‘Astonishing, audacious’: Retired 4-star general praises Venezuela operation, but asks: What’s next?
Jan 5, 2026, 4:08 PM
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by U.S. military forces on Saturday after Maduro dismantled Venezuela’s democracy and crashed its economy, according to The Associated Press. The operation has raised questions about legality, sovereignty, and presidential power.
Retired four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey praised the swift military operation but called President Donald Trump’s move an “astonishing display of unilateral presidential power” on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio.
“It was a brilliant military operation. It was just astonishing, audacious. It involved 150 some odd aircraft that put the Army’s Delta Force operators on the ground, snatching Maduro and his wife without harming them. It was simply beautifully done, and it’s quite a dangerous thing,” he said.
Although McCaffrey saw it as a “great military operation,” he raised concerns about moving forward.
“The question is — page two — what next? Who said we get to seize their oil?” McCaffrey said.
He pointed out that the good news is the Venezuelans are free from a brutal dictator who governed through street gangs and led to economic collapse, but there are issues around who is going to take over.
“The problem is, listening to Mr. Trump’s press conference, he says, ‘The guys who are going to govern Venezuela, who are going to run things, are behind me.’ What does he think is going to happen? There’s over 2,000 Venezuelan admirals and generals, and they all got a piece of the corruption assets. That means drugs and selling oil illegally to the Chinese through the ghost plate, that they’re not going to give up easily,” McCaffrey said.
“We’re not going to go back in and snatch the acting president, who’s a Chavista, the first order, and the second minister of defense in Venezuela is still in power, the Minister of the Interior with the police force, who says we’re going to be able to govern and expropriate their oil and build the economic structure over the coming 10 years. A lot of this is nonsense,” he continued.
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.
