Understanding Venezuela, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio

Trump's war on oil-rich Venezuela is based on lies: The real reasons why USA wants regime change -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU17g3DXwiY -- Geopolitical Economy Report with Ben Norton; Sept 2025; 49-min video

Trump-backed Venezuelan coup leader promises to give oil to US corporations

Look at the justifications that are coming from the White House and from the mainstream media and explain why this might be the most illegal thing the United States has done since Kissinger's secret bombing campaign in Cambodia.

Let's start by addressing what's already happening across mainstream media.

The whataboutisms have already begun.

The major news outlets are all trotting out their usual suspects.

You know, the professional pundit class on speed dial to tell you why this is all justified.

And if you're a Fox News viewer, why you should feel terrific about what just happened.

I mean, they're talking about how Maduro was deeply unpopular, a terrible economic manager, a ruthless dictator who rigged elections and jailed dissident.

All true.

Maduro presided over an economic catastrophe.

Partially our fault, but it was a catastrophe nonetheless.

He's authoritarian. He suppressed opposition.

But none of that matters. Not in what we're talking about right now.

Because we're being asked to accept a whataboutism that completely obfuscates the primary issue here.

This was an illegal, unconstitutional, unprovoked international war crime the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long time.

So, let me be absolutely clear about what happened.

The United States military, without a declaration of war, without congressional authorization, without UN Security Council approval, without any legal framework whatsoever, bombed the capital city of a sovereign nation and kidnapped its head of state - full stop.

And already I'm watching cable news glaze the military talking about precision strikes, stealth operations, our brave men and women in uniform.

All of these superlatives designed to whitewash the fact that we just literally kidnapped a democratically elected world leader and we're flying him to New York to face charges in a legal system he never consented to.

Now, before you jump in with, "Oh, but Venezuelan elections aren't legitimate."

Yeah, I get it. They had serious integrity issues.

But let's not go down the road of comparing election integrity among supposed democratic nations because we're still currently partnered with Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that doesn't even hold elections.

We prop up dictators across the world who suspend elections and constitutions whenever it suits us.

We've recognized coups that overthrew democratically elected leaders when the outcome served our interests.

And given our own recent history with election challenges and lawsuits and January 6, maybe we shouldn't be throwing stones from inside this particular glass house.

Now, the professional pundit class wants you to focus on Maduro's sins to justify this action, but don't fall for it.

Any take that you see that offers a whataboutism on Maduro should be ignored completely because it distracts from the central point that this is unprecedented.

And I hate that word because it's so overused, but it genuinely applies here.

You would have to go back to the CIA backed coup that overthrew Salvador Yende in Chile in 1973 and installed the dictatorial regime of Austo Pinocha to come close to this level of intervention.

Or yes, Kissinger's secret bombing campaign in Cambodia.

Operations conducted completely outside of congressional authority that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

I even saw a pundit try to draw parallels to Nicaragua in1989, but that doesn't work either.

Yes,the US spent a decade destabilizing the Sandinista government through the Contras economic embargos and diplomatic pressure that eventually led to the electoral defeat in 1990.

And yes, the Iran Contra scandal was one of the biggest political disasters in American history.

But even that involved covertback channel dealings over years.

It wasn't a direct military assault on a capital city followed by the abduction of a sitting president.

This is more brazen than anything we've done since the early 20th century when Theodore Roosevelt was invoking the Roosevelt correlary and literally saying we'll discipline Latin American countries ourselves if they step out of line.

So let's apply the logic of the Trump administration to any other situation.

The United States has been charged with crimes in the International Court of Justice multiple times.

We've been accused of war crimes by numerous countries and international bodies as well.

But we don't recognize any of these courts or their jurisdiction.

But using the precedent that we just set, any of these countries would now have the same standing to bomb Washington DC, to fly into the capital with Special Forces, capture Donald and Melania, and spirit them away for trial at the Hague or wherever they see fit.

Does that sound absurd?

Yeah, because it's absurd.

It's a flagrant violation of international law.

It's a violation of the UN charter.

It's a violation of every norm that has existed since World War II about how nations should interact with one another.

And I've already seen coverage of Venezuelans here in the United States and in Caracas being interviewed, saying Maduro was ruthless and incompetent and he shouldn't be in power.

But flip the script for a second.

If another country did that to the United States, what we just did to Venezuela, if they bombed DC and kidnapped Trump, there are at least 150 million Americans who would give you the exact same sound bite.

