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"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition" And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go i

• _heimdall 9mo ago
  > I am still curious about the whole side bar about Washington being now safest and free of crime. I heard that as Trump doing his usual thing patting himself on the back while justifying the continued use of our military for domestic law enforcement.
  • Larrikin 9mo ago
    Why is this downvoted? He never misses a chance to say its a good thing that the military is being used on the American population. The recent ruling against the use of the National Guard comes at a time when Kavanaugh is just upset that his name is going down in history for the term Kavanaugh Stops
    • _heimdall 9mo ago
      I'm not sure. Either people are reading it as though I'm approving what Trump does (I'm not), or they are and don't like my description of it.
• perihelions 9mo ago
  More quotes in that vein, > "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so." > "We're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have it" > "It's gonna make a lot of money" > "Well, you know, it won't cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial" Reading @atrupar.com 's live transcriptions, https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com
  • XorNot 9mo ago
    The joke about joining the US military to protect a billionaires oil investments is now just publicly stated government policy apparently.
• tootie 9mo ago
  He also indicated they will work directly with Maduro's second in command, not the putative winning candidate from the last election. This is purely about theft.
  • alephnerd 9mo ago
    In the eyes of the US, the expropriation of American assets in Venezuela [0] and then selling them to Russian [1], Chinese [2], and Indian [3] interests was theft. Russian-US relations are tense for the same reasons due to the saga of Sakhalin-I's nationalization from Exxon [4] following the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine and Russia's sale of Exxon's stake to Japanese [5] and Indian [6] interests. The previous administration also stopped Saudi and UAE from invading Qatar in 2017 [7] due to Rex Tillerson's personal interests with Exxon's stake in Qatar's energy infra [8] That said, assuming the US doesn't attempt a Venezuelan version of de-Baathification [9], this should be a fairly standard transfer of power - US-Venezuela relations only really tanked when Maduro came to power and hard pivoted Eastward, as even under Chavez American business operations continued and the relationship wasn't severely tense. And from the sounds of it, the faction backing Delcy Rodriguez chose to give Maduro up and (reading between the lines) roll back nationalization in return for staying in power. Almost everything in political science can be modeled using Tsebelis's Veto Player model, Mesquita's Selectorate Theory, Kuran's Revolutionary Threshold, and the Agency Problem. [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/02/oilandpetrol.venezuela https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/02/oilandpetro... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/venezuela-approves-15-year-extension-russia-linked-oil-joint-ventures-2025-11-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/venezuela-approves-1... [2] - https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/072524-venezuela-awards-two-chinese-companies-oil-production-jv-contracts https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news... [3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-ongc-says-oil-an-option-recoup-600-mln-venezuela-dividend-2024-01-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-ongc-says-oil... [4] - https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/russia-takes-control-of-sakhalin-1-oil-and-gas-project/2-1-1331213?zephr_sso_ott=TCuyiF https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/russia-takes-contr... [5] - https://www.japex.co.jp/en/business/oilgas/sakhalin1/ https://www.japex.co.jp/en/business/oilgas/sakhalin1/ [6] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-ongc-moves-closer-keeping-20-stake-russias-sakhalin-1-project-sources-say-2025-12-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-ongc-moves-cl... [7] - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/8/1/rex-tillerson-stopped-saudi-and-uae-from-attacking-qatar https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/8/1/rex-tillerson-stoppe... [8] - https://www.qatarenergylng.qa/english/AboutUs/Corporate-Structure https://www.qatarenergylng.qa/english/AboutUs/Corporate-Stru... [9] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
• xg15 9mo ago
  Yeah, I was mostly surprised about the brazenness of it all. So the plan is to take over the government, take over the oil industry, sell the oil and in infinite grace give the Venezuelans some part of it back (minus of course the "compensation" for the years in which US companies were kept out of the country) And all that as official doctrine, not even some secret strategy paper or covert ops campaign. Edit: I had to chuckle at his "reviewing" of the Monroe doctrine as DONroe doctrine. There is "on the nose" and there is "punching someone in the face"...
  • JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > the plan is There is no plan. Again. Machado is standing by. But she’s a woman so Trump has ruled her out.
    • JKCalhoun 9mo ago
      He's just said she's not being considered.
      • JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        Correct. I spoke unclearly. I meant that we have a good option, our Endara to Noriega, but instead Trump is hard pivoting to the Baghdad model.
