This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and the US just snatched a foreign leader and his wife from their bedroom.

What kind of message does this send to the Russians? What kind message does it send to the Chinese who have been eyeing Taiwan? And does it give them kind of carte blanche to say, look, the U.S. Did it.

What we know about President Donald Trump's plan to make Venezuela great again. Stick around. We are talking early Saturday morning. Can you just explain what your night was like?

Well, it was a busy weekend. We came from New Year's Eve. You think that you are in the beginning of the year that you can rest, but it was not like that.

Mary Triny Mina is a freelance journalist based in Caracas. She's working with us at CNN. And for months, she has been following the U.S. Military buildup near Venezuela and the dozens of deadly strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Experts questioned the legality of those strikes. And White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles suggested to Vanity Fair, this wasn't really about drugs. This was a pressure campaign against the ruthless leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. She said of Trump, quote, He wants to keep blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. But the question for months had been, how far would Trump go to make that happen? Would he strike targets on land? Would they try to remove Maduro by force? Well, in the early morning hours of Saturday, just days into the new year, Mary and everyone else in Venezuela got an answer.

We woke up with loud sounds across the city. Some people were misguided. They thought at the beginning, at the very beginning, that there were fireworks. Then they started to sound louder and louder. It was like 45 minutes. The detonations were not permanent. They stopped for a while. Then it started again. Then we heard some, like the use of armed fire, but it was from the distance. And then we started to hear planes and then helicopters. So that was a clear indication for us that something was happening.

A few hours later, the explosions had stopped, the helicopters had flown away, and at 421 a.m., President Trump posted a message to his true social account.

He said the United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country.

Just to underline what happened here, the U.S. Military swooped into a sovereign country in the middle of the night to abduct a leader in his capital. It's definitely not the normal course of business.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will quote soon face the full wrath of American justice. In a post on social media, Bondi cited the indictment against Maduro, charging him with Narcoterrorism and other drugs and weapons charges

Now, the last time a de facto ruler of a state was apprehended by U.S. Forces in their own country happened exactly 36 years ago when Panama's military chief Manuel Noriega surrendered to U. S. Forces to face drug trafficking charges. What we have here is a seismic moment for the Western Hemisphere and the people of Venezuela who have faced brutal economic conditions and repression under Maduro. So what's the mood on the streets right now? Have you been out at all on the street?

I've been nearby of my home. My home is in the center of Caracas, but it's silenced, it's a radio silence. It's like, it is something strange considering it's 10 a.m. On a Saturday, but the main highways are empty and the main streets is not like a regular Saturday in Caracas. And most people have decided to stay at home because of the announcement made by the government. The government is saying first, that they are declaring a state of emergency and we don't know exactly the implication of that is somebody could be arrested for example for being in the streets uh... Secondly they are saying they are calling to people to remain calm they keep saying over at the estate media that they're in control of the situation and the government just announced that all or at least the vice president delcito the guess which is in charge right now. She says that she's in charge, that the military forces are with her, and they announced a massive deployment of military forces across Venezuela.

Well, yeah, talk to me about who is actually in control, because I remember, I talked to our colleague, Stefano Pozobon, a few weeks ago about what could possibly happen if something like this were to occur. And he was basically saying that there could be a vacuum where it's kind of uncertain who would fill it and if that could possibly lead to more chaos. So you're saying that the government, the vice president is saying things are in control. But what do we know about what happens next?

Well, that's the uncertainty of this, because so far the military forces have shown support to Nicolás Maduro. The loyalty of the military force, at least the main heads, remain on the inner circle of Nicolá Maduro, and that is really important, because if you, for example, try to find an opposition figure to speak in Venezuela about what is happening, they won't talk. Because there's a lot of fear of reprisals inside of the country. You won't find a large gathering of peoples supporting the actions of Donald Trump because we have like many people detained over the last year after the presidential elections. So there's fear in the streets of Caracas too.

So like you said, this has been building up and up for months and months between the boat strikes and everything that's gone on there. I guess, did the average Venezuelan, did they think that something so drastic, you know, would happen that Trump would actually go this far to remove Maduro from the country?

Well, I kept interviewing people in the streets, and their reactions were mixed, some were supporting the situation, but they told you that quietly because they are afraid. And some people said, well, let's wait until something happens, because here in Venezuela, there's always an announcement, but never ends with something real happening. And I think those things that we witness and that we gather with the population over the past few months today are different because there's something concrete, there's concrete information that the mandatory of the country is outside of the county and taken into custody.