You'd be like, "Yeah, it was incompetent - shouldn't have been in power. Good riddance.

Does that justify it?

Of course not.

Because domestic unpopularity is not a license for foreign military invention and kidnapping.

All of this, every bit of media coverage focused on Maduro's failings is designed to distract from the point.

This action is illegal under both US and international law.

It's incredibly dangerous.

It sets a precedent that essentially says might makes right.

And any powerful nation can simply grab the leaders of weaker nations whenever they feel like it.

So what is this really about?

Because this isn't about justice or democracy or any of the noble rhetoric that we're going to hear from Trump.

So let me lay out the theories that are being floated.

Is this about oil, drugs, maybe a distraction from the Epstein files because Venezuela was such an easy target?

Well, in order, the answers are a little, no, and stop.

But there's another element that we've covered before on this show that needs to be explained again because it's already getting lost in the noise.

So, let's break down each theory, starting with oil.

It is fair to say that in the past, we have spilled blood for oil.

That was pretty much the pretense for the Iraq war.

But does the same pretense hold true for Venezuela?

Because Venezuelan oil is not like American oil.

Venezuela produces mostly heavy sour crude, extra heavy oil from the Oronooco belt.

It's thick, it's contaminated with metals, and it's very expensive to process.

So, their main export blend is a heavycrude, but to make it exportable, they have to blend it with a light crude.

So, compare that to US oil.

Our benchmark WTI or West Texas Intermediate and most of the shale output from places like the Perian and the Bacan are light sweet crudes that are easier and cheaper to refine into gasoline.

So why does Venezuelan oil matter at all?

Well, there is a case because US refineries, especially in the Gulf Coast, were historically built to optimize and process heavy sour crude.

They were designed to take imports from places like Venezuela, Mexico, and even the Middle East and to blend them with our domestic light sweet crude.

So these complex refineries are specifically configured to handle this nastier oil and turn it into things like diesel and industrial fuels.

So Venezuelan crude is technically valuable to some refineries, even though it's lower quality on paper.

So, the two types of oil, heavy sour and light sweet, are compliments, not substitutes.

So, we can make a case.

But here's the thing.

After years of US sanctions, Venezuela has been shipping its oil to other countries with refineries that can also handle it - namely India and China.

And here's where things get interesting.

So, unbelievable timing here.

Just yesterday, we released a piece about a new strategy unveiled by the BRICS alliance.

That's Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa along with some other entrance like Ethiopia, Egypt, and Indonesia about a payment system that factors directly into what we're talking about today.

Just this past December, just a few weeks ago, the BRICS Alliance announced an international payment system based on a new digital currency called the unit.

So, this represents a direct challenge to US dollar hegemony.

Not immediately, but someday.

But the more immediate concern is that if they perfect this system over the year, BRICS countries could theoretically start paying for oil with units instead of petro dollars.

This is a massive problem for the United States.

Again, not because we need Venezuelan oil.

We are the largest producer of oil in the world right now.

Chevron still does business in Venezuela as it is.

By the way, Exxon Mobile and Conoco-Phillips would probably like to someday resume operations there after they were kicked out during Chavez's nationalization.

But would we really risk overthrowing an entire government just to put two US companies back in business?

Especially when oil's trading below $60.

So even if these companies wanted back in, they're not going to invest the capital right now.

Trump just put us into a global recession with tariff wars.

So oil companies are pulling back on new investments right now.

They're not even exploring open leases in the United States, let alone trying to reclaim operations in a country that we've completely destabilized through sanctions.

So, anyone telling you that this is about the US taking the oil doesn't understand the dynamics here.

The oil story is about maintaining the petro dollar system.

It's about making sure that oil continues to be traded in US dollars, which creates demand for our currency and helps us sell the Treasury bonds that we desperately need to fund our massive deficits.

It's not about putting more money in Exxon Mobile's pockets.

It's about ensuring continued demand for dollars in global energy markets.

Because if Venezuela and more importantly oil producers in the BRICS nations shift to BRICS payments or currency that isn't dollar backed, it undermines the entire structure that allows the US to run trillion dollar deficits without immediate consequences.

And we know it's not about drugs.

Our own intelligence agencies have verified that the limited amount of drug trafficking coming from Venezuela is in cocaine.

And most of that is going to Europe.

The overwhelming majority of drugs entering the United States comes through Mexico.

It's fentanyl and fentanyl precursors from China that are processed in Mexican labs and smuggled across the southern border.

