Trump Oversees Venezuela Mission from Mar-a-Lago Club (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: You might have expected President Trump to monitor that high-stakes capture of Venezuela President Maduro from the Oval Office or the Situation Room, but he was actually in Florida, in a makeshift space at his Mar-a-Lago club, transformed into a war room covered with black drape and fitted with secure internet lines, a sophisticated phone system and several monitors, including a live feed of posts from the social media platform X. Then hours later, Trump addressed the nation from the Mar-a-Lago Tea Room, that's a room with an elaborate tinted ceiling and a three-tiered crystal chandelier, where he fielded questions from reporters and announced that the U.S. would run Venezuela. Meanwhile, Mar-a-Lago guests were arriving at the club as usual. They were dressed in their tennis whites, driving BMWs and Tesla Cybertrucks to security, seated under those yellow and white umbrellas at the beach club and taking in views of the Atlantic. That evening, Trump greeted club members dining on the crowded, glitzy patio, and they cheered his momentous mission. The setup for this operation was constructed in a discreet area of the club, away from those guests, according to one person familiar with the matter, but it's not the first time there's been potential intersection between club members and sensitive national security issues. Trump huddled with then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the patio after a North Korean missile launch. The two discussed how to respond as guests posted photos on social media. And since then, the president and his team have enacted tighter rules for guests snapping photos. The club is fortified with snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, and boats patrolling the intracoastal waterway.