Trump Has Allegedly Wanted To Steal Venezuela's Oil For Years

After Trump said we would keep their oil, Venezuela accused the US of blatant theft, echoing an accusation that amid his 2017 aggression against the country Trump said, "They have all that oil."

After the US seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, Venezuela accused the US of wanting to steal its oil. Asked what we would do with the oil on the tanker, President Trump said, “We keep it, I guess.”

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House, claiming “it was seized for a very good reason.”

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“What happens to the oil?” Trump was asked.

“Well, we keep it, I guess,” Trump replied casually, as if this resource were his to do with what he pleases.

Venezuela does not agree.

Venezuela called this a theft, and accused the US of wanting to plunder its natural resources rather than the stated objectives of fighting trafficking or defending democracy, the BBC reported.

Venezuela’s government said the seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy… Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed… It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”

The accusation that Trump’s true motive is to steal their oil echoes an accusation former FBI chief Andrew McCabe made about Donald Trump in his first term allegedly saying of Venezuela, “They have all that oil.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed the tanker was “transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela to Iran”.

“They Have All That Oil”

Former FBI chief Andrew McCabe claimed in his book that Trump wanted war in Venezuela because “they have all that oil.”

Jeffrey Sachs and Francisco Rodríguez wrote for Project Syndicate in 2019 as it looked increasingly like Trump would lead us into war with Venezuela during his first term that it looked like these ideas had been on Trump’s mind for a while already:

As former acting FBI director Andrew G. McCabe revealed recently in his book The Threat, Trump said in a 2017 meeting that he thought the US should be going to war with Venezuela. McCabe quotes Trump as saying: “They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” The comments echo Trump’s 2011 statement that Obama let himself get “ripped off” by not demanding half of Libya’s oil in exchange for US help in overthrowing dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi.

This, they say, was part of a miscalculation on the part of the Trump administration:

On this great challenge, US President Donald Trump’s administration has gravely miscalculated. When the United States chose to recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s president – along with a group of Latin American countries – and ban oil trade with the Maduro government, it was betting that the pressure would be sufficient to topple the regime. As a former senior US official told the Wall Street Journal, “they thought it was a 24-hour operation.”

They ended this 2019 analysis with a rather haunting passage, “Trump and other US leaders say that the time for negotiation has passed. They believe in a short, quick war if necessary. World leaders – and those in Latin American countries first and foremost – should open their eyes to the risks of a devastating war, one that could last for years and spread widely.”

Many of McCabe’s claims about Trump’s perceived ignorance and disdain for the rule of law were corroborated by other sources, including journalists. He was also accused in 2018 of making false statements to the Inspector General regarding media leaks about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation probe as Trump sought to portray him as an unreliable source.

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