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TRUMP BLURTS OUT DARK TRUTH ABOUT VENEZUELA PLAN—AND ABOUT MAGA
VOTERS  
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Greg Sargent
January 6, 2026
The New Republic
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_ To some critics, it’s about plunder. To others, it’s about
hemispheric hegemony. Actually, it’s about both. _

, Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

 

It’s often said that one of Donald Trump’s biggest innovations in
American politics is to confess to his corruption right out in the
open. Over the years, Trump has frequently confirmed the truth of that
diagnosis. But during remarks to reporters on Sunday about his
invasion of Venezuela, he gave this a new spin, taking his corruption
international in a fresh way.

“We need total access—we need access to the oil and to other
things in their country,” Trump said
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what he’s demanding of acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who has
replaced Nicolás Maduro since U.S. forces transported him here. Asked
specifically about Venezuela’s oil reserves, Trump said
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gonna run everything.”

This “total access” will go to “very large United States oil
companies,” Trump says
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insisted [[link removed]] this
will partly benefit Venezuela, he also says
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country’s oil “wealth” will go to the U.S. as “reimbursement
for the damages caused to us by that country.” Trump’s conception
of those “damages” is based on the idea that Venezuela “stole”
from us when it nationalized its oil industry in 1976—a complicated
history but one that doesn’t remotely support
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his claim. So this now looks very close to outright plunder.

To truly appreciate this, note that most analysis of Trump’s plans
for Venezuela has proceeded on two tracks. One of them, as Seva
Gunitsky explains
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that Trump envisions a “tripartite” division of the world, in
which the U.S., Russia, and China all bless one another’s domination
of their respective regions in a “hegemonic carve-up.” The other
sees Trump’s action through the prism
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of domestic corruption: He’s turning Venezuela over to American oil
companies and executives, some of whom bankrolled
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his reelection.

We need to put those two pieces together. Trump appears to envision
something like a “hegemonic carve-up” that also gives regional
MAGA-friendly oligarchies a major stake in our “share” of that
tripartite division’s spoils. This is already the Putin model:
authoritarian rule that enables smash-and-grab oligarchy by those in
the regime’s good favor. Trump is making it unusually explicit that
in this sphere of influence, Trump-approved oligarchs will be enriched
by _our_ regional spoils.

“Baked into Trump’s views on these so-called spheres-of-influence
are opportunities to enrich himself, his inner circle, his donors, and
his fellow oligarchs,” Casey Michel, a_ New Republic_ contributor
and author of the forthcoming book _United States of Oligarchy_
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tells me. “Putin envisions a world in which a small group of
imperialists loot their portions of the globe as they see fit. Trump
has been envious of this model for a long time. He’s implementing it
himself in the Western hemisphere.”

To be fair, it’s not obvious that oil companies themselves want in
on this scheme. At a minimum, they don’t want to appear open to it:
Politico reports
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that some are “leery” about making such investments, given the
logistical challenges of revitalizing the country’s oil industry
amid uncertainties about its future.

But what matters here is that _Trump himself_ envisions a future for
the region—and for U.S. energy oligarchs—along these lines. When
Trump insists the U.S. has a right to “access” all of
Venezuela’s oil based on a badly distorted story
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about our victimization by that country—after the U.S. military
invaded it and kidnapped its leader—he’s effectively declaring we
have the right to take its resources by force. It all smacks of the
schoolyard bully sneering, “What did you say about my mother?” to
a hapless smaller kid who actually said nothing, then citing this
invented insult as justification for forcibly taking his lunch money.

It’s _this_ international vision that Trump is blurting out when he
says that “we need total access” to Venezuela’s oil. You may
recall that during the 2024 campaign, Trump told a roomful of oil
executives
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that he would govern nakedly in their financial interests while
demanding $1 billion in campaign contributions in an explicit quid pro
quo. Trump has now taken this candor further: Whether the oil
companies want this or not, he is telling them they have great riches
to reap if they buy into his hegemonic-oligarchic schemes. And he’s
doing so right out in the open. This isn’t the same as calling this
a “war for oil.” It’s more an invitation to oligarchs to join in
his conception, such as it is, of the future world order.

By the way, this may be only the beginning of the corruption here.
_The American Prospect_ has a great piece reporting
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on how elite gamblers gamed prediction markets on the invasion,
probably with the help of inside information. The aftermath could
present more such opportunities.

Beyond all this, Trump’s illegal, unprovoked invasion of Venezuela
wrecks the notion that he was ever “antiwar” or
“anti-interventionist” in any real sense. As TNR’s Michael
Tomasky explains
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he’s fine with wars that are about “raw power in service of
plunder and conquest.”

We have been told endlessly that many voters who picked Trump were
partly frustrated with the foreign military adventurism of bipartisan
elites. But that raises a question. Let’s accept for now that many
Trump voters are driven by that frustration—that many harbor JD
Vance’s stated skepticism
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that foreign intervention can do good in the world that’s worth our
national sacrifice. Will they now decide that Trump’s version of
adventurism is a good thing? Now that Trump has laid bare its corrupt,
elite-enriching nature, will they go along with a war that’s nakedly
about pillage and plunder, either on moral terms or on the grounds
that it narrowly benefits the national interest?

Trump seems confident that they will. He told reporters Sunday
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“thrilled” with this action, adding: “They said, ‘This is what
we voted for.’”

As it happens, a new _Washington Post_ poll
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sheds light here. It finds that only 40 percent of Americans approve
of the decision to capture Maduro by military force, versus 42 percent
who disapprove, and only 37 percent say this was appropriate without
congressional approval while 63 percent say it wasn’t. But among
those
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who voted for Trump, 80 percent support the capture and 78 percent are
untroubled by the lack of congressional authorization.

So maybe Trump supporters are fine with this sort of military
intervention, after all. It’s hard to know if they would support
turning all Venezuela’s oil over to U.S. companies; the poll finds
only 46 percent of them support the U.S. taking control over that
country. But here’s the thing: Trump himself obviously thinks they
approve of that too. Listen to the tone of his declaration
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thrill his voters, and it’s clear he thinks they fully back the
rapacious nature of his mission.

That says something grim about Trump’s view of his own supporters.
He thinks they are just as corrupt, amoral, indifferent to the fate of
those killed by our military, and eager to pillage weaker countries
for the spoils of conquest as he is.

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Greg Sargent is a staff writer at _The New Republic_ and the host of
the podcast _The Daily Blast_
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seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he
was a prominent columnist and blogger at _The Washington Post_ from
2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, _New York
_magazine_,_ and the _New York Observer._ Greg is also the author of
the critically acclaimed_ _book
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An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation
and Thunderdome Politics. _

* Trump Supporters; Military Adventurism; Venezuelan Oil;
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