ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio how, exactly, the Trump administration intends to secure Venezuelan oil fields in the wake of Nicolás Maduro’s ouster. The Florida Republican questioned the premise of the question.
“Well, ultimately, this is not about securing the oil fields,” Rubio said on “This Week.”
He might want to chat with his boss about that. In fact, hours later, when Donald Trump spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One, the president was asked about Venezuela’s oil reserves. “Well, we’re gonna run everything,” the Republican responded.
The comment was striking, but it wasn’t unusual. During his Saturday-morning press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the American president made little effort to hide his oil-driven ambitions for Venezuela, at one point declaring, “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Some of the resources, he added, would go to Venezuelans, “and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”
Trump went on to say that the U.S. mission in Venezuela, no matter how long the operations take, “won’t cost us anything, because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial.”
When a reporter asked how the offensive in Venezuela might affect U.S. relationships with China, Russia and Iran, the Republican added, “We’re in the oil business, we’re going to sell it to them. … In other words, we’ll be selling oil.”
He made similar comments to Fox News shortly before the press conference in which he also talked about selling Venezuelan oil to China. “Nobody can stop us,” he concluded.
While assorted figures in and around the White House have peddled talking points on drugs and immigration, before and after the bombs dropped in Venezuela, Trump’s principal focus has been on one thing: oil. Whether or not the American president understands this, the road ahead is incredibly complex. Trump’s bizarre sense of entitlement to a foreign country’s natural resources is rooted in a variety of errors, but even putting those aside, overhauling Venezuela’s oil industry will be expensive and time consuming, and it’s an open question as to whether and when any of this will benefit U.S. energy interests. But Trump has spent the last decade or so talking about taking and keeping other countries’ oil reserves. Now, evidently, the Republican is moving forward with a policy to achieve his long-sought goal.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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