So how did this go down? And how involved is the U.S. Going to be in what comes next? Let's turn to CNN's Natasha Bertrand. She covers the Pentagon and national security. So Natasha, how did the play out? How did U. S. Forces pull this off?

Well, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, he actually gave a really remarkably detailed overview of how this all played out during a press conference on Saturday morning, said that this all began, the operation itself anyway, at 10 46 p.m. Eastern time on Friday night. And that is when President Trump ordered the military to move forward with this mission, which had been the culmination of months of planning and rehearsals. And it was called Operation Absolute Resolve. That sounds familiar. It's because the US military has another operation to defeat ISIS called Operation Inherent Resolve, so clearly a play on that.

Last night, the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could maneuver through. Ocean, mountain, low clouds, ceilings. According to...

To General Cain, aircraft then launched from 20 different bases, about 150 different kinds of aircraft, including fighter jets and bombers.

As the night began, the helicopters took off with the extraction force, which included law enforcement officers, and began their flight into Venezuela at a hundred feet above the water. As they approached Venezuelan shores, the United States began layering different effects provided by Spacecom, Cybercom, and other members of the interagency to create a pathway.

So they had aircraft from the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, the Air National Guard, all kind of protecting these helicopters that had that main extraction force entering Caracas.

As the force began to approach Caracas, the joint air component began dismantling and disabling the air defense systems in Venezuela.

So as that huge force approached the city, the joint force began dismantling and disabling Venezuela's air defense systems because they do have those air defenses that were actually largely provided by the Russians using Russian air defense missiles. And they were able to dismantle those and they really encountered no issue with that. And so the helicopters were then able to go towards the compound. That Maduro was staying at, at that point, and they arrived there at about 1 a.m. Eastern time, according to General Cain.

And the apprehension force descended into Maduro's compound and moved with speed, precision, and discipline towards their objective.

And he apparently, according to President Trump, was trying to escape to an even more secure location inside that compound. He was actually trying.

Like try to get to a bunker or something.

Trying to get exactly trying to get to this area where that was heavily fortified and before he could actually close the door The US forces that were that had descended into that compound were able to actually apprehend him So very dramatic scene something out of a movie

Seriously.

And there's one more dramatic detail here, which is that when the helicopters were apparently descending over that compound area, they did come under fire.

'On arrival into the target area, the helicopters came under fire, and they replied with that fire with overwhelming force and self-defense.

So they essentially neutralized, you know, any of the Venezuelan forces that were on the ground trying to protect Maduro. And one helicopter was actually hit in that crossfire, but it remained flyable for the whole mission. So this aircraft was damaged, but was able to stay in the air and ultimately get safe way.

Well, so I guess my question is, why do this now, after all this months of buildup that you and I have talked about on this show, why was this the moment to go in and take such a drastic step?

It's something that the president and his national security team had apparently been planning for for months and months.

Nicolas Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance, until they didn't and until he didn't. He effed around, and he found out.

They say they tried to exhaust other options. President Trump spoke to Maduro multiple times, urging him to step aside.

I did have conversations with him and I said you got to surrender. I actually thought he was pretty close to doing so, but now he wished he did, yeah.

And so he said that this was, or at least he framed this as kind of a last resort after months, of course, of threatening military action inside Venezuela itself. Of course, we know that the US military has been building up this massive presence in the Caribbean, a dozen warships, thousands of US troops have been there since August. And the CIA, in fact, installed a small team inside Venezuela, according to sources, in August in order to monitor Maduro's movements and create a pattern of life. And so I think that all of the contingency planning was in place just in case it came to this point. And, you know, there was always a hope kind of in the background of administration officials that maybe there would be some kind of popular uprising against Maduro, maybe his own, you now, security forces would revolt against him and try to remove him and the U.S. Wouldn't have to get involved. But ultimately, they saw that Maduro wasn't budgeting and that there was no kind of groundswell of opposition to him that would result in him actually being removed from power. And so this is something that President Trump has been talking about doing since his first term. There were plans underway even then to try to oust Maduro and replace him with opposition elements that the US has long considered to be the rightful leaders of Venezuela. But this is such a dramatic escalation. And I think the fact that they didn't tell members of Congress even before they were doing this kind of regime change operation is also going to result in a lot of questions.

Yes, lots of questions from Congress for sure, but in Venezuela, the biggest question on everyone's mind right now is, who's going to be running the country? When we come back, why, President Trump says the U.S. Will have a big hand in it. Natasha and I are back in a bit, stick around. I was speaking to a freelance journalist working for us in Caracas earlier today, and she was saying that Maduro still has a lot of loyalists remaining in Venezuela, and they might not be ready to step aside just because Maduro has been taken away. Obviously, the Trump administration wants all the parts of the Maduro regime to get out of the way. So how exactly are they going to make sure that happens? What is the plan now that Maduros out?