      • joseda-hg 9mo ago
        Which makes total sense, the military has been Chavismo's strongest asset for as long as it's been a thing That won't change just because Maduro isn't there, whomever does take control, will need external protection, or the US acting as an unspoken enforcer (Unspoken because "No boots on the ground right now" but "prepared for a second wave")
        • terminalshort 9mo ago
          I suspect there is also consideration of strategy here. The regime's lack of democratic approval is actually a benefit. A client state that has democratic approval has much more leeway to go against its master. A client regime that is unpopular with its population has no other base of support than the powerful country that put it there. This maximizes leverage.
• throw-the-towel 9mo ago
  Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
  • achenet 9mo ago
    On top of that, I don't think the common Venezuelan laborer was getting much benefit out of the Maduro regime capturing the oil wealth. From the point of view of the less fortunate, there isn't much difference between a Venezuelan elite enriching themselves off the local oil vs an American elite enriching themselves off the local oil.
    • svnt 9mo ago
      Right, that’s not the issue. The issue is national sovereignty. The US just started taking over South America.
      • solenoid0937 9mo ago
        Claims of sovereignty are meaningless, what happens is whether those claims hold up in real life, and in this case they clearly don't. A country is either powerful enough to enforce sovereignty, or it is not actually sovereign; so this hand-wringing about "Venezuela's sovereignty" is meaningless. It's already been proven false, to some extent. The US is free to do what it wants with Venezuela, or virtually any non-nuclear country in the world. Always has been, really. It simply doesn't exercise said power very often.
        • WaxProlix 9mo ago
          Is this then a call to assassinate local politicians you don't agree with? Some might makes right thing? We're all at least momentarily able to overpower or mortally harm one another, but often don't choose to. Why do you think that is?
          • 9mo ago
• morshu9001 9mo ago
  I prefer this honesty over the unrealistic expectations the US set up in each Mid East country plus Afghanistan.
  • joering2 9mo ago
    How about not going there at all for whatever reason, under any circumstances. And there are bigger issues at stake, no amount of drugs "made in Venezuela" inhaled by Americans can kill them as much as one North Korean Nuke. I'm surprised no lesson the US learnt from similar overthrows in the past, but again this is Trump. The country can get so unstable that by the time Marco start giving out "legitimate" orders, there will be 30 different groups fighting and killing each other. True unchecked anarchy. So what's then? Boots on ground. Are we still in the spirit of sacrificing 150,000 American soldiers in the name of freedom, like we did in Iraq? When we kicked out Russians from Middle East we were not aware they kept islam jihadists at bay, then Al Quaida came to live and we all now how it ended.
    • lisbbb 9mo ago
      [dead]
      • the_af 9mo ago
        [flagged]
    • morshu9001 9mo ago
      I wasn't even thinking about the drugs. Is that a real thing? North Korean nuke isn't a real concern. Iraq had no goal. The stated reason was WMDs and 9/11, so bogus and unrelated. Stability wasn't our concern either, I mean we funded Saddam Hussein to begin with. US companies did set up oil drilling, but I really don't think the driving motivation was oil, otherwise we'd have gone to Venezuela first.
      • Forgeties79 9mo ago
        You think our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was not related to oil?
• belter 9mo ago
  >>"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and >>judicious transition"- And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go >> into Venezuela" The new President of Venezuela will be called Fulgencio Batista...
  • jacquesm 9mo ago
    Hehe. Ok. This is not a funny thread but that is funny.
• asveikau 9mo ago
  The ironic thing is that nationalizing the oil was pretty much the most defensible part of Chávez's legacy. (To be clear I'm not a fan of Chávez or of Maduro.)
  • tim333 9mo ago
    Chavez actually did quite well in the early years. I'm not sure he nationalized oil but took greater amounts of the revenue in tax and used it for positive things for the people. It went downhill after a while with many of the problems common to communist policy though.
    • seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
      Chavez was corrupt but the people he replaced were also corrupt. Even when Venezuela was "rich", most of the people were poor and felt like they weren't benefiting from it. The US is probably going push Venezuela to that prior state, where the country is rich on paper but most people are struggling, setting up a call for another Chavez. That assumes the US can just waltz into the country and take complete control, which is probably not going to happen.
      • terminalshort 9mo ago
        Better some people are poor than everybody is poor, which tends to be the result of putting leftists in charge.
        • TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago
          How large is your ideal value of "some"?
