Why Trump Is Taking the Fight to Venezuela’s Doorstep

The Trump administration is tightening the net around Venezuela’s oil exports, saying that the country stole American property and that its governing regime is illegitimate. The “illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping,” President Donald Trump said in a Dec. 16 post on Truth Social. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller likewise said on X that the “tyrannical expropriation” of American oil companies’ investments in Venezuela was “the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”...