In one of the recessed rooms at Mar-a-lago, beneath monitors, in which he can surveil his every move, President Donald Trump watched as highly trained Delta-Force soldiers examined a two-story drop on the residence of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, where the latter was reportedly sleeping with his wife.
Maduro was quickly arrested in trying to escape to a safe room that was steel-enforced. This is an act that marked the culmination of a month of a campaign with a subtext that was well known to the people who had been planning this course of action to oust Maduro to power. Although Trump at some point or another expressed his apprehension about the unwanted consequences and how the United States might end up being engaged in a prolonged war, he ended up overriding those concerns and gave the operation the go-ahead during the days before Christmas. The operation was not carried out till over a week later, when the meteorological conditions were favourable and the parameters of operation were considered favourable. At 10.46 p.m. ET the president provided the final approval after a shopping visit to the marble and onyx and a dinner in the patio of Mar-a-Lago.
Soon the American rotary wing planes were sailing across the Caribbean Sea at less than 100 feet in the air making moves towards Caracas. A few hours later, Maduro was captured by the U.S. troops who were handcuffed and wearing gray sweatpants and blackout goggles, as the president of Venezuela appeared in an image published by Trump on Truth Social on Saturday morning. His next day Trump announced that now United States would govern Venezuela with an indefinite future, and had little details to mention, stating that he had no aversion to boots on the ground.
To a president whose own political constituency was partly electrified through the frustrations caused by two decades of massive U.S. foreign intervention, the intervention decision was one that constituted swift turnaround. Trump mostly did not discuss the further duties and focused on the ability to reach far-off oil fields of Venezuela and kept declining the potential of a greater U.S. military operation in the event that the supporters of Maduro were unwilling to yield power.
There were multiple complaints privately voiced in Washington-area circles during the hours after the action that the long-term implications of such an undertaking, on both national security and political implications on the political consequences of a president whose poll numbers are already low and whose support base is showing little interest in international intercession.
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