Confirmation, it was never about drugs....
Donald Trump has claimed Venezuela has stolen ‘all’ of the oil from the United States.
There have been rumblings of a potential conflict for months between Washington and Caracas as Operation Southern Spear attempts to stop the flow of drugs into America.
Trump’s announced his intention is ‘whatever we had’ returned by the government in Caracas.
Under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan government seized assets from some American oil companies after the country nationalised oil fields in 2007.
The US President expressed his frustration that the US didn’t push back sooner as he gave an update on his blockade to reporters.
He said: ‘Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had — they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching.
‘But they’re not gonna do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. They threw our companies out. And we want it back.’
According to the Washington Post, US servicemen could be briefed for more ‘forceful’ naval operations as forces amass in the Caribbean.
Trump was pictured meeting with Marco Rubio in the Oval Office.
F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, Growler electronic warfare aircraft, and Hawkeye early warning planes have also been spotted in the air, according to FlightRadar.