Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth seem hellbent on eradicating any sense of honor or pride in the U.S. military. Over the past weeks, there’s been intense controversy over Hegseth murdering shipwrecked sailors clinging to wreckage in the open ocean, with a video of the incident said to be stomach-churning.
But if you’re taking a sledgehammer to the military’s reputation, why not engage in some outright piracy on the side? Overnight, US forces boarded and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela”. The tanker – a Panama-flagged vessel named Skipper – was transporting oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which raised the ire of the Trump administration.
Trump himself confirmed the incident in comments in the Roosevelt room, “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.” When pressed for why this vessel was targeted, he mumbled that it was “seized for a very good reason.” And as for the oil on board? Trump shrugged: “We keep it, I guess.” Yo-ho-ho.
🚨You can’t make this up.
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) December 10, 2025
Donald Trump announces he has intercepted a tanker off the coast of Venezuela that contained “illegal Iranian oil” – And says the United States will KEEP the oil.
So piracy is his foreign policy? This is completely unhinged.
pic.twitter.com/bpsOz7ZwGF
So we’re just going to steal this?
The understandably furious Venezuelan government accurately dubbed this: “a blatant theft and an act of international piracy” and continued:
“Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed … It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”
Venezuela isn’t just peddling a conspiracy theory: top Republicans have been fairly open that the pretext for all this is Trump wanting to steal the Venezuelan people’s oil. Just weeks ago, MAGA representative Maria Salazar casually explained on Fox Business that:
GOP Rep. Maria Salazar:
— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) November 26, 2025
“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world even more than Saudi Arabia. This will be a windfall for us when it comes to fossil fuels.”
They’re not even hiding it anymore. They’re admitting the U.S. wages war to steal oil.pic.twitter.com/I32flTutiF
“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Even more than Saudi Arabia. This will be a windfall for us when it comes to fossil fuels.”
It remains to be seen if Donald “no new wars” Trump actually invades Venezuela. If he commits to putting boots on the ground to force regime change, he could drag the United States kicking and screaming into yet another endless quagmire, punctuated only by an endless parade of planes flying back with a cargo of flag-draped coffins.
Published: Dec 11, 2025 06:31 am