Trump’s saber-rattling in Venezuela / Venezuelan Coup Leader María Machado Vows To Privatize Oil: US Corporations Will ‘Make a Lot of Money’

NB: The USA emerged as the leading global hooligan after World War 2. Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan: a long story, documented by Alfred McCoy. Venezuela is the latest chapter in American empire building. It will meet the fate of their intervention in Vietnam. Their Armed forces know how they had to leave in ignominy in helicopters from the rooftops of their embassy in 1975. But draft-dodger and convicted felon Trump wants to flex his muscles. Welcome to reality. DS

Aaron Blake

Hubris courses through what President Donald Trump and his administration are doing right now. So much of it is unpopular and politically fraught. They’re charging ahead regardless. That’s true of the tariffs. It’s true of the growing militarization of the homeland. And it’s been true of his cuts to the government and many other things.

But perhaps nothing is as politically fraught right now as what’s happening off the coast of South America. There are growing signs that Trump is flirting with regime change or even attacking Venezuela. And to the extent it’s more than a bluff, it’s not difficult to see the situation blowing up in the administration’s face.

CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf today runs through the increased saber-rattling and signs of a building clash. The US Navy has built up in the Caribbean, and the Air Force flew B-52 bombers off the Venezuelan coast for hours on Wednesday. The Trump administration is striking alleged drug boats in quite possibly illegal ways. Trump has both left open the possibility of strikes inside Venezuela and confirmed Wednesday that he has authorized covert CIA action there….

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/17/politics/venezuela-trump-saber-rattling

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Venezuelan Coup Leader María Machado Vows To Privatize Oil: US Corporations Will ‘Make a Lot of Money’

By Ben Norton / Geopolitical Economy Report

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was given to María Corina Machado, a far-right, pro-war Venezuelan opposition leader who has been funded by the US government for more than two decades. Machado has helped to lead numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, in 2002, 2014, 2017, 2019, and again today. She is now at the center of the US government’s regime-change war against Venezuela.

In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations. Machado excitedly explained that, if Trump helped her overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, her new regime would “be the strongest ally in the region for the United States”.

“Venezuela is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money”, she vowed.

This is what Machado said to the son of the US president (emphasis added):

Forget about Saudi Arabia; forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil, I mean, infinite potential.

And we’re going to open markets. We’re going to kick [out] the government from the oil sector. We’re going to privatize all our industry. Venezuela has huge resources: oil, gas, minerals, land, technology. And, as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States.

So we’re going to do this right. We know what we have to do. And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest. This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.

Venezuela has the world’s biggest oil reserves

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on Earth. US corporations once profited from these resources, but Venezuela’s oil industry was nationalized by leftist former President Hugo Chávez, who launched the Bolivarian Revolution.

Machado wants to privatize Venezuela’s powerful state-owned oil company PDVSA.

Venezuela’s state-owned refinery company Citgo was already illegally seized by the US government during the first Trump administration’s coup attempt in 2019-20.

https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/17/venezuelan-coup-leader-maria-corina-machado-vows-to-privatize-oil-us-corporations-will-make-a-lot-of-money