By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump said that U.S. military pilots were “hit pretty bad in the legs” during a mission last month in Venezuela that led to the capture of the South American nation’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.
While speaking at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Friday, Trump said that three helicopter pilots were wounded amid gunfire, praising them as “really brave.”
“They were hit pretty bad in the legs,” Trump said, adding that the pilots were “landing a big chopper and they’re being shot at from close range by a machine gun.” The threat was then neutralized quickly by U.S. military snipers, he added.
“That night, the entire world saw what they call military — my U.S. military — is capable of,” the president said. “That was an unbelievable operation.”
During the raid, Venezuelan leader Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, were captured and taken to the United States, where he faces charges of drug trafficking and other counts. In an initial court appearance in New York City, Maduro pleaded not guilty.
Before and after his capture, the U.S. military has engaged in a pressure campaign against the South American country, including boarding oil tankers that are suspected of trying to evade sanctions. Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including a ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean over the past weekend.
The War Department wrote in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding” on Sunday morning in the Indian Ocean.
“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine — hoping to slip away,” the Pentagon said. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down. No other nation has the reach, endurance, or will to do this.”
The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro’s capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X. The vessel has been “involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil” since 2023, the organization said.
Last week, the U.S. military boarded a different tanker in the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II, without incident, officials said. The military had pursued that tanker from the Caribbean, it said.
In the meantime, Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, was named as the interim leader of the country, although last week Rodriguez said in an NBC News interview that Maduro is still the leader of the country.
“I can tell you President Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president. I will tell you this as a lawyer, that I am. Both President Maduro and Cilia Flores, the first lady, are both innocent,” she told the news outlet in Caracas.
She then added, “I can tell you I am in charge of the presidency of Venezuela, as it’s stated clearly in the constitution of Venezuela. And from the amount of work that I have, from how busy I am, I can tell you it’s very, very hard work and we’re doing it completely day by day.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
