After months of growing military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump ordered an operation into the South American country to capture its leader and whisk him to the United States, where his administration planned to put him on trial.

In a Saturday morning interview on “Fox and Friends Weekend,” Trump laid out the details of the overnight strike, after which he said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship.

Trump described Maduro as being “highly guarded” in a presidential palace that was “like a fortress,” although the Venezuelan leader was not able to get to a safe room.

American forces were armed with “massive blowtorches,” which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked himself in the room, Trump said.

“It had what they call a safety space, where it’s solid steel all around,” Trump said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared.”

Part of that preparation, Trump said, included practicing maneuvers on a replica building.

“They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.

Trump said that the U.S. operation took place in darkness, although he did not detail how that had happened. He said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” the capital of Venezuela.

“This thing was so organized,” he said. “And they go into a dark space with machine guns facing them all over the place.”

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, detailed a “meticulously planned” operation that he said had been months in the making, crafted to minimize harm both to Maduro and his wife, as well as civilians. Through the holiday weeks of Christmas and New Year’s, Caine said service members watched and “sat ready” for the order, which the general said could come only once weather conditions improved Friday night.

“Last night the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could move through,” Caine said, noting that helicopters flew low to the water to enter Venezuela, covered above by protective U.S. aircraft.

Caine said that more than 150 aircraft from 20 different bases were involved in the surprise, overnight attack on Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro.

Caine said the aircraft included F-22, F-35, and F-18 fighter jets as well as B1 bombers and other support aircraft “as well as numerous remotely piloted drones.”

Caine said that the mission of the aircraft was to provide cover for the helicopters that acted as the “extraction force” with the goal of capturing Maduro and his wife.

“There were multiple self-defense engagements as the force began to withdraw out of Venezuela,” Caine said. He also said that the military chose “the right day to minimize the potential for civilian harm and maximize the element of surprise.”

(YWN’s Jerusalem desk is keeping you updated after tzeis ha’Shabbos in Israel)

(AP)