Trump Pulls The Same Nick Shirley Trick

With respectable journalists still on Christmas break, Trump sends the military into Venezuela and plucks out Maduro and his wife to face indictment and trial on drug and weapons charges, just like that.

The Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Saturday morning that “Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.”

Senator Cotton said that he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who informed him that Maduro is in custody in the United States “and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens.”

“I commend President Trump and our brave troops and law-enforcement officers for this incredible operation. The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran and Cuba or whether to act like a normal nation and return to the civilized world. I urge them to choose wisely,” he said.

As a footnote:

Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez claimed on Saturday morning that the Venezuelan socialist regime has no information on the current whereabouts of dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores after President Donald Trump announced their capture.

Rodríguez, speaking over the phone with VTV, the Maduro regime’s flagship propaganda outlet, claimed that Venezuela has been “violated, attacked, and assaulted” by the United States and demanded that the U.S. government immediately shows “proof of life” of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.

The big thing I noticed is how the mission was planned to take place on January 2, when both Venezuelans and the US press were presumably still recovering from New Year's Eve. Trump himself had been at at Mar-a-Lago since before Christmas , but he was clearly still at work, for instance meeting with Zelensky the previous Sunday and issuing Truth Social posts on Iran and Somali fraud over the course of the week -- but nothing specific on Venezuela.

Let's compare this action with the outwardly similar removal of Manuel Noriega from Panama in 1989-90 under Poppy Bush:

Noriega, who had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies, consolidated power to become Panama's de facto dictator in the early 1980s. . . . In 1989, Noriega annulled the results of the Panamanian general elections, which appeared to have been won by opposition candidate Guillermo Endara; President Bush responded by reinforcing the U.S. garrison in the Canal Zone. Following the declaration of a state of war between Panama and the United States passed by the Panamanian general assembly,. . . Bush authorized the execution of the Panama invasion plan.

On December 20, the U.S. invasion of Panama began. Panamanian forces were rapidly overwhelmed. . . . Endara was sworn in as president shortly after the start of the invasion. Noriega eluded capture for several days before seeking refuge in the Holy See diplomatic mission in Panama City. He surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was then flown to the U.S., where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The Pentagon estimated that 516 Panamanians were killed during the invasion, including 314 soldiers and 202 civilians. A total of 23 U.S. soldiers and 3 U.S. civilians were killed. The United Nations General Assembly, the Organization of American States and the European Parliament condemned the invasion as a violation of international law.

The Panama operation took over two weeks and left hundreds of casualties. The time span between the invasion and the ultimate capture of Noriega gave the usual suspects plenty of time to set up their condemnations of blah blah blah. In the case of Venezuela, the whole thing took place overnight while everyone important was snoozing away. You can bet the news anchors were still at their retreats in Aspen. As of yesterday, the story at Reuters was:

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said in a New Year's interview that his country is willing to receive U.S. investment in its oil sector, coordinate in the fight against drug trafficking and hold serious talks with the United States.

"We must start to speak seriously, with the facts in hand," Maduro said in his annual interview with a Spanish journalist, originally published in Mexican newspaper La Jornada and broadcast on Venezuelan state television on New Year's Day.

By yesterday night, this was all inoperative. In an interview this morning with Fox:

he said,

I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. The speed, the violence, you know, they used that term. . . . It was extremely complex, the whole maneuver, the number of landings, the number of aircraft. . . the number of helicopters, the different type of fighter jets, we had a fighter jet for every possible situation. . . and they broke into places that were not really able to be broke into, you know? Steel doors that were put there for just this reason, and they got taken out in a matter of seconds. . . . I've done some pretty good ones in other parts of the world, okay? . . . We did another one not so long ago, it was called the knocking out of the Iranian nuclear threat. . .

He imp;lies that casualties on both sides were relatively low, likely much lower than those in Bush's Panama operation. But it's also worth noting that the Iran strike took place on June 22, the period between Memorial Day and July 4 when respectable journalism shuts down for summer break, which is likely to last until Columbus Day lately.

Both Trump and Nick Shirley are re-teaching an important lesson: act when everyone else is snoozing. But Trump is also building a new set of expectations: he does what he wants, but he's unpredictable. In fact, he'll do it at the worst possible time for his opponents, in a way that nevertheless reflects it's been meticulously planned.

In fact, it's becoming clear that the Venezuelan operation was being planned and implemented in detail over the whole course of the past year:

In January 2025, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14157 that directed the US State Department to label certain Western Hemisphere drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

. . . In July, the US designated the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles)—a criminal organization that the US alleges has ties to the Venezuelan leadership—as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. At the time, the US State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs posted on X that it would use "all the resources at our disposal to prevent Maduro from continuing to profit from destroying American lives and destabilizing our hemisphere"

. . . After authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels, the Trump administration doubled the reward for the capture of Maduro to US$50 million. At the time, an anonymous US official told Reuters that military action against those groups did not seem imminent; another official told Reuters that powers granted in the order included allowing the Navy to carry out sea operations including drug interdiction and targeted military raids.

I love how Reuters has always been the patsy lately.

In August 2025, the US began deploying warships and personnel to the Caribbean, citing the need to combat drug cartels, although most of the fentanyl entering the US is over land via Mexico. On 20 August, Trump ordered three Navy warships to the coast of South America. As of 29 August, seven US warships, along with one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, were in and around the Southern Caribbean, bringing along more than 4,500 sailors and marines.

It's simply astonishing that Trump, the intelligence apparatus, and the War Department were able to bring all this planning and rehearsal off without a leak. Nobody, it seems, had the tiniest inkling; Maduro was setting up a diplomatic campaign with China that very dayL

Just 5 hours ago, Chinese officials arrived in Venezuela for talks with President Maduro.

4 hours later, the US launched large airstrikes on Venezuela's capital in a major escalation.

A statement from President Trump is expected. pic.twitter.com/jbDMXSXnRq

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) January 3, 2026

But consider you're China thining about annexing Taiwan. They now have to consider seriously what Trump would do: he could plan almost anything, he could carry it out with incredible speed and surprise, and the US military could bring the whole thing off.

Trump deliberately cultivates an expectation that he acts on impulse -- in fact, that his motives are entirely self-serving and unpredictable. I'm convinced that nothing could be farther from the truth.

But what does this also say about Secretary Hegseth and the War Department? Think about just one tiny part of the whole plan, that the admirals and gemerals were at minimum too terrified to leak. Not the least little peep. Allowing for the relative scale of the different operations, I nevertheless think we haven't seen anything like this since D-Day and the Manhattan Project.