President Donald Trump says the U.S. used a secret weapon he called “The Discombobulator” to disable Venezuelan equipment when the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators at a Jan. 28 hearing that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was an "impediment to progress" and had refused to make a deal with the Trump administration before it captured him in a surprise military operation on Jan. 3.

President Donald Trump said the US used a weapon he referred to as a “discombobulator” to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this month, but a senior US official said he’s likely conflating tools used by the US military.

President Donald Trump and U.S. officials have laid out some of the details of the U.S. military strike against Venezuela that led to the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro.

WASHINGTON — President Trump told The Post that a secret new weapon he calls “The Discombobulator” was essential to the daring US raid that captured Venezuela’s drug-dealing dictator Nicolas Maduro. Trump boasted that the mysterious weapon “made [enemy] equipment not work” when US helicopters swooped into Caracas on Jan.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there's been "good and decent progress” in Venezuela since the United States ousted Nicolas Maduro as leader of the South American country

As the Trump administration prepared late last year for the US military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a handful of officials began studying the US approach to oil resources in Iraq following the 2003 US invasion.

After Trump ordered the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the President publicly announced that he did not like how the Venezuelan leader tried to copy his dance moves. Author Michael Wolff recently said that he believes the imitation was one of the reasons why the POTUS decided to attack Venezuela.

The president claimed that the device used during the capture caused "[enemy] equipment" to "not work"

In response to a question from Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the interim Venezuelan government is helping identify the "shadow fleet ships" used to evade oil sanctions.