Donald Trump acknowledged that he informed oil companies about his plans to attack Venezuela and abduct its leader, despite not bothering to notify Congress.
Speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, the billionaire president told reporters that he talked to oil companies “before and after” the attack, describing them as crucial to “fix the infrastructure” in the South American country after the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
“They want to go in, and they’re going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they’re going to represent us well,” Trump said. “The infrastructure is rusty, rotten, most of it is unusable. It’s old. It’s broken. You see pipes lying all over the ground, nothing’s been invested for years.”
Trump’s admission that he tipped off oil companies about the plan to capture Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, came after multiple Democrats said the surprise bombardment of Venezuela amounted to an illegal declaration of war without the required congressional approval.
The Trump administration has shrugged off the criticism, claiming the plan to detain Maduro and bring him to New York to face “narco-terrorism” charges was a law enforcement operation that does not require the support of Congress.
There have also been questions about the apparent motivations behind the shocking operation. The White House has long claimed the U.S. does not want to carry out a regime change in Venezuela and that the removal of Maduro is not linked to the country’s lucrative oil.
But Trump has repeatedly declared that the U.S. is going to “run” Venezuela and be “in charge” there now that Maduro has been detained. He also announced a plan to seize control of the country’s oil industry, vowing to send American companies in to revive what he called the “dead country.”
“The country is a mess. It’s been horribly run. The oil is just flowing at a very low level,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “Even if it was badly run, it should have more income, more oil than what they do. So we’re going to have the big oil companies going in, they’re going to fix the infrastructure, they’re going to invest money.
“We’re not going to invest anything. We’re going to just take care of the country,” Trump added.
For several months, there have been fears that Trump would launch an attack on Venezuela as part of a broader effort to remove Maduro, amid pressure tactics including the seizure of sanctioned oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast and the imposition of blockades on others.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the plot to remove Maduro was part of a counter-narcotics operation.
“Venezuela is all about making money for his friends. Wall Street, the oil industry, they can make a lot of money off of Venezuela if they run it,” Murphy said.
“Once again, you’re seeing that this president’s foreign policy, the invasion of Venezuela, the ouster of Maduro, is about making his crowd filthy rich. It has nothing to do with American national security.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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