Niall Ferguson: Maduro’s Capture Takes Us Back to the Future

In the earliest hours of January 3, a group of U.S. Delta Force operators broke into the heavily fortified presidential compound of Nicolás Maduro, the dictator who has ruled Venezuela since 2013.

Maduro tried to shut the door to a steel safe room, but it was too late. By 4:29 a.m. Caracas time, he and his wife were aboard the USS Iwo Jima bound for New York, where they are set to be arraigned as early as Monday.

“I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” an exultant President Donald Trump told Fox News over the phone. Later, in a press conference, he compared the operation to “World War II” and to the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities this past June.