Nine months ago, the Trump regime assembled a military force off the coast of Venezuela that included the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Then it sent in Delta Force and about 150 aircraft to snatch up the country’s leader and jail him in the United States.
Last week, the Trump regime announced an “agreement” with the Trump-approved Venezuelan government to grab 65 billion barrels of oil.
Axios called it “taking an ownership stake.”
Semafor described it as “custodianship” of the country’s oil industry.
The New York Times called it “a significant win for the Trump administration.”
To me, it seems reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde taking an “ownership stake” in banks and serving as “custodians” for the money in a “significant win” for their criminal gang.
Dictators steal things. That’s not a news flash. But when some journalists enthusiastically focus on how much money the thieves will make, it shows a news industry that has been laundered of a basic sense of right and wrong. Shockingly few people in the media are asking: Do we really want to be a country that blows people up and steals from them?
From a military perspective, the Jan. 3 raid was well executed. No U.S. soldiers were killed, but an estimated 80 to 100 Venezuelans and Cubans died, some of them civilians. From an international-rule-of-law perspective, the attack was shameful. The regime dishonestly cast the abduction of Nicolás Maduro as a law enforcement operation rather than a blatant act of aggression.
Instead of freeing Venezuelans from a dictatorship, Trump left Maduro’s underlings in place, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is effectively running the country’s finances. No elections have been scheduled, and opposition leader Maríia Coarina Machado has not returned from exile.
Trump quickly declared that the country’s oil money “will be controlled by me” to benefit both Venezuela and the United States. Early this month, he said, “We’re making hundreds of billions of dollars, and so are they.” But fact-checkers say that’s impossible, since Venezuela’s gross domestic product is only $111 billion. The exact oil revenue collected since the attack – and who’s getting what – remains opaque.
One thing is crystal clear, though: The raid on Venezuela was an armed robbery.
Some news outlets want us to think the regime is doing Venezuela a favor. Axios, a frequent channel for Trump regime spin, cited the disrepair of the country’s oil industry before the U.S. attack and offered this supposedly exonerating paragraph to justify the theft:
The administration is sensitive to accusations that Rodriguez would be giving away Venezuela’s natural resources to the U.S., one official said, so ‘we’re going out of our way to show how this will benefit the people of Venezuela, because it will.’
The Associated Press buys into Trump’s spin, too. In early August, the AP said talks between the Rodríguez government and the opposition “will focus on strengthening democracy and restoring rights after nearly three decades of socialist rule.” But the problem with Venezuela’s previous government wasn’t socialism – it was authoritarianism. They’re not the same thing!
The story carried the subhead: “US wants to facilitate process, not dictate.” Yeah, sure, AP. Because Trump is a famously hands-off person, especially when he’s the one with the guns.
Business media seem especially excited by the oil grab. CNBC said Trump was “trying to solve this three-dimensional oil puzzle that’s gripping the world right now.” But the outlet did note that “the sitting Venezuelan administration that the United States is negotiating with was installed by the U.S. government earlier this year, so presumably the thumb is on the scale.”
The Washington Post, whose opinion section is in the tank for Trump but whose news section often performs well, was an exception to the cheerleading. WaPo cast doubt on Trump’s claim that the oil deal would be cost-free for U.S. taxpayers and noted that a key Venezuelan partner, Alejandro Betancourt López, is “the subject of investigations in multiple countries into alleged money laundering and faces a Swiss warrant for his arrest.”
Of course, defiance of the law is an asset to Trump, not a disqualification.
Trump called the Venezuelan operation the “perfect scenario” for what he hoped to do to Iran. But while the Iran war has been a strategic failure so far, Trump is still thinking about plunder. In April, he posted: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” More recently, he insanely called the Strait of Hormuz a “new U.S. territory.”
The more the media cast the Venezuela operation as a “success,” the more they encourage Trump to menace the Middle East and move on to Greenland and Cuba.
Some might say it’s not the job of straight-news reporters to determine whether Trump’s smash-and-grab policies are right or wrong. But journalists make value judgments all the time, and an obvious one in today’s world is to believe in human rights and national sovereignty, where the powerful don’t run roughshod over the weak. Too often, the American news industry mistakes normalizing theft and murder for “objectivity.”
If major media are too timid to challenge American banditry themselves, they could at least quote people who do. Initial coverage was full of oil-deal boosterism from Trump, Rubio, and Rodríguez, and short on skepticism.
A “might is right” mentality has consumed the U.S. government. If it fully consumes the news media, we’re doomed.
This week’s media atrocity
In its six-month assessment of the war with Iran, the New York Times ran the headline: “U.S. Goals Remain Unmet.” That’s quite an understatement. Even things that weren’t stated goals are unmet, such as keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, protecting Gulf countries from attacks, and maintaining decent relations with European allies.
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This is another huckster deal in which Trump will put up no money of his own and somehow glean a lot money before the money-losing project falls into bankruptcy, having produced very little oil for the global market.
From Ron Filipkowski:
NYT: “Any meaningful new production from Venezuela will take years to materialize. As a result, the effort will have little immediate impact on global commodity prices, which in turn determine what US consumers pay at the pump.”
Trump posted this claim [Sunday] today: “One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the US.”
Oil and Gas expert Matt Randolph: “Venezuela no longer has the upgrading capacity to make their oil compatible for the SPR. So, yes you can put Venezuelan oil in but it MUST be upgraded. They can’t do that right now. For them to build a new upgrader you are conservatively looking at 10-12 Billion dollars and 5-7 years.”
Ronald Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman posted: “Trumpy scores another own goal. The all-in economic cost of Venezuelan heavy crude is $70 per barrel compared to the 56 year constant dollar average price of global crude at $71/barrel, less 15% discount for low quality Venezuelan crude or $60 per barrel. That is to say, a $10/barrel loss on 65 billion barrels of crude under the Donald’s latest deal. The Art of the Deal strikes again!!!”
You’re right, it’s theft.