So President Trump also alluded to this during his press conference. He said that the U.S. Had spoken to Delci Rodriguez, who is Venezuela's vice president, who was put in power by Venezuelan President Maduro.

She had a long conversation with Marco and she said we'll do whatever you need. I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn't have a choice. We're going to have this done right.

And the suggestion was that she is going to be running the country with de facto U.S. Support, with people from the U. S. Government backing her, at least for the time being, at least assuming that she runs things the way the U S. Government wants to see them run.

So Marco's working on that directly, just had a conversation with her, and she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again, very simple.

And so that suggests that the US is putting their stock in her right now and hoping that because they saw how Maduro was ousted and how the US government is clearly not afraid to put boots on the ground in Venezuela, that she and other elements of the Maduro regime will kind of fall in line. Now that's really significant because it indicates that the opposition in Venezuela is kind of being tossed to the side for the moment. The administration had been kind of stringing along the opposition, which is led by Maria Corina Machado, for months now, kind of dangling this possibility that they would be installed as the rightful leaders in Venezuela.

I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't the respect to be a leader.

Now it seems like the administration is content to let Maduro's vice president, his deputy, Delci Rodriguez, stay in power for at least the time being. And Trump actually said that he doesn't think that Machado is capable of leading the country at this point, that she doesn't have the respect of the Venezuelan people to be able to lead it effectively.

That's just really confusing to me because I thought the opposition, I thought the international community considered them the rightful winners of that past election that Maduro basically grabbed. So why would an ally of Maduro want to work with the U.S. On running the country into its next phase? Like what's going on?

I think everyone is asking that question and it's extremely confusing. Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize late last year and that did not sit well with President Trump. She dedicated her prize to the president, but there's a lot of speculation in that perhaps he doesn't have a lot of respect for her personally. And that is part of the reason why he's kind of moving them to the side in order to, you know, put front and center. Someone who may be more compliant to the administration's desires, especially because it seems like they may be operating out of fear right now, given what they saw Maduro doing.

I want to go back to what Trump said repeatedly at this news conference about that the US would run the country of Venezuela. And he was asked a lot of questions and there wasn't a ton of clarity, but I guess I'm just wondering, what do we know at this point about what Trump might be envisioning of how involved the US would be in this country? Because we've been down this path before with US entanglements and honestly it just hasn't ended well.

It's totally unclear what he meant by that, to be honest. I think everyone's trying to parse that right now. He suggested at one point that his national security team, so Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Cain, would effectively be leading a group that would be running Venezuela, or at least be helping to run Venezuela in conjunction with, of course, the regime elements that are currently in place.

But we're going to be running it with a group, and we're going to make sure it's run properly. We're going rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars. It'll be paid for by the oil companies directly.

'But obviously the follow-up question and one that he did not answer was whether there are going to be troops on the ground in Venezuela to try to secure the country in the midst of what could be a very significant power vacuum.

You referenced boots on the ground earlier. Can you just sort of button this up? Do you envision the US military having a presence in Venezuela as the US runs? Well, no.

Well, no, we're going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil, because we have to have. We're sending our expertise in. So you may need something, not very much. But no, We're going be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela.

And part of what President Trump was saying as well is that US oil companies and US oil interests are going to be there and that they're going to provide some degree of stability. But this also assumes that the US is going to kind of be treated and welcomed with open arms by the Venezuelan people who are going allow them to operate there and allow the Venezualan government to be essentially a puppet regime of the United States. And so there's just so much right now that we don't know about the mechanism of how this is actually going to work. President Trump was extremely vague about it and just said that it's going to be a group, you know, led by his national security team that is going to working with the people on the ground in Venezuela to make this happen.

The legality of the strikes on the alleged drug boats that we had been talking about for months was always questionable at best, but waltzing into a foreign country and capturing its leader and his wife seems like way beyond that. So I know a lot of people are asking, was this legal?

