WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said the US used a secret weapon he called “The Discombobulator” to disable Venezuelan equipment when the US captured Nicolás Maduro. Trump also renewed his threat to conduct military strikes on land against drug cartels, including in Mexico.
Trump made the comments in an interview Friday with the New York Post.
The Republican president was commenting on reports that the US had a pulsed energy weapon and said, “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
He said the weapon made Venezuelan equipment “not work.”
“They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off,” Trump said in the interview. “We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”
Trump had previously said when describing the raid on Maduro’s compound that the US had turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” but he didn’t detail how they accomplished that.
The president also indicated the US will continue its campaign of military strikes and could extend it from South America into North America as the administration tries to target drug cartels.
“We know their routes. We know everything about them. We know their homes. We know everything about them,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit the cartels.”
When asked if the strikes could occur in Central America or Mexico, Trump said: “Could be anywhere.”
The US on Friday carried out a strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the first such action since Maduro’s capture.
It marks at least 36 known strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September that have killed at least 117 people.
Trump said the US has removed the oil aboard seven oil tankers connected to Venezuela that it has seized but wouldn’t reveal where the ships are now.
“I’m not allowed to tell you,” Trump said. “But let’s put it this way, they don’t have any oil. We take the oil.”
During the interview, the president also said that he was still trying to figure out where to hang the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, which she gave to him earlier this month. The prize was leaning against a statue in the Oval Office.
Trump also told the newspaper that the framework of an Arctic security deal he struck with NATO chief Mark Ruttte would give the US ownership of the land where American bases are located.
“We’ll have everything we want,” Trump said. “We have some interesting talks going on.”
Much of the potential deal remains unclear. Leaders of Denmark and Greenland have said the island’s sovereignty was non-negotiable and a NATO spokesperson said Rutte, in his conversations with Trump, did not propose any “compromise to sovereignty.”
The president said he would not go to the Super Bowl and called it a “terrible choice” for Bad Bunny and Green Day to perform at the game. He attended last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans.