OUR DAILY THREAD: War Is Still A Racket
Game. Set. Match.
THE SET-UP: “We may never know the true extent” of the corruption surrounding Trump’s imperial takeover of Venezuela’s oil. That’s according to a new analysis from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). They cite the Trump regime’s convenient firing of Inspectors General at the Departments of State, Defense (War) and Interior, the regime’s defiant secrecy and the lack of oversight from an utterly supine Congress as key factors contributing to the heist’s opacity.
That opacity has, in turn, generated golden “opportunities for corruption.” CREW offers a few examples:
Harold Hamm, the oil tycoon who reportedly helped organize the 2024 dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump solicited $1 billion from industry executives, attended the January 9th meeting at the White House about reviving Venezuela’s production. Hamm donated millions to Trump’s political apparatus and the White House ballroom.
Harry Sargeant III, another billionaire oil tycoon and GOP donor whose wife also donated six figures to Trump’s political operation, reportedly golfs frequently with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and has been advising Trump on getting American oil companies involved in Venezuela.
Reliance Industries, a conglomerate run by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is reportedly in talks to secure a permit to buy Venezuelan oil. In 2024, a subsidiary of Reliance paid the Trump Organization $10 million to license the Trump name for a property in Mumbai.
Chevron is the only major American oil company currently operating in Venezuela, and its stock price jumped after news of the raid. Chevron also spent $4 million lobbying Congress and the Trump administration last spring in part to maintain its presence in Venezuela and donated $2 million to Trump’s second inauguration.
One anonymous Polymarket user made more than $400,000 by betting that Maduro would be ousted in the days and hours before the operation, raising potential insider trading concerns.
Seventeen White House staffers reported holding between $820,036 and $2,250,000 in Big Oil stocks. Though they may have divested since, if White House staff continue to hold investments in oil companies, they should not be making decisions that impact those companies.
The dots are easy to connect.
Unlike the roster of contractors Trump famously stiffed as a developer, political “donors” have every reason to believe they will be duly compensated. And unlike the two secret memos the regime used to justify his extra-constitutional oil caper—one from the Office of Legal Counsel and one from the Dept. of Justice—the connectability of donations to remunerative outcomes doesn’t seem to bother Trump or his party.
To the contrary, you will often hear a legion of lampreys defend their shark as “the most transparent president ever!” because he doesn’t try to hide the brimming ledger of quid pro quos that has enriched his “family business” and shaped his policies at home and abroad.
Strangely, the overt nature of his corruption has normalized it. Perhaps it’s because the blatherati regularly describes the president’s “style” as “transactional,” as if corruption and selfishness are features of his presidency instead of bugs. Or perhaps it’s because his style has been a feature of US empire for …. ever.
In 1933, retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler famously went on a speaking tour of the US. Titled “War Is A Racket," the speech he gave would become a book two years later. In it, he lamented his storied career, calling himself “a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.” The empire Butler served then sounds eerily familiar today:
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
Said Butler:
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
Sadly, Butler’s pointed mea culpa continued to resonate at the turn of the 21st Century as the US was poised to invade Iraq. When then-White House Spokesperson Ari Fleischer announced the invasion of the oil-rich former client state, he called it “Operation Iraqi Liberation.” When they realized the acronym was O.I.L., they hastily rechristened the illegal war launched under false pretenses as “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” If nothing else, it was an admission that they knew it looked bad and sounded worse. They at least felt it necessary to try to hide their ulterior motives, none of which ultimately included the outright theft of Iraq’s oil.
That was, according to Trump, the biggest mistake of the Iraq War. They didn’t take the oil. And now, in spite of also criticizing the war as “stupid” and luring war-weary Americans with the promise of ending “forever wars,” Trump has bombed oil-rich Nigeria and oil-rich Iran and, of course, oil-rich Venezuela.
And it’s in Venezuela that Trump launched his own illegal war under false pretenses. His war on narcoterrorism has been bullshit from day one. It was a thinly-veiled excuse to move naval assets into the region and to ultimately remove Maduro … thus clearing the way for him to … take the oil.
And what are we doing about it?
Nothing.
At today’s hearing, Secretary of State Rubio fielded war powers-based objections from Democrats and he dismissed the lonely principled stand taken by Republican apostate Rand Paul, but none of it will stop the same kind of imperial thievery Smedley Butler bemoaned nearly a century earlier. - jp
Maduro was an ‘impediment to progress’ and refused deal, Rubio says
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/28/us-maduro-venezuela-hearing-rubio/88394925007/
Venezuela ‘untenable situation’ that had to be addressed, Rubio says about Maduro capture
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-senate-committe-hearing-rubio-9.7064947
Rubio says oil companies were not tipped off about Venezuela operation, contradicting Trump
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5711677-rubio-venezuela-oil-companies-trump/
How the Trump administration plans to control Venezuela’s oil money
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-29/trump-venezuela-oil-revenue-plan/106282226
Trump’s Venezuela oil sell-off sparks corruption concerns
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/28/trumps-venezuela-oil-deal-corruption/88365104007/
Vitol and Trafigura: Traders at the Heart of Trump’s Venezuela Oil Grab
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-25/vitol-and-trafigura-traders-at-the-heart-of-trump-s-venezuela-oil-grab
Venezuela and Mexico: How Trump is trying to choke Cuba’s oil supplies
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/28/venezuela-and-mexico-how-trump-is-trying-to-choke-cubas-oil-supplies
Rubio Says US Ready to Use Force to Ensure Venezuela’s Cooperation
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-27/trump-is-ready-to-use-force-to-ensure-venezuela-cooperates-rubio
Delcy Rodríguez Responds to the US: “No More Orders from Washington DC”
https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/news/2026/01/27/delcy-rodriguez-responds-to-the-us-no-more-orders-from-washington-dc/