When the United States invaded Iraq in March of 2003, in a campaign to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush monitored the offensive from Camp David. He returned to Washington a few days later, telling reporters that despite “pockets of resistance,” the US was “making significant progress.”
President Donald Trump has never made much use of the secluded presidential retreat. Instead, he watched the operation to strike Venezuela and arrest President Nicolás Maduro in the early hours of Saturday morning from Mar-a-Lago, his private golf club in Palm Beach, Florida. “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” Trump told Fox News in an interview hours after the attack.
Speaking from Mar-a-Lago’s “Tea Room” soon after, Trump announced a plan staggering in its ambition and eerily reminiscent of the foreign policy of his Republican forebear. The United States, Trump said, would “take over” and “run” Venezuela in order to replace Maduro’s regime with one chosen by the United States.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said.
Venezuelan citizens living in Spain watch Donald Trump’s press conference from Puerta del Sol Square.
PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/Getty Images
The president, who is 79, appeared exhausted. His voice was subdued and hoarse, and later in the press conference, as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine briefed the press on the operation, he seemed to struggle to stay awake. As Trump read from a stack of papers on a podium, he deviated from the script a few times, including for one lengthy aside about crime in Washington DC, where he promised “the restaurants are open, they’re happy,” and in Los Angeles, which he complained he “got no credit for” improving the fortunes of. As Trump rambled, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood behind him, stony faced, looking at the floor.
Trump eventually handed off to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “He effed around, and he found out,” Hegseth said of Maduro in his own short remarks. Rubio spoke next, maintaining that Maduro was “not the legitimate president” of Venezuela and noting he was indicted on drug trafficking and corruption charges in the Southern District of New York in 2020. On Saturday, the Justice Department announced new charges against Maduro and his wife, who was also captured.
