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nicolas maduro
'It's All About the Oil,' Says Venezuelan Defense Minister After 'Incoherent' Trump Claims
The minister also echoed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's declaration that the US seizing oil tankers is "piracy."
Dec 18, 2025
As President Donald Trump continues his march toward a US war on Venezuela, the South American country's defense minister on Wednesday blasted his "delusional" and "completely incoherent" claims, and echoed warnings from around the world that "it's all about the oil."
In addition to killing nearly 100 people by bombing alleged drug smuggling boats, Trump has authorized covert Central Intelligence Agency action in Venezuela and repeatedly threatened attacks on land. Late Tuesday, Trump declared a naval blockade that he said will continue until the nation returns to the US "all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."
Trump appears to be referring to the presence that US companies had in Venezuela before the country nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s. On Wednesday, the Republican president told reporters: "Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had—they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't watching. But they're not gonna do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back."
In a Wednesday speech, Venezuela's defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, pushed back against Trump's blockade, threats of military action, and "delirious" claims that the country stole its own oil, land, and other assets from the United States. The minister also reiterated a declaration from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that the US seizing oil tankers is "piracy."
As CNN reported, Maduro—whom Trump aims to oust from power—gave a similar speech about the US administration's purported goal of combating drug trafficking in Caracas on Wednesday.
"It is simply a warmongering and colonialist pretense, and we have said so many times, and now everyone sees the truth. The truth has been revealed," Maduro said. "The aim in Venezuela is a regime change to impose a puppet government that wouldn't last 47 hours, that would hand over the Constitution, sovereignty, and all the wealth, turning Venezuela into a colony. It will simply never happen."
According to Anadolu Agency, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said on social media this week: "We will continue to be free and independent in our energy relations. Together with President Nicolás Maduro, we will continue to defend the homeland.”
Although the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on Wednesday night narrowly defeated a pair of war powers resolutions aimed at reining in Trump's actions toward Venezuela, lawmakers from both major parties have also called out the administration's drug claims and argued against launching another US war for oil.
Responding to a clip of Trump's comments to reporters on Wednesday, US Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), who sponsored one of the resolutions, wrote on social media: "I've said it many times before: This is not about drugs. If the goal were stopping narcotics, this administration would not be talking about oil rights or seizing tankers. That is not a lawful basis for war."
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of the few Republicans who supported the resolutions, took to the House floor ahead of the votes on Wednesday to denounce Trump's march toward an unconstitutional war and declare that "this is about oil and regime change."
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Trump Says Ground Attack on Venezuela Imminent—Plus Colombia, Mexico Also in US Crosshairs
"It's now taken as a given... that Trump is mulling a ground invasion of Venezuela and a dramatic expansion in his bombing campaign with no congressional authorization," said one critic.
Dec 09, 2025
President Donald Trump said in an interview published Tuesday that a US land attack on Venezuela is coming and signaled that he is open to launching similar military action against Colombia and Mexico.
“We’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon, too,” Trump told Politico's Dasha Burns, citing the pretext of stopping fentanyl from entering the United States.
Trump repeated his baseless claim that during the administration of his predecessor, the "very stupid" former President Joe Biden, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro "sent us millions of people, many from prisons, many drug dealers, drug lords," and "people in mental institutions."
Burns then noted that most of the illicit fentanyl sold in the United States "is actually produced in Mexico," which along with Colombia is "even more responsible" for trafficking the potent synthetic opioid into the US. She asked Trump if he would "consider doing something similar" to those countries.
"I would," Trump replied. "Sure, I would."
Pressed on his contradictory pardon of convicted narco-trafficking former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández while threatening war against Venezuela, Trump feigned ignorance, claiming that "I don't know him" and asserting that "he was set up."
Trump's latest threat against Venezuela comes amid his deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of the oil-rich South American nation, his approval of covert CIA action against Maduro's government, and more than 20 airstrikes on boats his administration claims without evidence were smuggling drugs in the southern Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Trump administration's targeting of Venezuela evokes the long history of US "gunboat diplomacy" in Latin America and continues more than a century of Washington's meddling in Venezuelan affairs. It also marks a historic escalation of aggression, as the US has never attacked Venezuelan territory.
Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of men killed in the boat bombings, contend that at least some of the victims were fishermen who were not involved in drug trafficking.
The strikes have killed at least 87 people since early September, according to administration figures—including shipwrecked survivors slain in a so-called double-tap bombing. Legal experts and some former US military officials contend that the strikes are a violation of international law, murders, war crimes, or all of these.
Critics also assert that the boat strikes violate the War Powers Act, which requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days. The Trump administration argues that it is not bound by the War Powers Resolution, citing as precedent the Obama administration's highly questionable claim of immunity from the law when the US attacked Libya in 2011.
A bipartisan bid to block the boat bombings on the grounds that they run afoul of the War Powers Act failed to muster enough votes in the Senate in October.
"Note that it’s now taken as a given—as an unremarkable and baked-in fact about our politics—that Trump is mulling a ground invasion of Venezuela and a dramatic expansion in his bombing campaign with no congressional authorization," New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent observed Tuesday in response to the president's remarks to Politico.
"What emerges from this interview," he added, "is that Trump is pulling all of this—the substantive case for these bombings, the legal justification for them, the rationale for mulling a massive military escalation in the Western Hemisphere—out of his rear end."
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Top Brazilian Official Warns Trump of 'Vietnam-Style' Regional Conflict If He Attacks Venezuela
"The last thing we want is for South America to become a war zone," said Celso Amorim, chief foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Dec 08, 2025
A top Brazilian official is warning President Donald Trump that a US military attack on Venezuela could easily spiral out of control into a "Vietnam-style" regional conflict.
Celso Amorim, chief foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said in an interview published on Monday by the Guardian that a US military strike on Venezuela would inevitably draw nations throughout Latin America into an armed conflict that would be difficult to contain.
"The last thing we want is for South America to become a war zone—and a war zone that would inevitably not just be a war between the US and Venezuela," he said. "It would end up having global involvement and this would be really unfortunate."
Amorim added that "if there was an invasion, a real invasion [of Venezuela]... I think undoubtedly you would see something similar to Vietnam—on what scale it’s impossible to say."
While acknowledging that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is disliked by many other South American leaders, Amorim predicted that even some of Maduro's adversaries would rally to his side in the face of destabilizing military actions by the US government.
He also predicted that anti-US sentiment would surge throughout the continent in the event of an invasion, as there is still major resentment toward the US for backing right-wing military coups during the Cold War in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.
"I know South America," he emphasized. "Our whole continent exists because of resistance against foreign invaders."
The Trump administration in recent weeks has signaled that it plans to launch attacks against purported drug traffickers inside Venezuela, even though reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States.
The administration has also accused Maduro of leading an international drug trafficking organization called the Cartel de los Soles, despite many experts saying that they have seen no evidence that such an organization formally exists.
Trump late last month further escalated tensions with Venezuela when he declared that airspace over the nation was "closed in its entirety," even though he lacks any legal authority to enforce such a decree.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that Maduro is remaining defiant in the face of US pressure, as he is refusing to go into exile despite the threat of an attack on his country.
According to the Post's sources, Maduro's inner circle of allies "shows no signs of imminent collapse," even as he has limited his public appearances and beefed up his personal security amid fears that he could be the target of an assassination attempt.
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