At 4:21 am US time on Saturday, a notification lit up screens around the world: President Donald Trump had posted on Truth Social that the United States had captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Ten minutes later, at 4:31 am, a New York Times reporter called the President’s cellphone.
“After three rings, we were talking,” said Tyler Pager, a White House correspondent for the Times. “He said, ‘Hello,’ and I jumped right in.”
Pager identified himself and told Trump he was calling from The New York Times with questions about the overnight operation in Venezuela. He managed to ask four questions before the President ended the call, directing him instead to “tune into his news conference a few hours later.”
It was a surreal moment: while explosions rocked Caracas and confusion reigned in the Venezuelan capital, the President of the United States was personally fielding questions from the press in the predawn hours.
Pager, who had woken up at 1 am after receiving reports from a colleague in Venezuela that “Caracas had been bombed,” was trying to piece together the operation with his team.
“I just called him directly and he picked up,” Pager said, adding that he “wasn’t that surprised” because Trump “regularly picks up calls from reporters.” During the 50-second conversation, Pager pressed the President on whether he sought congressional authorization and what the next steps for Venezuela would be.
Trump “did not complain that I had called,” Pager noted, though he stopped short of revealing sensitive details. “He didn’t really answer my questions, instead directing me to tune into his news conference a few hours later.”
The exchange highlighted a sharp contrast in presidential styles. Pager recalled that during four years covering the Biden administration, he had been “stonewalled” and never granted an interview. “I eventually reached [Biden] directly on his cellphone, and after a short interview, his aides changed his phone number,” he said.
By contrast, Trump appeared to invite the media spectacle. By 9:45 am, Pager said he was at Mar-a-Lago, clearing security for what he described as the President’s “victory lap.”
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, chaos and shock gripped the streets.
The operation, codenamed Absolute Resolve, involved low-flying aircraft striking military installations in Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, leading to the capture of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
The raid capped a year-long pressure campaign. US intelligence had moved onto Venezuelan soil by late 2025, and a CIA drone strike on a port facility occurred just weeks prior. Trump had framed the conflict as a war on “narco-terrorism,” warning that Washington would not allow traffickers to “destroy American youth.”
The January 3 operation marked the most direct US military intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, when dictator Manuel Noriega was deposed and extradited to the United States.
Trump announced that Maduro and Flores had been “captured and flown out of the country” to face justice. Republican Senator Mike Lee confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Maduro would “stand trial on criminal charges” in the US.
The legal groundwork dates back to March 2020, when US prosecutors indicted Maduro on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, accusing him of leading the Cartel de los Soles.
Maduro’s capture has left a power vacuum in Caracas. Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino condemned the operation, calling the presence of “foreign troops” a source of “death, pain, and destruction,” while the government declared a state of external disturbance.
The global response was polarised. Leaders in Cuba, Iran, and Russia condemned the operation as a violation of sovereignty, while Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei celebrated it, declaring: “Long live freedom, dammit!”
Back in Washington, focus has shifted to Venezuela’s future. As Pager noted, despite the direct line to the President, a key question remains unanswered: “What would the next steps be for Venezuela?”
For now, the decades-long standoff between Washington and Caracas has ended not quietly, but with a roar of jet engines and the audacious capture of a sitting president.