So, if this was actually about narco-terrorism, we'd be invading Mexico or launching strikes on Chinese pharmaceutical companies.

This whole narco-terrorism accusation is just a justification that we trot out whenever we want to intervene somewhere, but need a reason that sounds tough on crime and plays well domestically.

It's propaganda - pure and simple.

So, as far as this being a distraction from the Epstein files, look, I think there's a small side benefit for Trump, but anyone who suggests that this is the primary motivation is missing the big picture.

Trump does love his distractions, but you don't launch a military operation of this scale just to change the newscycle.

There are much easier ways to do that.

So, the biggest reason that I guarantee that you're not going to hear from the mainstream is that yes, it's about oil, but not directly.

It's about payments for oil and standing up the petro dollar.

Getting ahead of the fact that the BRICS nations, the biggest of which are now the primary

recipients of Venezuelan heavy sour crude, just launched a mechanism to get around the petro dollar.

But there's another angle that you also won't hear about.

Cuba.

And to contextualize this idea, we have to explain the relationship between Venezuela and Cuba.

These two countries have been joined at the hip ever since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998, united by what they called the Bolivarian Revolution, a shared ideological project of resistance to US imperialism and economic self-determination.

So, let's rewind to the 1990s.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its primary benefactor and the result for them was catastrophic.

Cuba entered what Fidel Castro called "The Special Period."

It was a decade of severe food and fuel shortages, economic contraction, and genuine suffering for ordinary Cubans.

The United States, sensing an opportunity to finally topple the Castro regime, doubled down with the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, which tightened the embargo and prohibited foreign companies from doing business with Cuba.

So, after decades of failed assassination attempts and efforts to ferment internal revolution, American policymakers thought that this was finally it.

The Cuban Revolution would collapse under its own weight.

But then Hugo Chavez won the Venezuelan presidency in 1998 and everything changed.

Chavez and Castro formed an immediate bond.

They shared ideologies, enemies, and visions.

See, for Castro, Chavez represented one of the last champions of Cuban inspired revolutionary movements in Latin America.

For Chavez, Castro was a mentor.

He was a symbol of resistance and a model for how to maintain power against overwhelming US pressure.

And the relationship wasn't just symbolic.

It was profoundly practical.

See,Venezuela needed expertise in healthcare, education, and security.

Cuba needed oil and hard currency as well.

So, they made a deal.

Venezuela would provide Cuba with heavily subsidized oil - at its peak 105,000 barrels a day -basically for free or at a deeply discounted rate.

And in exchange, Cuba would send doctors, teachers, intelligence officers, and military advisers to Venezuela.

This exchange saved Cuba's economy.

Venezuelan oil pulled Cuba out of The Special Period and gave the Communist Party a lifeline that it desperately needed.

So between 2000 and 2018, over 219,000 Cuban professionals served in Venezuela.

This is why the Cuba-Venezuela relationship is central to understanding what just happened.

For over six decades, the United States has tried to overthrow the Cuban government and undo the Castro Revolution even after Castro died.

We've tried everything.

The Bay of Pigs invasion, multiple assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, crippling embargos, diplomatic isolation, nothing worked.

The Communist Party in Cuba has survived every attempt to dislodge it.

But if we can topple Venezuela, we can cut off Cuba's economic lifeline.

So if we strangle the Cuban economy by taking away the oil and cash it needs to survive, we get two regime changes for the price of one.

And this brings us to little Marco Rubio, Trump's Secretary of State, who is absolutely central to this entire operation.

Rubio is Cuban American.

His parents immigrated from Cuba.

And like many in the Cuban exile community, especially in Florida, he carries deep personal generational hostility toward the Castro regime, the revolution, and everything that it represents.

So this isn't just politics for Rubio.

This is about this system that they blame for forcing generations in their family in particular into exile and a six decade promise that one day the revolution will be undone.

Rubio has been one of the most vocal advocates for crushing Venezuela for a decade.

He's been pushing for regime change, for harsher sanctions, for anything that would destabilize that government.

And his motivation has been totally transparent.

If you topple Venezuela, then you finally deliver the death blow to Cuba.

And then we have Maria Karina Machado, the woman who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her opposition activism against Maduro.

Now, this is a complete sham of an award because, you know, Kissinger won it for God's sake.

They gave it to Obama before he was President and then he went on an eight-year terror bombing seven countries we weren't even at war with.

And so we know it's a sham because Mashado herself said that Donald Trump should have won it instead.