          • jacquesm 9mo ago
            Typically this translates into everybody below me on the social ladder.
        • 9mo ago
• tim333 9mo ago
  >ZERO concern of the current US administration about the welfare of Venezuelans I get the impression they are concerned at least a bit with the welfare of Venezuelans. Maybe a secondary consideration to drugs and oil but here's what Trump was saying: >We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. So, we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in. And we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. And it has to be judicious because that's what we're all about. We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela. (https://youtu.be/cQdRlS4uf0E?t=3784 https://youtu.be/cQdRlS4uf0E?t=3784)
  • blurbleblurble 9mo ago
    Then the hook is thoroughly in your cheek, if you haven't swallowed it
    • tim333 9mo ago
      I'm a bystander but mildly optimistic.
      • blurbleblurble 9mo ago
        You may as well be a bot
        • tim333 9mo ago
          Bots don't have much of an opinion on these things. I'm disappointed that everyone is so cynical. At least the Venezuelans seem cheerful even if some HN commenters are not and sound like they'd be happier if Venezuela had another twenty years of poverty and dictatorship.
          • pjc50 9mo ago
            People who remember Iraq and Libya understand the difference between stable dictatorship and unstable warlord era. Removing those dictators left the countries more deadly and poor than otherwise. Libya in particular created the European refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. I suspect one outcome of this will be even more Venezuelan refugees, including illegally in the US.
• Sprotch 9mo ago
  How exactly will the US run the country? They have just one guy
  • thiagoharry 9mo ago
    It will not. Chavismo did not end with the death of Hugo Chávez. Nor will it end with the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro.
  • pjc50 9mo ago
    Every time the puppet president fails to meet targets, they are executed by missile strike?
  • khazhoux 9mo ago
    It should be one of the Trump kids to run it. Whichever one knows the most spanish. «¿Como hacer país muy bueno?» And Republicans won’t see a problem with that.
• whatever1 9mo ago
  Oil companies already had contracts that Maduro violated.
• BloodyIron 9mo ago
  > Washington being now safest and free of crime I'd make the case it depends on who's defining what is and is not a crime. Consider that the POTUS is a 34x convicted criminal, and yet he not only has total freedom, he literally has the highest quality personal protection ecosystem on the planet, and so much more. So, who is the criminal here? Which are the crimes? And what is _actually_ going to happen?
  • lisbbb 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • mortehu 9mo ago
      When you're talking about changed laws, are you referring to the civil case against E. Jean Carroll? And when you are talking about "charges that the banks said weren't even an issue" are you talking about the civil fraud case? No banks were victims in the hush money case, which is where the felonies are from.
      • terminalshort 9mo ago
        There was no victim in the hush money case which is why the prosecution was clearly political. Even Andrew Cuomo, Democrat and former NY DA, said that those charges never would have been filed against anyone other than Trump.
        • ben_w 9mo ago
          What made it a felony under New York law is the claim that the falsified records were intended to conceal another crime, specifically efforts to influence an election. To a decent approximation, if Trump had not been running for office when he did this, then it wouldn't have been a crime. But then, he wouldn't have cared to cover it up. Covering up that he got off with a porn star isn't the problem. Like Bill Clinton, it's the actual particulars of the coverup rather than generically that there was a desire to cover up an extramarital affair itself that's the problem.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• SilverElfin 9mo ago
  I think it’s normalization. If they can ignore Congress, lie to them, break American law, ignore international law, what’s to stop them from violating the constitution? It’s how they will ultimately deport 100 million Americans, like they proposed a few days ago on the DHS Twitter account. Don’t fix things through the political process - just ignore them and use military force.
• belter 9mo ago
  >> Never the US has been so honest around so many lies in the same speech. Its more this: https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1q34556/millions_of_e_files_still_pending_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1q34556/mill...
• giancarlostoro 9mo ago
  > And then a few seconds later: "US oil companies will go into Venezuela" Venezuela is down to 1 million barrels per day, down from 3 million per day from the 2000s because of the sanctions after Hugo Chavez. They own the worlds largest reserve (about 300 billion barrels worth) and it was always my understanding that we worked with them before Hugo Chavez went the route he went and brought a great nation to shambles for a power trip. I think Venezuela will recover with our aid, but a lot of their old infrastructure is gone, they will need investors. They will also need to deal with their crime problem and hold real elections for once.