Five hundred million dollars of Venezuelan oil money is now sitting in a Qatari bank account. Controlled by a U.S. president who talks about other nations’ resources like they are his personal war trophies.
The United States toppled a government and grabbed its most valuable asset. Trump routed the first payout into an offshore account. And Trump’s own team is boasting that they, not Venezuelans, will decide if and when any of it comes back.
This is not policy as usual. This is what happens when an elected strongman decides the law does not apply to him. Trump has pushed through orders that wall this cash off from courts, creditors and even future governments.
His aides frame it as a “historic energy deal.” Ideologues like Stephen Miller have spent months arguing that Venezuelan oil really belongs to the United States.
From Caracas to Tehran, officials call it piracy and robbery. They warn that this is how empires behave when they stop pretending to respect sovereignty.
At home, a supposedly coequal Congress has managed a few angry letters while Trump proves he can invade and seize another country’s oil. And he dares anyone to stop him.
This is not foreign policy doctrine. Rather it is a confession that the world’s most powerful democracy is letting a lawless president operate like a dictator on the global stage.
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