Donald Trump at an event at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, January 6, 2026. Credit: ALEX WONG / Getty images / Profimedia
US President Donald Trump celebrated the capture of his Venezuelan counterpart on Tuesday in a speech addressed to Republicans attending an event at the Kennedy Center, where he said, among other things, that Nicolas Maduro was trying to imitate his dance, reports AFP.
After Maduro's capture, The New York Times wrote, citing sources, that the Venezuelan leader's public dancing and nonchalant attitude in recent weeks helped convince some members of Trump's team that Maduro was mocking them and trying to bluff, so Washington decided to act.
“They get up there and try to imitate my dance a little bit,” Trump told Republican congressmen at Washington's Kennedy Center, recently renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center.
“But he's a violent guy and he's killed millions of people. He's tortured. They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they're closing,” the US leader continued, without giving further details about the location he was referring to.
Maduro constantly appeared on stage dancing to a techno remix titled “No to War, Yes to Peace” as the US military presence grew in the Caribbean.
Trump is known for his dance to the disco song “YMCA” at rallies.
While he praised the “brilliant” operation by US forces that captured Maduro and his wife on Saturday to bring them to the US, most of Trump's speech focused on the importance of the 2026 midterm elections.
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Trump on Melania: “She hates when I dance”
Donald Trump returned to the subject of dance as he ran through a list of policy priorities, and when talking about banning transgender people from women's sports he mimicked, in exaggeration, what he described as a trans weightlifter.
“My wife hates it when I do that,” the US president said. “He said, 'That's so unpresidential,'” he added.
“He hates when I dance,” Trump continued, adding, “Could you imagine FDR dancing?”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945, was paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921.
