Trump gives Mar-a-Lago address to nation after US captures Maduro, strikes Venezuela

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military carried out a “large-scale strike” in Venezuela early Saturday morning and took Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife into custody.

Covered by: Rachel Wolf, Michael Sinkewicz, Lucas Tomlinson , Michael Dorgan, Elizabeth Elkind, Alex Miller, Amanda Macias and Jasmine Baehr

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WHAT TO KNOW

• President Donald Trump announced that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been captured and flown out of the country after the U.S. carried out a “large scale strike.” Trump is expected to address the nation at 11 a.m. ET from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.
• The U.S. military has carried out a series of strikes on suspected drug vessels allegedly tied to the Venezuelan regime in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific. The CIA carried out a strike in late December against a dock area inside Venezuela that U.S. officials said was used by drug cartels to load narcotics onto boats.
• The U.S. government had offered a $50 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro. After Saturday’s early-morning operation, Venezuela’s vice president has demanded proof of life.

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20 min(s) ago

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Released photos show Trump, national security team monitoring Venezuela mission from Mar-a-Lago

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President Donald Trump released photos Saturday afternoon showing himself and senior members of his cabinet monitoring the early-morning U.S. military operation in Venezuela from Mar-a-Lago.

The images, posted to Trump’s Truth Social account, show Trump seated at a long table alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, with aides and security personnel standing nearby. Computer screens and communications equipment appear visible in several shots.

The photos were taken in the early hours of Saturday morning as U.S. forces carried out what he described as a “large-scale strike” in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

The images offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at Trump and his national security team tracking the operation in real time from Florida.

Posted by Jasmine BaehrShare

4 min(s) ago

Maduro’s fall sparks suspicion of betrayal inside Venezuela’s ruling elite

As Americans awoke to the news of U.S. military strikes on Venezuela, and the capture and extraction of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, questions are being asked if Maduro was betrayed by someone from his secretive inner circle. 

That inner circle includes Diosdado Cabello, who currently holds the role of minister of interior, justice, and peace, is widely believed to be as powerful as Maduro.

Another member of that inner circle is Vladimir Padrino, the longstanding head of the nation’s Armed Forces, who wields enormous power. Both Cabello and Padrino quickly condemned U.S. actions, but their responses so far have rung hollow.

Cabello now stands as the undisputed heir to the Chavista movement, with Padrino and the nation’s military muscle seemingly in lockstep, yet the Venezuelan Armed Forces seemingly put up no resistance of any kind to the operation.

In an early morning video shared on X, Padrino lambasted the “criminal military aggression by the government of the United States…coming to strike with their missiles and rockets fired from combat helicopters in Fuerte Tuna, Caracas, and the states of Mirana, Aragua, and La Guaira.

“He repeated decades-old Hugo Chavez talking points, stating, “Venezuela rejects with all its strength the presence of these foreign troops which have only brought death, pain and destruction. This invasion represents the greatest tragedy that the country has suffered, which is motivated by an insatiable greed for our strategic resources.”

With a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s head, considerable domestic unpopularity, and the disputed 2024 election which the international community widely discredited as stolen, the writing appeared on the wall for Nicolas Maduro for years.

Now, Maduro and Flores are reportedly guests of the United States government on the warship Iwo Jima, bound for New York to face what is likely to be the trial of the decade. Maduro is facing weapons and drug charges.

This is an excerpt of an article by Fox News Digital’s David Unsworth.

Posted by Jasmine BaehrShare

28 min(s) ago

Chevron, last US oil company in Venezuela, says it’s following US law amid leadership crisis

Chevron has operated in Venezuela for roughly a century (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Chevron, the only remaining U.S. oil company operating in Venezuela , said it continues to run its limited operations in “full compliance” with all applicable laws following the predawn capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations,” a Chevron spokesperson wrote in a statement to Fox News Digital.

The company emphasized that its priority remains the safety and wellbeing of its employees and the integrity of its assets, declining to comment on the broader security environment in Venezuela as the political situation rapidly evolves.

Chevron has maintained a constrained presence in the country through joint ventures with the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), after other U.S. energy firms exited amid nationalization efforts, sanctions and political instability.

President Donald Trump said U.S. energy companies could play a central role in rebuilding the country’s oil sector. He added that the United States continues to enforce its embargo on Venezuelan oil.

Posted by Amanda MaciasShare

37 min(s) ago

Schumer warns Trump running Venezuela ‘should strike fear in the hearts’ of Americans

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would run Venezuela should cause alarm among Americans. 

Trump during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago told reporters that following strikes on Venezuela’s capital Caracas, and the subsequent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Saturday that the U.S. would be running the country. 

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “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.”

But Schumer noted that moving ahead with the strikes and “without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.” 

“The administration has assured me three separate times that it was not pursuing regime change or taking military action in Venezuela,” Schumer said. “Clearly, they are not being straight with Americans.”

“The idea that Trump plans to now run Venezuela should strike fear in the hearts of all Americans,” he continued. “The American people have seen this before and paid the devastating price.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump both weighed in on why Congress wasn’t notified of the strikes — Rubio warned it could have endangered Operation Absolute Resolve while Trump charged that lawmakers leak information.

Schumer demanded that the administration brief lawmakers on its objective in Venezuela immediately, and what plan Trump had to prevent a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster “that plunges us into another endless war or one that trades one corrupt dictator for another.”

Posted by Alex Miller