President Donald Trump convened more than a dozen major oil executives at the White House on Friday afternoon to explore potential investment opportunities in Venezuela, coming just days after the United States removed President Nicolás Maduro from power.
Trump invoked a national emergency to protect Venezuelan oil revenues controlled by the U.S. government from being seized by private creditors, casting the move as essential to safeguarding American national security and preserving stability across the region.
The dramatic U.S. raid that captured Nicolás Maduro has been framed as a decisive blow against corruption, drug trafficking, and authoritarianism. But the facts emerging in the days since tell a far more complicated story — one that raises uncomfortable questions about American motives, regional stability, and the future of U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.
If this were truly a mission driven by humanitarian concern or a desire to protect Americans from narcotics, it is striking how quickly the conversation shifted to petroleum and investment opportunities. The timing alone suggests that oil was not an afterthought — it was a central consideration.
The Trump administration has issued threats not only to Venezuela’s acting leadership but also to Colombia and Cuba. It has revived talk of acquiring Greenland. These statements, taken together, paint a picture of a government increasingly comfortable with the language of coercion and territorial ambition.
Americans themselves appear uneasy. Polling shows the public is split on the raid, with many still forming opinions. Nearly half oppose the idea of the United States taking control of Venezuela or choosing its next government. An overwhelming majority believe Venezuelans should decide their own political future. That instinct — a respect for sovereignty and self-determination — is one the United States would do well to heed.
None of this is to deny that Maduro faced serious allegations or that Venezuela has suffered deeply under his rule. But the manner of his removal, the immediate pivot to oil negotiations, and the administration’s increasingly expansionist posture raise legitimate concerns about what truly motivated this operation — and what might come next.
The Western Hemisphere has a long memory of U.S. interventions justified in the name of democracy but driven by strategic or economic interests. If the United States wants to avoid repeating that history, it must be transparent about its goals, restrained in its ambitions, and respectful of the sovereignty of its neighbors.
Venezuela is part of a broader, more aggressive vision of American power — one that extends from the oil fields of Venezuela to the mineral-rich ice of Greenland.
Trump’s fixation on acquiring Greenland is not new, but the timing and intensity of his renewed push are telling. Fresh off a military operation in South America, he told reporters that Greenland is “so strategic” and claimed the island is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships.” The White House then confirmed it was considering “a range of options” to bring the self-governing Danish territory under U.S. control — including the use of the military.
European leaders were alarmed. Denmark warned that such a move would effectively end NATO. Greenlanders themselves overwhelmingly oppose U.S. control. Yet the administration pressed forward.
Why? Because Greenland is not just a frozen island. It is a geopolitical jackpot.
The territory sits between the U.S. and Russia, straddling emerging Arctic shipping routes that could dramatically shorten global trade paths as ice melts. It lies atop vast reserves of oil, gas, and some of the world’s most valuable rare earth minerals — the same minerals China has used to pressure the United States. Analysts note that Greenland may be one of the most strategically important pieces of real estate for the next half-century.
In other words: this is not about democracy. It is about leverage.
When you place Greenland and Venezuela side by side, the pattern becomes impossible to miss — a foreign policy driven by the acquisition of land, resources, and strategic advantage, one that demands scrutiny, accountability, and a sober understanding of the costs of intervention.
Trump’s Venezuela Agenda Isn’t Justice — It’s Profit was first published on Latino News Network.
Hugo Balta is the publisher of the Latino News Network executive editor of The Fulcrum.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.