In Venezuela’s takeover, Trump revolves around oil
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Saturday defended his regime-change military attack on Venezuela as a “law enforcement” operation to arrest a drug trafficker, just five weeks after he pardoned and released from prison a convicted drug trafficker and despite his multiple statements that the raid was to gain access to oil.
“Our military, working with us and law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro,” Trump said, referring to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, in a news conference from his Florida country club, where he spent the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Trump went on to say that the US military would govern Venezuela for the foreseeable future. “We are not afraid of the troops on the ground,” he said.
“We don’t want to get involved in anyone else coming in, and we have the same situation we had for the last few years,” he added. “We are going to govern the country until such time as we can make a safe, appropriate and sensible transition, and it has to be sensible.”
He also claimed that Venezuela had “stolen” oil from the United States.
“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations,” he said. “This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. Considered the largest theft of property in the history of our country. They took over a huge oil infrastructure like we were babies.”
Jesús Vargas via Getty Images
But Trump’s alleged interest in Maduro’s alleged drug trafficking stands in stark contrast to his Dec. 1, 2025, pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández. The former president of Honduras was serving a 45-year sentence in federal prison after a jury determined he had been responsible for smuggling more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Trump claimed, without evidence, that Hernandez had been unfairly prosecuted by his predecessor, Joe Biden, even though the criminal investigation into his activities had spanned three presidential administrations, including his own first term from 2017 to 2021.
Meanwhile, Trump has been open about his desire for the United States to exploit Venezuelan oil reserves.
Running to regain office in 2024, Trump said he had come close to gaining that control in his first term.
“When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We would have taken it. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door,” he said at a rally in North Carolina.
Just two weeks ago, Trump cited oil as justification for his military buildup off the coast of Venezuela.
“They took away our oil rights, they eliminated our companies, and we want them back,” he told reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, next to Air Force One.
For years, Trump has expressed his belief that the United States had the right to confiscate oil using the military. Although he falsely claimed to have opposed President George W. Bush’s Iraq war from the beginning, he said he would have seized Iraqi oil. “Take the oil!” he said frequently at his rallies in 2016.
Trump, in his comments Saturday, repeated several of his common lies about Venezuela and drug smuggling. He claimed that each of the suspected drug smuggling ships he ordered destroyed in recent months represented 25,000 American lives saved.
In fact, that could only be true if the ships were carrying the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, and the Trump administration has offered no evidence of this. Most of the fentanyl entering the United States arrives across the border with Mexico, transported by American citizens.
The 100 people killed so far on the boats were probably trafficking cocaine or even marijuana.
Trump also claimed, once again, that Venezuela had dumped thousands of its criminals and mentally ill people into the United States. There is no evidence of this, and the false claim could reflect Trump’s confusion between people seeking political asylum and people in mental health facilities.