Trump Admits the Real Reason for His Surprise Attack on Venezuela

Just hours after President Donald Trump bombed Venezuela and abducted its leader, Nicolás Maduro, he began talking about the Latin American country’s oil industry.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, with 303 billion barrels worth of crude, or about a fifth of global reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And that fact has clearly been at the top of Trump’s mind.

Appearing in a Fox News interview Saturday morning, Trump was asked what he sees for the “future of Venezuela’s oil industry.”

“Well, I see that we’re going to be very strongly involved in it, that’s all. I mean, what can I say? We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it.”

This wasn’t the first time that Trump has admitted his war with Venezuela is at least partly motivated by oil. Earlier last month, the U.S. military seized two Venezuelan oil tankers. Asked what would happen to the oil, Trump replied, “we’re going to keep it,” then added: “Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it. Maybe we’ll use it in the Strategic Reserves. We’re keeping the ships also.”

President Donald Trump announced in the early hours of Saturday that the United States had bombed Venezuela, the most oil-rich country in Latin America, and abducted its president, who is now being flown back to the United States.

“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” he wrote on Truth Social at 4:21 a.m. “This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” He said he will give more details on the attack in a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida at 11 a.m.

Maduro is expected to be flown to New York, where he will face charges in Manhattan federal court.

“Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York,” Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on X Saturday morning. “Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States. They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

Trump did so without the approval of Congress, which is supposed to sign off on all acts of war.

“Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change,” Democratic Senator Andy Kim said after the bombing. “I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress. Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”

Shortly after the U.S. attack, the Venezuelan government accused Washington of an “extremely serious military aggression.”

“Venezuela rejects, repudiates, and denounces before the international community the extremely serious military aggression perpetrated by the current government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and people,” the Venezuelan government said.

The president is apparently taking foreign policy lessons from one of his political nemeses, Hillary Clinton—at least, that’s what one of his biggest first-term acolytes seems to believe.

Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon accused his old boss of rifling through Hillary Clinton’s playbook, during a Friday episode of his War Room podcast. Bannon claimed that the president’s recent threats of violence against Iran were practically identical to State Department operations during the Obama administration.

“Aren’t people teasing right now that Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton must’ve somehow gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve celebration, because the president coming out today saying, ‘We’re locked and loaded’—isn’t that straight from the Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton playbook?” said Bannon.

Trump warned Iranian officials Friday morning that the United States was ready to defend locals protesting the country’s economic conditions, posting on Truth Social that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”

At least three people have been reported dead and 17 injured as Iranian security forces clashed with crowds of protesters in the western province of Lorestan. Still more deaths have been reported in several other cities around the country.

“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump added.

It was not clear if Trump actually intended to follow through on the warning or had any plans in place to do so, but Iran—which backs forces in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen—did not take the specter of confrontation lightly.

Responding to Trump’s comments on X, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, wrote that “Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests.

“The American people should know—Trump started this adventurism,” Larijani noted. “They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”

But Trump is no stranger to attacking Iran. In June, the White House joined Israel in striking three of the country’s nuclear facilities. That attack, conducted without the express approval of Congress, damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan.

The powers that be at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are planning on a massive recruitment drive in 2026—but the people they’re hoping to attract aren’t your typical feds.

The deportation agency has earmarked $100 million for online advertisements over the next year, hoping to draw gun rights advocates and military enthusiasts into its ranks, according to an internal document obtained by The Washington Post.

The agency’s so-called “wartime recruitment” strategy involves a massive hiring spree that aims to take on as many as 10,000 new officers across the country. To do so, ICE is coordinating a sprawling social media campaign to target people who have “attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear,” reported the Post.

Some of that cash will be directed toward advertisements on Snapchat and the conservative YouTube dupe Rumble, while other portions of the budget will be dosed out for live marketing via livestreamers and right-wing influencers.

The recruitment blitz will also utilize contemporary software such as geofencing in order to beam ICE advertisements directly to devices in certain areas, such as those near military bases, Nascar races, college campuses, or gun and trade shows, according to the 30-page document.

The plan is a far cry from ICE’s typical recruitment methods, which have historically depended on recruitment from local police offices and sheriff departments to locate experienced talent with potential to grow at the federal level. Former ICE director Sarah Saldaña, who spearheaded the department during Barack Obama’s presidency, warned Newsmax that ICE’s latest recruitment tactics could invite applicants who bring “a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85 percent” of the job.

It’s unclear just how much of the $100 million allotment ICE has already spent, but the Department of Homeland Security has awarded nearly $40 million to a couple of marketing firms to support the public affairs office, according to federal awards data reviewed by the Post.

Regardless, ICE still has plenty of dough to play around with: Congress virtually tripled the agency’s budget this summer when it passed Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, jumping its appropriations from roughly $9.6 billion to $30 billion. (Meanwhile, the legislature also took a hatchet to Medicaid, gutting billions of dollars from the critical public health care program.)

Just one day after a bombshell Wall Street Journal story on the president’s growing signs of aging, Donald Trump went on a bizarre posting spree about dead birds and wind turbines.

Throughout Friday, Trump posted several different photos on Truth Social of dead birds near turbines.

In one photo captioned “Eagles going down!,” he confused a red kite, a bird of prey, for America’s national bird.

Two days earlier, Trump mixed up a falcon and an eagle in another post complaining about windmills.

Trump’s hatred of wind turbines goes back at least a decade, but the incessant photos of dead birds this week are on another level. Perhaps they can be explained by the Journal’s recent story documenting his rapid physical and mental decline. The story, which Trump is already fuming over, highlighted things like Trump’s requests for shorter and fewer meetings, his belief that a high dosage of aspirin will give him “nice, thin blood,” his difficulty hearing, and how easy is it for him to get cuts on his hand due to his thin skin.

“The White House Doctors have just reported that I am in ‘PERFECT HEALTH,’ and that I ‘ACED’ (Meaning, was correct on 100 percent of the questions asked!), for the third straight time, my Cognitive Examination, something which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take,” Trump wrote Friday morning, before he went on to post about the dead birds.