President Donald Trump has always loved the idea of taking other countries' oil by force. And he claims to have accomplished that goal in Venezuela. The war there "lasted 48 minutes, and we paid for the war with what we've taken out many, many, many times. Where have you heard that before? You haven't heard that before. That's the old fashioned way, right? The old-fashioned way. To the victor belong the spoils," Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
That's not how other officials advertised U.S. oversight of Venezuelan oil. "We're the bankers, we don't direct the funds," Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told the Economic Club of Minnesota in January. "This is the oil of the people of Venezuela," Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to Congress a few weeks later, claiming that the U.S. government was making sure that "the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met" through oil sales.
