Trump touts Venezuelan oil tanker and floats making Venezuela the 51st state
At a campaign rally in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday, Donald Trump pointed to a tanker off the coast that he said carried one million barrels of Venezuelan oil and hailed a U.S. deal with the country’s Trump-backed interim government as the greatest oil victory in history. The agreement, he said, will cover billions of barrels and supply oil to the United States at zero cost to the American taxpayer. Nine months after a January U.S. attack that captured long-serving Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a raid on his Caracas residence and took him to New York to face criminal charges, Trump told the crowd Venezuela will become a prosperous country and might someday soon become a prosperous 51st state. Venezuela now sits on a growing list of places he has spoken of acquiring, including Greenland, Canada and Mexico.
The urgency of the pact is tied to Trump’s entry into the war with Iran in February. After Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a passageway for 20 percent of the world’s oil, U.S. fuel prices surged and added to cost-of-living pressure. Trump claimed on social media that prices will soon come plummeting down, and on Truth Social, moments before taking the stage, that by unleashing energy dominance from Alaska down to Venezuela he had made the Western Hemisphere the energy capital of the world.
With tens of millions of Americans set to vote in next week’s midterm elections, polls show his approval ratings at record lows amid the Iran war and tariffs on goods from much of the world. Critics also say the administration has not pushed a transition to democracy in Venezuela, where elections have not been held since Maduro was detained.
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