Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation. Working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Greg Meyry. I cover national security. It is 1.45pm Eastern Time on Saturday, January 3rd. The United States has captured Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and both of them are headed to U.S. soil. A short while ago, President Trump made that announcement. Late last night and early today, at my direction, 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 an assault like people have not seen since World War II. Franco, you've been following this. What can you tell us about how this extraordinary action played out overnight? Yeah, President Trump said he actually watched the operation in real time from a room in Mar-a-Lago along with some generals. And one of those generals, Dan Cain, head of the Joint Chief of Staff, gave some details in today's presser. He said the operation was named Absolute Resolve. He said that more than 150 aircraft from across the hemisphere were involved. The U.S. actually dismantled Venezuelan air defenses in advance so that American military helicopters could go into Caracas. There was shooting and one of the aircraft was hit, but he said that it remained fliable. Forces were on the ground, he said, by 2 a.m. local time. And maybe about two hours later, they had both Maduro and his wife on an aircraft out of the country. Trump actually released a photo of Maduro in U.S. custody. It kind of showed him in handcuffs. He was in sweats and kind of wearing this blackout mask. And the president said that Maduro tried to get to a safe room and he reached the door, was able to barely open it, but he was unable to close it. Though Trump said even if they did close it, the U.S. forces would have blown it open. Greg, as you've been following this, what stood out to you? Well, a couple things that General Cain mentioned. He said this had been planned for months and you certainly would expect that. He said everything was in place by early December, so roughly a month ago, and they were just waiting for the right set of circumstances. And you had to deal with things like the weather in the Caribbean. There's some mountainous terrain in Venezuela, a lot of cloud cover at times. So the weather broke for them. This could have happened at any time recently. And they really did keep it under wraps, which is what the administration wanted. And of course, members of Congress are complaining that they were not informed, that they weren't given any advance notice. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they were informed when the mission began in the middle of the night, but they had no advance warning. And Rubio said they couldn't do that because then the mission could have been compromised. Trump said Congress leaks, which is true. But it was interesting to hear a little bit about the dynamics that have been going on because there was certainly the sense that something like this could happen, but it was kept under wraps. All of this leads to the big question, which is who is in charge here now that the president of Venezuela has been physically removed by the United States? Who's running Venezuela? Well, the vice president, Delcey Rodriguez, was sworn in as president today, according to Trump. But according to Trump, it's really probably the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and perhaps Pete Hegseth and perhaps Cain. I mean, Trump said they were part of a large group of leaders who were going to be kind of running Venezuela and they would continue to lead the country until its infrastructure was rebuilt. I mean, Trump wasn't clear about what kind of support they would have, whether U.S. military force would be there. But he also said that he was not afraid of having boots on the ground. And I would just say that is something very significant for this president, considering how adverse he has been about U.S. troops' involvement in foreign wars or foreign affairs. And this will be the case for how long? We don't know. Trump said those troops are still poised just off the coast of Venezuela. They are prepared, as Trump described it, to carry out a second wave, which he said could be even bigger. So it seems the desire is that this could all be worked out politically and diplomatically and a new Venezuelan government can take hold without unrest. But what Trump didn't say is what happens if there is instability, what happens if they can't get a government that the Trump administration likes in Venezuela. What exactly would trigger those U.S. forces to go back in and carry out more military action? We don't know the answer to that question. We don't know how much longer they might sit there offshore. I will say that. I was pretty surprised that Trump, you know, in past Trump's MO is kind of like, we'll get this done quick. It'll be easy. It'll be fast. But I actually found that Trump was pretty honest about this being a long-term commitment. He did not sugarcoat the fact that there would be billions of dollars needed to invest in this, and it would take time and effort to rebuild that infrastructure. I got the impression from him that the United States is going to be sticking around a long time, and that to me is pretty eye-opening. You know, Ryan, lots of questions clearly for Venezuela, but meanwhile, here in the U.S., Trump says that Maduro and his wife Celia Flores will face trial in New York at some point. What do we know about the charges that they're facing? Well, look, the Justice Department actually originally announced charges against Maduro back in 2020, in March of 2020. For trafficking, cocaine trafficking, a sort of drug conspiracy, what we got today was a new indictment that was unsealed in the Southern District of New York, so in Manhattan. There are four charges there, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and a couple of weapons charges. There's a 25-page indictment, and what it does is essentially allege that there was this relentless campaign headed by Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials to flood the United States with cocaine. The indictment says that senior Venezuelan officials worked with major cartels like the Sinaloa Cartel in the Zetas in Mexico, as well as some groups in Colombia, that these Venezuelan officials, including Maduro, provided law enforcement cover and logistical support for cocaine shipments by those groups to the United States. Maduro and his wife Celia Flores are being brought to the United States. Trump has said to New York, the Attorney General Pam Bondi says that there they will face the full wrath, as she put it, of American justice. One thing that I will also point out here is that we have heard a lot from the Trump administration over the past four or five months, since the strikes against the drug boats began, the suspected drug boats began in early September, that this is a campaign to stop the importation of illicit drugs into the United States. They leaned heavily into that messaging. We've seen roughly 30 strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. But at the same point in time, that has been undermined in part by one, the fact that President Trump recently pardoned the former Honduran president who had been convicted and sentenced for running a massive drug conspiracy, importing tons of cocaine into the United States. And I will point out that that includes shipments, as prosecutors have said, that were coming from Venezuela during the period of time when Maduro was in charge. