump very much has his eyes on Greenland. Of course, Greenland is part of Denmark, may have seemed far-fetched a few months ago, maybe not now. Yeah, well, Donald Trump's spoken to that very fight. He's given an interview. He's actually on the golf course. Of course he is.

And that's where he spent his Sunday. He spoke by phone to the Atlantic magazine, spoke about Venezuela. And actually his quote is, with regard to Delce Rodriguez, if she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very... big prize probably bigger than maduro he said but he was asked about greenland his quote or his answer was we do need greenland absolutely the reason donald trump has his eyes on it not only is it

rich with natural resources. But also strategically, it is in a very important place. It is basically the Arctic. And if Trump wants to be able to control the sort of Western hemisphere... part of the Arctic, right up into the Arctic Circle, then he needs Greenland and being able to position military in Greenland in larger numbers than they already are. The Americans have a small base there, but they'd like a larger one strategically.

Donald Trump. That is all very important indeed. My eyes on New York, on Brooklyn, actually, right now, Mark. I've spent the day, like I said, outside the MDC Metropolitan Detention Center, infamous, you know, for its unsafe and insanitary conditions, that's what.

I keep reading, it was quite a spectacle, Maduro coming here, you know, being flown, arriving. Absolutely extraordinary. Seemingly in good spirits, wishing the drug enforcement agents a happy new year, all of that stuff. I have to say, outside the MDC, you don't... get much sign of high security there were three what looked like military personnel with military fatigues they were armed but

You know, loads of media, some protesters actually for a while, but that was the only sign that you had of this precious cargo inside. It's an industrial corner of... Brooklyn, you've got this refuse tip at one end, fly over at the other. Presidential, it's absolutely not. They have housed high profile.

individuals there in the past. That's where they keep prisoners who are awaiting trial. Sean Diddy Coombs was there. Ghislaine Maxwell, she spent time in there. They were given accommodation arrangements that kept them from the general population. I think we can assume the same will be the case with Nicolas Maduro for his own safety as much as anything else. So, you know, big logistical adventure to get him here, obviously. It will be to get him to...

The reason that he is in a US domestic court is because this is the way the US government is framing this whole thing. And it's kind of, I think, how they're getting around, if they are, if they even care, getting around the whole, you're breaking international law, because they don't see this as an issue of international law. If it was, then Maduro would be in The Hague.

he wouldn't be in Manhattan. The reason he's in Manhattan is because they see him not as the legitimate president of a country, but as a drugs baron, a drugs baron who they claim... incorrectly as it happens, has been sending a whole load of drugs over to the United States. And you only have to look at how Team Trump have been defining.

Maduro for many months now. There's a quote from Marco Rubio from the summer where he says Maduro is not the president of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government. Maduro is the head of a cartel, a narco-terror organization which has taken...

possession of a country and he is under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States. And to that point, look at the charges that he's facing. Federal charges of narco-terrorism, a narco-terrorism conspiracy charge, cocaine importation. conspiracy charge and two illegal weapons counts. So they see Maduro not as a president,

but as a common criminal who happened to hijack a country. And so they have taken him, they've kidnapped him, yes, maybe, but they've taken him into a domestic American court setting where they're going to put him on trial. That's their justification. I think many people would say it's pretty ropey. And many are not just around the world, but here in the United States. Of course, many on Capitol Hill, Congress was not notified.

of this operation before it took place. Marco Rubio said that was for reasons of operational secrecy. But certainly Donald Trump's opponents, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, He's saying today that that was an act of war and by extension that means that Donald Trump should have

run it past Congress and sought and received the permission of Congress to launch this operation. So that's an argument that continues here in the United States. In terms of the arguments in court, I think one of Maduro's defenses likely to be that Venezuela's sovereignty has been violated in this instance and that he enjoys head of state immunity. But this will be an arraignment hearing where typically an accused is.

read the charges against them and invited to enter a plea. So that all takes place midday, Monday in downtown Manhattan. We'll be there and we'll be reporting on it in tomorrow's podcast. Yeah, James, Martha will be there alongside you as well. Stay warm. I hear it's very cold in New York. I was there last week and it sure was. So keep warm down at the bottom end of Manhattan. Yeah, New York in January. Doesn't get much colder.

Good luck with it all. It will be busy, I am sure, and you'll both be back. James and Martha on the podcast tomorrow from New York. What a start to the year. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.