US President Donald Trump said that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife are on the US warship USS Iwo Jima, which is sailing to New York.
“Yes, Iwo Jima, they’re on the ship,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News. “They’re sailing to New York. They were picked up by helicopters and they were flown in by helicopter on a nice flight – I’m sure they liked it. But they killed a lot of people, remember.”
Asked about the options he had previously offered Maduro, Trump said, “Well, I basically said – you have to give up. You have to surrender.”
He also said that he spoke with Maduro seven days ago, CNN reports.
“This was a very important symbol and we – I had conversations. I actually spoke to him personally, but I said, you have to give up. You have to surrender,” Trump said.
Trump said that both Maduro and his wife were indicted in New York. He announced what his administration is considering as the next step in governing Venezuela, after Maduro was captured.
“Well, we’re making that decision right now. We can’t risk someone else taking over and just picking up where he left off. That’s why we’re making that decision now. We’re going to be very involved in that. And we want freedom for the people,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News.
Trump said Venezuelans were very happy about Maduro’s capture “because they love the United States” and because the country under Maduro was a “dictatorship.”
The US president said they waited four days to launch the operation, due to better weather conditions, as reported by Reuters.
Maduro, according to Trump, was trying to negotiate.
“You know, he was trying to negotiate at the end,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘No, we can’t.’ What he did with the drugs was bad.”
The United States will be “very heavily involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry after the operation to capture Maduro, Trump told Fox News, as reported by Reuters.
“We have the biggest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the best, and we will be heavily involved in that,” he said.
‘Like watching a TV show’
Trump said he was monitoring the complex operation to capture Maduro in real time from a room at Mar-a-Lago, along with military generals.
“I’ve been told by real military professionals that there’s no other country in the world that can pull off a maneuver like that,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News. “If you had seen what happened — I mean, I literally watched it like I was watching a television show.”
“If you saw the speed, the violence – you know, they use that term, the speed and the violence – it was incredible. The incredible job that those people did. Nobody else could have done anything like it,” Trump added, according to CNN.
Trump, who spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Palm Beach, at his private Mar-a-Lago club, said he watched as the US military captured Maduro, including breaking through a steel door.
“Well, we watched it from a room. We had a room and we watched every aspect of the operation. We were surrounded by many people, including generals, and they knew everything that was going on. The operation was very complex, extremely complex,” Trump said.
“Really, they just came in, broke into places that were thought to be impenetrable – they broke down steel doors that were put in place for that very reason – and it was all over in a matter of seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump continued.
Trump also said the United States had a “huge number” of aircraft at its disposal, including helicopters and fighter jets.
Trump said he believed no Americans were killed during the operation to capture Maduro, although several were injured while trying to capture him at what Trump called a heavily fortified location.
“I don’t think we had any fatalities, I have to say, because a few guys were hit. But they’re back and they should be in pretty good shape.”
The US President added that one helicopter was hit during the operation, but that no aircraft were lost.
“We didn’t lose any aircraft. Everything came back. One was hit pretty hard, a helicopter, but we got it back,” Trump said.