This tells you everything that you need to know about the political forces behind that award, but also what's happening today.

And the number one promoter of Maria Machado to receive the Nobel Prize: Marco Rubio.

Because Machado represents the Venezuelan opposition that aligned with US corporate interests.

The opposition that wants to return to the neoliberal policies of the '80s and '90s that enriched a tiny elite while leaving the majority in desperate poverty.

See, Machado is not a champion of democracy in any meaningful sense.

She's a champion of the old economic order that Hugo Chavez overthrew, the order that treated Venezuela as an extraction zone for foreign capital.

And this gets to the heart of the Cuban-American politics in Florida, which has been one of the most reliably Republican voting blocks in the country for decades.

Why?

Because they fundamentally oppose any normalization of relations with Cuba until the Communist Party is destroyed.

So, crippling Venezuela will plunge Cuba into chaos not seen since The Special Period.

But here's the difference.

Today, there's no Fidel Castro.

There's no charismatic revolutionary leader who commanded respect and could hold the country together through sheer force of personality.

The current Cuban leadership is technocratic and uninspiring.

So without Venezuelan oil, without economic support, Cuba could genuinely collapse this time.

And that's what Rubio is banking on.

Once Cuba is on its knees, he can gin up a justification to invade there as well and install another US-friendly regime and finally deliver on the promise to his political base.

And now we have Machado licking her chops thinking she's just going to waltz into Caracus and take over as president as if it's that simple.

But let me give you a parallel.

Imagine if Iran unilaterally acted on one of their ICJ cases and bombed DC, kidnapped Donald Trump, and announced that they were installing their preferred candidate in the White House.

I mean, JD Vance would be standing there like, um, what exactly is happening here?

Right?

There would be absolute chaos.

There would be competing claims to power.

There would be violence.

That's what's about to happen in Venezuela.

The US just decapitated the head of the government, but there's still an entire political and military apparatus in place.

Maduro's allies, the Venezuelan military, the Cuban advisers, regional powers like Colombia and Brazil, none of them are just going to accept Machado walking in and taking over because the United States said so.

But as usual, the US just assumed that the next part would be easy.

We topple the bad guy, install our preferred government, everyone lines up and thanks us for bringing freedom and democracy. How many times have we made this mistake?

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya - it just never works out.

It just never works out in the way we think it will.

And this way won't be easy either, because it never is.

So, let's put it all together.

It's not about drugs.

The whole narco-terrorism narrative is propaganda, plain and simple.

This really isn't about oil in the sense of acquiring petroleum resources, because we're the largest producer.

We don't need Venezuelan crude.

This is though about the petro dollar.

It's about maintaining dollar dominance in global oil markets at a time when the BRICS alliance is actively building alternative payment systems.

It's about making sure that oil continues to be traded in dollars so that we can keep selling Treasury bonds to fund our deficits.

And the biggest side benefit is Cuba.

It's about Marco Rubio settling a score.

And now because of this illegal military action, because of this brazen violation of international law, we've set a precedent that "Might Makes Right."

The powerful countries can just bomb and kidnap the leader of weaker countries whenever they decide the time is right.

So please, reject the whataboutisms and realize that we have crossed the Rubicon.

And make sure to check out the piece that we just dropped about the BRICS unit for more context on the petro dollar issue.

2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, a US government-funded far-right coup leader, vowed to privatize Venezuela's oil and give it to US corporations.

"We are going to privatize all our industry", she told Donald Trump Jr.

"American companies ... are going to make a lot of money", she promised.

Ben Norton exposes the neocolonial US war on Venezuela.

Why does the US keep recognizing a fake president of Venezuela?

The US just recognized the official runner-up as the winner in Venezuela’s presidential election.

We’ve seen this before.

In 2019, the US recognized a virtually unknown Venezuelan politician named Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela after the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won the election.

They used this as a pretext to break all relations with Caracas and hand over billions of dollars of Venezuelan state assets to an illegitimate right-wing US puppet.

The recognition of Gonzalez could indicate the US’s desire to launch a similar regime change operation against the Maduro government.

6 great memes & the following from BreakThrough News:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-N3ck2Att_

US gov't supports drug traffickers in Latin America, while threatening Venezuela

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwCducQ8HHw -- Geopolitical Economy Report with Ben Norton; Sept 2025; 26-min video

How the US-backed Venezuelan opposition screwed migrants over

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am4fkmiZ4iU -- The Grayzone; April 2025; 13-min video