Category: USA Politics

President Donald Trump recounted the military’s strength during the successful operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro during an event in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Friday honoring U.S. special forces and their families for their roles in the capture. 

“It was in a matter of minutes before (Maduro) was on a helicopter being taken out of there. They had to go through steel doors,” Trump said Friday afternoon. “The steels were like it was like papier-maché. You know what papier-maché is? That’s weak paper.”

U.S. special operations forces carried out the successful capture of Maduro and his wife on sweeping narcotics charges. Trump celebrated that the mission did not kill any U.S. military personnel or damage U.S. military equipment in a nation that is heavily militarized, with Maduro himself living on a protected military base.

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“These guys blasted through every door,” Trump continued Friday. “They got up to him before he got to the big safe. But that wouldn’t have worked either, because they had equipment that was going to knock that out in a matter of minutes, but he never got there. It went so fast.”

Trump continued that the operation had been “precise” and “incredible.”

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“Think of it in a matter of minutes,” he continued. “When people realize what happened, they’re looking up, and there’s the helicopter heading back to the aircraft carriers. So that night, the entire world saw what the full military might the U.S. military is capable of. And that was an unbelievable operation, but that was a smaller operation.” 

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Maduro was whisked off on a helicopter, before he was brought to the U.S., where he faces federal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-trafficking conspiracy and weapons-related offenses. He’s being held in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City. 

First lady Melania Trump joined the president on the trip to North Carolina, with Trump joking that they enjoy the area so much, they might move there in the future. 

“Maybe I’ll maybe I’ll move here with our great movie star,” Trump quipped, giving a nod to Melania Trump’s new documentary, “Melania.” “We’ll move here with our first lady. We’ll move to Fort Bragg. Would you like that, darling?  She loves you. It’s a possibility.”

Two of President Donald Trump’s top Democratic critics are using appearances at a high-profile European gathering to blast the Republican president’s agenda and beef up their foreign policy chops on the world state ahead of possible 2028 White House runs.

“Donald Trump is temporary,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday during a climate change discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “He’ll be gone in three years.”

And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, during a town hall at the prestigious conference, pointed to Trump and charged, “We are seeing our presidential administration tear apart the transatlantic partnership, rip up every democratic norm.”

Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez are the most well known of a small group of potential Democratic presidential contenders using appearances in Munich to criticize Trump’s international agenda and offer a contrast to Vice President JD Vance, the perceived 2028 Republican front-runner, who delivered a scathing attack on Europe during his speech at the security forum last year.

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The other Democrats with likely national ambitions making the rounds at the confab and meeting with international leaders are Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and former Commerce Secretary. Gina Raimondo.

Ocasio-Cortez pointed to her fellow Democrats in Munich and said, “I think many of us are here to say we are here, and we are ready for the next chapter, not to have the world turn to isolation, but to deepen our partnership … and increase commitment to integrity to our values.”

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Newsom, who is speaking at his third major international conference in recent months, following appearances last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and late last year at a world climate conference in Brazil, hammered Trump over climate policy, arguing the president is “doubling down on stupid.”

“Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant of the White House in Washington, D.C.,” Newsom charged. “Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock.”

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Fox Digital has reached out to the White House for a response to the jabs from Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez, during the first of her two appearances at the conference, was asked by the town hall moderator, “When you run for president, are you going to impose a wealth tax or a billionaire’s tax?”

Responding with a laugh, the four-term federal lawmaker then said, “I don’t think that anyone — that we don’t have to wait for any one president to impose a wealth tax… That needs to be done expeditiously.”

Matthew Bartlett, who served at the State Department during the first Trump administration, told Fox News Digital that “the regular foreign policy crowd is turning into something of a cattle call for 2028 as numerous Democrats take Munich to articulate their vision and try to develop some sort of foreign policy credential as the next presidential race is on the horizon.”

And Terry Shumaker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago during the Clinton administration, noted that the appearances in Munich by the potential candidates “gives them experience, confidence, and something to refer back to on the campaign trail when they’re asked about their foreign policy experience.”

And Shumaker, a longtime New Hampshire-based attorney and Democratic Party activist, said it also signals to the world “that Trump is not a monolith. That there’s another side of the story in the United States.”