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive an up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. I want to go back to these questions about who is running Venezuela going forward. During the press conference, President Trump had this to say about what comes next. We're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it essentially until such time as a proper transition can take place. Greg, what might be involved in running another country as President Trump says the U.S. is going to do? Well, I guess you could say the U.S. has a lot of experience in trying to run other countries and it's been mixed at best. I think in many cases it's gone very poorly. We've certainly seen Iraq and Afghanistan in the last quarter century. So you can start there with examples of places where leaders were toppled quite quickly and it seemed then it would just be a steady rebuilding process, but it wasn't. And so you've got to consider that possibility. The country has been run by Nicolas Maduro for more than a decade. His predecessor Hugo Chavez. We've seen just absolute economic decline from a country that has a lot of oil resources. So it can be very, very complicated both at the political level, the diplomatic level. There could be instability. But it is also a country that has a lot of oil resources. If it could resume producing the level of oil that it has in the past and that's a very big if it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of effort. But there are potentially the resources there for Venezuela to rebuild. So I think it's hard to make a prediction with any certainty one way or the other. But I think you can say there are going to be a lot of complications that are very difficult to predict. And I'll just echo what Franco said. President Trump often talks about doing a deal, doing something quickly. He does seem to be realistic about the length of time that it will take. There are two other countries that immediately come to mind that the U.S. has intervened in militarily in the past quarter century that people talked about their vast oil reserves and how that is going to help quickly rebuild Iraq and Libya. And we have seen how both of those cases turned out. Now, Ryan, a moment ago you were describing the charges against Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Under what legal authority does the administration say it is doing this? Well, the administration has not talked publicly about its justification here. The administration did brief members of Congress as we've said after this operation began. And from speaking to a person familiar with the matter, I'm told that the administration said that the president was acting under his Article 2 authority as commander-in-chief and that the Pentagon was in essence taking action to assist the Justice Department in executing an arrest warrant for Maduro and his wife. Now, the United States has gone into foreign countries in the past and grabbed a suspect who's been indicted in the U.S. and brought them back to the United States to face trial. There's a notable case in the country that I just mentioned, Libya, of a suspect who was involved in the killing of a U.S. ambassador there. So this has happened with terrorism suspects, but in many cases what you end up having is an agreement with a given country's authorities or there is a plausible self-defense argument that the U.S. is taking this action in self-defense. Here, legal experts, and we've also seen pushback from some members of Congress saying that the idea that the U.S. was taking this action in self-defense doesn't hold water. The idea being that Venezuela did not pose a direct imminent threat. Some members of Congress were not briefed ahead of time. The president said that and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this was essentially not the kind of operation that Congress could have a heads up about, I guess because of the sensitivity and the security risk. Franco, what is Congress saying so far in response? You are hearing pushback from some Democrats. Even Senator Tim Kaine, who was on our air earlier this morning, called these strikes clearly illegal. He said the Constitution is clear that the U.S. doesn't engage in military action or war without a vote of Congress except in the case of imminent self-defense. That obviously did not happen. Trump did not seek authorization from Congress. Again, in his press conference, he complained that Congress leaks too much. But I do think this is just another example of the United States or of President Trump and his administration kind of expanding his executive power while diminishing the power of Congress. I would also jump in here and just say that the operation today the administration says was a great success. There weren't any American service members who were killed in this operation. They captured Maduro and his wife. They successfully took him out of the country and are bringing him to the U.S. to face trial. But that is not the end of this, as we have said. This is the beginning of this. There's going to be a long tail here. And because the legal rationale is disputed, the upside of getting legal buy-in and public buy-in for an operation like this is it provides you political cover. And they have not done that here. And so if things do go south, there's only one person who's going to be to blame for that, and that's going to be President Trump. And we should say Republican leaders are praising the president's actions. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, among others. Thune, in a statement, called it a decisive action to disrupt the unacceptable status quo. But again, there is a lot of pushback, especially from Democrats so far. Trump's whole campaign was based largely on putting America first. That's been a slogan for a long time. How does this move by the Trump administration fit into that vision, especially when he campaigned on the idea that he would bring closure to conflicts around the world? So far, his international focus, this term, has really alienated some of his supporters. So, you know, in addition to where Venezuela kind of comes out on this, I think there is a big question about how Trump's own supporters are going to kind of feel about this long-term investment. And I think that's why you're getting so much emphasis from Trump and his aides about oil. This push for oil is clearly an argument that this is in U.S. interests. Trump said that Venezuela stole U.S. oil, speaking to when Venezuela nationalized the industry. It is clearly, I think, an effort to kind of mitigate some of those concerns that the United States, from MAGA World, that the United States is too focused on foreign wars and not focused enough on domestic interests. That Trump has lost his way on America first. And he argues that this is America first. This is about American interests. And oil is a prime example of that. Well, Trump said during the press conference that this should serve as a warning, essentially, to anyone who would compromise American interests. I'm paraphrasing. We've been talking about this America first policy and the idea that Trump promised to restrain military action. But could there be more of the same here? Is this the beginning of a different approach? Do you expect to see more actions like this? Well, the president has already acted much differently this term. I've done some counting. He's bombed four countries in the Middle East, two countries in Africa, and now this operation in Venezuela, all in less than a year. Since he took office last January. So we're seeing a president much more willing to use military force in this term. And we've seen him lay it out in the national security strategy, which was just put out recently, talking about this greater emphasis on the Western hemisphere and Latin America. He brought it up again today. The Monroe Doctrine dating to President James Monroe just over 200 years ago, that Latin America, the Western Hemisphere is the U.S. backyard. Other countries should not be involved. So there is much more of an emphasis and we see Secretary of State Marco Rubio, son of Cuban immigrants also being very aggressive, very hawkish. So I would not be surprised having seen what we saw today that we could see more of this. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Franco Ardeniaz. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Greg Meyry and I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
