President Trump said that he and key members of his administration watched the Delta Force raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, in real time from a room at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida club.
In a lengthy telephone interview Saturday morning on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump offered some details of the monthslong planning that went into the operation, including the construction of a replica of Mr. Maduro’s safe house, where special operations forces could practice the raid.
Mr. Trump said that the military repeatedly rehearsed the operation and was able to execute flawlessly, breaking through steel doors protecting Mr. Maduro in “a matter of seconds.”
“I watched it literally like you are watching a television show,” the president said. “It was an amazing thing.”
The capture operation was the product of months of meetings between Mr. Trump; Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; and Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s top aides. The men sometimes gathered as a group but also met or spoke with Mr. Trump one-on-one.
While Mr. Trump did not identify the military team that conducted the raid, other U.S. officials said it was the Army’s Delta Force. “They are the most highly trained soldiers in the world,” the president said.
No U.S. troops were killed in the operation, Mr. Trump said. But he added that he thought some were hurt when their helicopter was hit. The helicopter, which was damaged, the president said, flew out of Venezuela to safety. Two U.S. officials said that about half a dozen soldiers were injured in the overall operation.
The president provided few specifics of the military operations beyond the raid that captured Mr. Maduro, but noted that the United States had put different kinds of fighter planes into the skies above Venezuela.
Mr. Trump said he vetoed a deal with Mr. Maduro to head off the raid. Mr. Maduro had been offering the United States access to Venezuelan oil, but Mr. Trump said he was unwilling to make an agreement because of Mr. Maduro’s involvement in the narcotics trade.
“What he did with drugs is bad,” Mr. Trump said, adding, as he often does, that Venezuela had emptied its prisons and sent people to the United States.
Mr. Trump said on Fox News that Mr. Maduro and his wife had been taken to the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, one of the American warships that have been prowling the Caribbean. He said Mr. Maduro would be taken to New York, where a new indictment had been issued.
Mr. Trump suggested that his administration would continue to target Venezuelan government officials if they sided with Mr. Maduro.
“If they stay loyal, the future is really bad, really bad for them,” he said. “I’d say most of them have converted.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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