After the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump made false and misleading statements about previous US strikes on Venezuelan boats and Maduro sending the gang Tren de Aragua to to the U.S. Here are the facts.
President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago club, Jan. 3, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen. President Donald Trump said a U.S.
military assault succeeded in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both facing U.S. charges related to cocaine trafficking under In a Jan. 3 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said the U.S. would"run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."as interim president. Trump said Rodríguez had talked to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was"essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."Maduro, an authoritarian, has led Venezuela since 2013, succeeding an ideological ally, Hugo Chávez, who had been in office since 1999. Under both men, U.S. relations with Venezuela frayed over foreign policy, oil and human rights. In July 2024, Maduro declared victory following an election that international observers described as fraudulent. The country’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, received aboutin September after the U.S. government began attacking vessels off the coast of Venezuela, killing more than 100 people, in what Trump described as an effort to thwart drug smuggling. When a reporter asked Trump during the Mar-a-Lago press event whether he’d spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado following Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Machado"doesn't have the support or the respect within the country."the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy in Venezuela, had a 72% approval rating from Venezuelans according to a March Trump said without evidence that the United States’ role in governing Venezuela"won’t cost us anything" because U.S. oil companies would invest in new infrastructure in the oil-rich country."It’s going to make a lot of money," Trump said.Rubio:"It’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission."members of Congress were not notified in advance. Trump said the administration was concerned about Congress potentially leaking news of the administration’s decision to capture Maduro.Trump and his cabinet were not forthcoming about their intentions for regime change, so"we are left with no understanding of how the administration is preparing to mitigate risks to the U.S. and we have no information regarding a long-term strategy following today’s extraordinary escalation." The U.S. Constitution assigns Congress the right to declare war. The last time that happened was for World War II., the president has had to report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing the U.S. military into hostilities and terminate the use of the military within 60 days unless Congress approves. If approval is not granted and the president deems it an emergency, an additional 30 days are granted for ending operations. In recent decades, congressional consent has usually been granted through an authorization for the use of military force. But an authorization has not been passed for operations in Venezuela. Kaine and other lawmakers have pursued— so far fruitlessly — to prohibit the use of federal funds for any use of military force in or against Venezuela without Congressional authorization., eight bipartisan, senior members of Congress must receive prior notice of particularly sensitive covert actions. In June 2025, the administration, about the forthcoming U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. For the Venezuela operation, it appears no lawmakers were notified in advance. President Nicolás Maduro, accompanied by first lady Cilia Flores, greets supporters during an event marking the anniversary of a 1958 coup ousting dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 23, 2024. at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September. Trump said previously that the boats were carrying drugs en route to the U.S. and during the press conference he said the drugs on each boat would kill"on average, 25,000 people."about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of the drugs could have been destroyed.73,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That means the drugs on 32 boats would have been responsible for 800,000 deaths, nearly 11 times the number of U.S. overdose deaths in one year. "While Venezuela's permissive environment enables to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States," the report said. In the early 20th century, Venezuela’s long-serving dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez, allowed foreign companies almost exclusive access to the country’s oil resources. In 1975, after decades of seeking greater control of its oil resources, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry. "Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless," Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver,."The U.S. was much more interested in having Venezuela be a provider of oil — relatively cheap oil — than to have a production collapse in Venezuela," Rodríguez said. As a result, the change was"relatively uncontroversial" at the time. U.S. oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil and Gulf, now Chevron, lost about $5 billion each in assets and were compensated $1 billion each, according to But Rodríguez said the companies didn’t push for additional compensation at the time, in part because no forum existed to do so.that invading a country to take its oil would be both illegal and unethical. In 2016, Trump mused about how the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil when it invaded to oust Saddam Hussein."If ‘to the victors go the spoils’ was legal doctrine, then we would have believed that should have been able to keep Kuwait City after he invaded" in 1990, terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross told PolitiFact in 2016."But we viewed that — quite rightly — as an act of aggression under the U.N. Charter." Walmart’s 2025 package of Thanksgiving dinner ingredients shows a “25% reduction in costs for Thanksgiving between Biden and me.”“The Trump administration just declared that erecting a ballroom is the president’s main priority,” rather than issues such as the cost of living and health care. Democrats are “dishonestly sending around a video from 2017” claiming it was an Oct. 18 ‘No Kings’ rally in Boston. As the Trump administration pursues mortgage fraud charges against Letitia James, “there are three Cabinet members who committed mortgage fraud that he’s just letting fly.”Video muestra noticia de “última hora” en el que el presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro se “rindió públicamente” ante el presidente Donald Trump.
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