President Donald Trump used his Veterans Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday to contrast America’s long wars of the past with his administration’s operation in Venezuela, saying the U.S. is already taking in “billions and billions of dollars” in oil.
Speaking near the graves of Americans killed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump went through the length and death toll of each of those conflicts. He argued that the country “got very little from any of these wars.”
Then he turned to Venezuela.
“In our case, we had Venezuela, where we’re taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil and all sorts of other things,” the president said. “Be hundreds of billions very soon. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it, and we paid for the cost of the war many, many times over already.”
Trump described the January operation that removed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power as a war his administration won “in 48 minutes.”
The president has made Venezuela’s oil a centerpiece of his case for the operation. Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and Trump has long argued that America’s biggest mistake in past wars was failing to “take the oil.” After Maduro’s capture, he said major U.S. oil companies would “spend billions of dollars” to fix the country’s broken oil infrastructure.
So far, though, the money flowing to the U.S. is well short of the president’s numbers. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the U.S. received more than $12 billion in revenue from Venezuela’s natural resource exports through September. The Times reported that most of those funds were sent back to Venezuela soon after they arrived.
Trump made a similar claim in August, saying both countries were “making hundreds of billions of dollars.” PolitiFact rated that statement false at the time. It found that the highest credible estimate of oil revenue since the U.S. took over Venezuela’s oil industry was about $13 billion.
The administration has kept pressing ahead. Trump has called his recent energy agreement with Venezuela the biggest oil deal in world history. On Monday, Exxon signed a nonbinding memorandum with Venezuela’s state oil company to study opportunities there. The company said any investment would require stable policies and strong protections.
Industry analysts have warned that rebuilding Venezuela’s oil sector after years of mismanagement will take a long time and tens of billions of dollars. Venezuela now produces a little over 800,000 barrels a day. In the 1970s, it produced about 3.5 million.
Trump’s remarks came as the administration faces heavy scrutiny over its foreign policy following the midterm elections, including the war with Iran. But on Venezuela, the president made clear he sees a clear win. As he told the crowd at Arlington, it is a result “nobody’s ever seen” before.
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