President Donald Trump stated that US military forces deployed a weapon he called “the discombobulator” during the American operation in Caracas earlier this month to oust former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“The discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump told the New York Post in an interview. He added that the weapon caused enemy equipment to “not work.”
“They never got their rockets off,” Trump said, as reported by the Post. “They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off. We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”
The White House did not promptly reply to inquiries seeking more details about the weapon.
Following the operation, known as Operation Absolute Resolve, the president hinted at a technical capability during a news conference.
“It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly,” Trump stated following the operation.
American forces seized Maduro and his wife, Celia, during a pre-dawn raid on Jan. 3 and transported him to the US to answer to criminal charges. The move represented a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s prolonged campaign against the nation. Maduro has entered a not guilty plea to US charges in a narco-terrorism case.