"Trump and his allies have now apparently decided to drop all pretense and stick to oil. They are publicly messaging and focused on access to Venezuela’s oil reserves as the primary goal of the military campaign."
~ Jay Kuo
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/1
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/trump-venezuela-maduro-unprepared
"During his triumphalist press conference after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Trump never used the word 'democracy.' He did, however, say 'oil' 27 times, declaring, 'We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.'
Even so, whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies."
~ Paul Krugman
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/2
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-emperors-new-oil-wealth
"Donald Trump has said Venezuela will be 'turning over' $2bn worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, a flagship negotiation that would divert supplies from China while helping Venezuela avoid deeper oil production cuts."
~ The Guardian
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/3
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/venezuela-oil-trump-us-latest
“'This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!' Trump said in a post online."
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/4
“'Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil.'
That’s Trump saying the quiet part out loud (again!) to MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough on the phone."
~ Pete Rothpletz
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/5
"By eschewing any notion of restoring democracy to the Venezuelan people, Trump has revealed his imperialist Big Oil mission as unadorned thuggery."
~ Sabrina Haake
#Trump #Venezuela #oil #thuggery #fascism
/6
https://sabrinahaake.substack.com/p/petroterrorism-the-new-politics-of
"A huge share of your tax dollar goes to pay for this military. This has become basically a private militia for the oil industry and Wall Street, that's also really bad for you."
~ Sen. Chris Murphy
#Trump #Venezuela #oil #WallStreet #EconomicElites
/7
https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/invading-venezuela-to-help-big-oil
A conversation about what happened and where we go from here
"See, that’s all it takes. You pick up the phone, you go on Truth Social, you say some stuff in ALL CAPS, and the world bends to your will. ...
This is how stupid Trump and Miller and Rubio are. They announced what they want to do with Venezuela’s oil. Trump used the word 'oil' twenty times in his press conference about the attack on Venezuela at Mar a Lago on Sunday."
~ Lucian K. Truscott
#Trump #Venezuela #oil
/8
Abigail Haddad notes that in the staged photos the White House released after Maduro's seizure, In one image, you can see the Director of the CIA, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense grouped around a laptop with a screen displaying feed from X behind them. In other pictures, you can see "Venezuela" in the search box.
#Trump #Venezuela #oil #SocialMedia #X #WarasTheater #PoliticsofTheater
/9
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/life-under-a-clicktatorship
"With the best intelligence systems in the world at their fingertips, they were checking X in the midst of the mission? Combined with the curtains separating some section of Mar‑A‑Lago from the rest of the President’s resort, the images create an almost surreal air. It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands."
William Lindsey 
Gondor