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President Donald Trump revealed during an exclusive interview with “Fox & Friends Weekend” that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a “fortress”-like house, where he got “bum rushed so fast” by American special forces.
Trump said he huddled with generals inside a room at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as they “watched every aspect” of the “extremely complex” operation unfold. The president said the initial plan was for Maduro to be captured earlier this week, but U.S. forces had to wait for the right weather conditions.
“We waited four days. We were going to do this, four days ago, three days ago, two days ago. And then all of a sudden it opened up, and we said, ‘go,’” the president said, describing how Maduro was in a “very highly-guarded” house at the time he was confronted.
“He was in a house that was more like a fortress than a house. It had steel doors. It had what they call a safety space, where it’s, you know, solid steel all around. He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum rushed so fast that he didn’t get into that,” Trump said. “We were prepared. We had, you know, massive blowtorches and everything else that you need to get through that steel. But we didn’t need it. He didn’t make it to that area of the house.”
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A U.S. official briefed on the matter told Fox News on Saturday that the U.S. Army’s Delta Force physically captured Maduro, with the CIA providing intelligence to the Department of War to help track down the dictator’s location.
“Everything was pinpoint… everything they practiced. They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the safes, all the steel all over the place,” Trump told “Fox & Friends Weekend,” describing the military planning that went into the operation.
Trump said he believes no U.S. forces were killed during the operation. He added that, “a couple of guys were hit, but they came back, and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape.”
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Trump also said Maduro and his wife were taken by helicopter to the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, and that they were heading to New York to face an indictment on charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy.
When asked about what the future of Venezuela holds with Maduro no longer in the country, Trump said, “we’re making that decision now.”
“We can’t take a chance of letting somebody else run and just take over where he left off. So we’re making that decision now,” Trump told Fox News on Saturday morning. “We’ll be involved in it very much, and we want to do liberty for the people. We want to, you know, have a great relationship. I think the people of Venezuela are very, very happy because they love the United States. You know, they were run by essentially a dictatorship or worse.”
Trump also said the U.S. military operations in Venezuela “is saving lives because the drug trafficking is so bad, it’s gotten so out of control.”
Fox News’ Rachel Wolf and David Spunt contributed to this report.
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