President Donald Trump Friday sharply criticized former President Joe Biden’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling it an “embarrassment” and arguing his administration would not have left military equipment behind.

“You remember that where they left all the military equipment behind? We didn’t. We wouldn’t have left anything,” Trump said while speaking at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “We were going to get out with dignity and strength, respect. We looked like we were running. We don’t run from anybody. That was a Biden embarrassment.”

Trump also questioned why aircraft were not flown out of the country.

“We don’t leave equipment behind. We don’t leave jets behind,” he said. “I said, why do you leave those jets behind, sir? I thought it was cheaper to leave it behind. You know, $150 million plane. All they had to do is put a little jet fuel in there and fly it to wherever they want to fly it.”

He said the U.S. military had been rebuilt during his first term and is now stronger than ever.

“So with the help of everyone in this room, America is the strongest military on the face of the earth. We rebuilt it. We really did,” Trump said. “We rebuilt it in my first term.”

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His remarks came during a visit that honored the special operators involved in the operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which he contrasted as an “extraordinary military operation.” 

The U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 after nearly 20 years of war. The evacuation followed a February 2020 agreement negotiated during Trump’s first term that set a timeline for U.S. forces to leave the country.

Biden oversaw the final withdrawal as Taliban forces rapidly seized control of Afghanistan, culminating in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians.

Biden has argued that he was bound by the withdrawal agreement negotiated during Trump’s first term and faced the choice of completing the pullout or sending more U.S. troops back into combat. Trump has rejected that claim, saying his deal with the Taliban was “conditions-based” and that he would not have withdrawn if the Taliban failed to meet its commitments.

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden Friday for comment and has yet to receive a reply. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday made the case for the passage of the SAVE America Act, accusing opponents of the bill of favoring access to the ballot box for illegal immigrants. 

Noem was in the Phoenix area where she pushed the Trump administration’s efforts to shore up election integrity and voter security. 

She touched on the Save America Act, a bill that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote, photo identification to vote in federal elections, and for states to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls. She noted that wide majorities of Republicans and Democrats approve of the legislation. 

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However, she criticized the bill’s opponents, who say it will disenfranchise millions of voters. 

“Each of the arguments that have been laid out to criticize this bill are baseless speculation from the radical left because they want illegal aliens to vote in our elections,” Noem told reporters during a press conference. “They want to disenfranchise American citizens by telling them that their votes don’t matter. There’s only one reason that anyone would oppose this bill, and that’s because they would want to cheat.”

“They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them, and to rob the United States citizens of their vote,” she added. “And that’s why they resist us at every single level.”

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Congressional Democrats have characterized the bill as an effort to disappear millions of American off voter rolls, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., calling it “Jim Crow 2.0,” a term used by some to describe modern so-called voter suppression laws.

During her remarks, Noem mentioned a handful of illegal immigrants who were registered to vote in various states.

“There is no room in our election system for people that aren’t Americans,” she said. “There is no room in our election system for fraudsters and foreign influence.”

The secretary also called for Arizona to clean up its voter rolls, noting that DHS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) can be used to do just that. The program assists local, state and federal agencies to determine the citizenship and immigration status of individuals.

“Maybe people who’ve passed away, people that aren’t citizens, people that don’t live here,” she said. “That would make sure that in your next election, when people are casting their votes, they know they’re voting for the right decisions and that those votes are counted, and they’re counted appropriately, and someone else didn’t get to weigh in on their leadership.”

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Records obtained by The Post show the mayor was “directly” involved in the call to redirect scarce backup power to the Nutcracker ballet.

While the California governor immediately attacked President Trump during his visit to Munich, accusing the POTUS of “doubling down on stupid,” Gavin Newsom’s globetrotting has sparked its own backlash in the Golden State.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) laughed off ribbing by a panel moderator at the Munich Security Conference on Friday about a possible bid for the White House in 2028.

The official House Republican campaign arm is firing off backhanded valentines to a dozen of its top Democratic targets in the 2026 midterm elections, needling them over various controversies.

The secretary threatened federal investigations if the airlines refuse to comply.