Yeah, this is a really interesting question. So we're told that internally, Trump administration officials are pointing to this 1989 legal opinion and the subsequent US invasion of Panama as precedent to justify this operation without seeking congressional approval first. Interestingly, that 1989 legal opinions, it was authored by Bill Barr, who at that time was the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. And of course he later served as attorney general in President Trump's first term. And what that opinion concluded is that the president has the inherent constitutional authority to deploy the FBI to investigate and arrest individuals for violating US law, quote, even if those actions contravene international law. And as we know from our reporting, the FBI was on the ground with US Delta Force soldiers during Friday night's operation to arrest Maduro and his wife. And the administration particularly Marco Rubio, have been framing this very much as a law enforcement operation that was simply supported by the U.S. Military.

So they're basically saying we were going to make an arrest a law enforcement arrest We just needed the military to come protect the law enforcement officials to make this arrest and that's why we had to come in With the the helicopters and the strikes and all that just to make sure they were safe. That's basically the gist

That's exactly right. And this 1989 legal opinion gives them the cover to do that because it focuses solely on the authority of the president and the attorney general through the president's authority to authorize the FBI to carry out these extraterritorial arrests, as long as that is consistent with US domestic law, completely going against what international law says and what the UN Charter says about preventing members from. Invading another country's sovereign territory. Regardless of all that, this opinion says if the FBI needs to carry out an arrest and if it's deemed legal and if its an indictment that is deemed sound, then they can do that. And you know, a lot of legal experts have a lot serious problems with that and they say that this situation is very different from the one in 1989 when the U.S. Invaded Panama and ultimately captured. Manuel Noriega, who then stood trial in Miami for very similar crimes to what Maduro's being accused of, primarily that Panama at that point had declared war on the United States. But we're told that this is what the administration is pointing to as a precedent and one legal advisor told us that this may indeed check all the boxes that they need to make the argument that this was legal.

Yeah, I guess you could say, though, that there are plenty of other bad actors wanted by the U.S. Warrants out for their arrest, but we don't see the military providing escort to go in there and grab them. Like this is a pretty wild case.

It's completely remarkable and I think that it's very difficult, it's going to be very difficult for them to argue with a straight face that this was a law enforcement operation first, when you had all of these troops, 150 plus military aircraft, Delta Force operators, you know, obviously invading a sovereign country, dropping bombs because they did, there were strikes on land targets during this operation. And then using this legal opinion to justify all of that. It's going to be a tough sell.

Yeah, not to mention the question of whether to notify Congress. Basically, the reporting suggests that they were all notified after the fact. So that's going to have to be untangled in the days ahead as well. But I guess, finally, I'm wondering about the geopolitical implications here. What does the world think about what the Trump administration has done here?

You know, I think that we're going to be seeing widespread condemnation of this. We already see, you know, one of the European Union's top officials coming out and saying that, you now, this is something that they're closely monitoring, that the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be respected, calling for restraint from the US. You know this is that many critics are going to look at and say, what kind of message does this send to the Russians? What kind of messages does this end to the Chinese who have been eyeing Taiwan? And does it give them kind of carte blanche to say, look, the US did it. The US kind of invaded this country and removed a leader. Obviously it's debated whether or not Maduro was a legitimate leader, but then what's stopping us? And so I think that's kind of the precedent that the rest of the world, or at least the democratic world, the western world, is going to be looking at. But then you have reaction from Latin Americans and Cubans and Venezuelan people themselves who believe and rightfully believe that they have been under a dictatorship for so long and have been repressed.

I don't know, I'm happy! I don´t know about the other person

and you see people celebrating in the streets.

I can't think straight. I have a lot of mixed feelings. I'm very happy, very excited. It's very intense feelings. We've been waiting for this for 26 years, and it finally happened. I can...

And so, you know, I think that you're gonna have kind of the emotional reaction to this and you're gonna have the pragmatic reaction that says what's next and what does this mean for the international community. But I think it's all going to depend on how the U.S. Is able to or not, you, know, create a stabilizing presence in Venezuela and just make sure that, you know, we don't have a repeat of Iraq and Libya because obviously U. S. Interventions have not while in the past.

Yeah, and we're seeing this from even parts of Trump's MAGA base, you know, questioning whether this is truly America first to be involved in this way to run a country as Trump has suggested. Whatever details may come from that, there's certainly questions about just what this involvement could mean politically for Trump as well going forward. Well, Natasha, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

On Saturday afternoon, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez addressed her nation in a defiant speech, condemning U.S. Aggression and saying Venezuela will never be a colony again.

We demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, the only president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

And just hours after that, Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores arrived in the US. Ahead of Maduro's first court appearance on drug trafficking and weapons charges in New York next week, Maduro had previously denied drug trafficking allegations. That's all for us today. You can get up to the minute updates on this story over at CNN.com and we'll be right back here on Wednesday with another episode. I'll talk to you later.