Donald Trump calls into FOX News after Maduro capture: here’s what he said

Donald Trump called his favourite TV show after ordering bombs to hit Venezuela as its president was captured and removed from the country. While it sounds like a new episode of Black Mirror, it is unfortunately the biggest news story so far of 2026 and is very real.

Like your middle-aged cousin who is “just between jobs”, the US president called into daytime television to make shouting at the screen a little more justifiable. On the call with Fox & Friends, which I’m sure was a show on Nickelodeon when I was young, he explained in detail the extent of the mission that saw the Venezuelan leader and his wife taken from their home.

“It’s just it was an amazing thing, the amazing job that these people did. There’s nobody else could have done anything like it,” Trump said of the operation.

He was asked by the host: “can you tell us where Maduro and his wife are right this second?” to which he replied that the pair would “be heading to New York” before adding that they were taken aboard the Iwo Jima ship.

“They’ll be heading into New York,” he repeated, “the helicopters took them out, and they went by helicopter on a nice flight. I’m sure they loved it, but they’ve killed a lot of people. Even people in their own country. They killed a lot of people to maintain power. He’s a very vicious person.”

“If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence, it was an amazing thing,” he added, explaining that “we were going to do this four days ago but the weather was not perfect. The weather has to be perfect... all of a sudden it opened up and we said go.”

He admitted that there had been “a few injuries but no deaths on our side” and said Maduro was captured “in a house that was more like a fortress than a house” with “solid steel all around”.

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As for what’s next, Trump tried his best to bat away anything concrete in terms of plans, but did say that the US would be “strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry, admitting that he told Maduro a week ago that “you have to give up, you have to surrender. We had to do something much more surgical,” he concluded, “much more powerful”.

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