The United States will run the country of Venezuela until a replacement for dictator Nicolás Maduro can be found and sworn in, President Donald Trump announced at a press conference today.
The Trump administration plans to send American oil companies down to take over the lucrative Venezuelan oil business, according to the president. And the U.S. military stands ready for a second and bigger attack on Venezuela should that be necessary, Trump promised. Maduro “will never again be able to” terrorize Americans, Trump promised. The captured dictator and his wife face charges in New York for their role in fueling the deadly American drug war and sending here many terrorist cartel members, including Tren de Aragua killers. Maduro is now on his way to America.
Trump lauded the “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.” Maduro sent terrorists, criminal kingpins, convicted criminal prisoners, and more to America. He stole American oil infrastructure. and was behind the drug crisis killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump stated. Now Maduro is deposed and in handcuffs, and the new Monroe Doctrine is alive and well —the “Don-roe doctrine,” Trump joked.
President Trump makes it clear that the US will “run” Venezuela until a judicious transition is achieved:
“We want peace, liberty, and justice…” pic.twitter.com/DojM4vXqZG
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) January 3, 2026
The assault was carried out by “a force against a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator Nicolás Maduro to justice. This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might,” Trump said. You can read more about the fortress storming in my previous piece. Venezuelans are free and Americans are safer, Trump said.
“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,” Trump mysteriously boasted.
No more are we under weak fools such as Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter, Trump bragged. “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, 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 military on the planet by far.” He said “we’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by sea. Each boat kills … [on] average 25,000 people.”
Then came the key. “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump stated. “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.”
The president added another detail that will enrage Democrats and America’s enemies: “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.”
As a warning, Trump said, “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.” That will happen if necessary. “The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of the 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,” Trump said
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth referred to previous destruction of Iranian nuclear capabilities and seemingly indicated that terrorist regime could suffer the fate of Maduro. “Welcome to 2026,” Hegseth said. This is a strong and powerful America.
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