Officials of Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime claimed President Donald Trump “confessed” to having “stolen” a sanctioned oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.
President Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, announced the United States seized an oil tanker as it was sailing off the coast of Venezuela towards Cuba.
According to reports, the oil tanker, identified as Skipper, is linked to illicit smuggling of Iranian oil and carried Venezuela crude at the time of the seizure.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized in action. And, other things are happening. So, you’ll be seeing that later. And you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,” Trump told reporters.
According to members of the Maduro regime, President Trump’s remarks constitute a “confession” of America’s plans to “steal” Venezuelan oil.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, in a Telegram message, claimed the “masks have come off, and that the “truth has been revealed.”
“The real objective of the U.S. is Venezuela’s oil; to steal it and take it illegally, without paying anything. This action constitutes an international crime and carries responsibility,” Rodríguez wrote.
“Venezuela will go to all international bodies to denounce this vulgar theft. In national unity, we will defend our resources and heritage. Venezuela will always prevail!” She concluded.
Rodríguez accompanied her message with a copy of a Maduro regime statement “rejecting and repudiating” the seizure of the tanker, which the regime described as an “act of international piracy, publicly announced by the President of the United States, who confessed to the assault of an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea.”
“In these circumstances, the real reasons behind the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been exposed. It is not migration. It is not drug trafficking. It is not democracy. It is not human rights. It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people,” the statement read in part.
Similarly, Interior Minister and long suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello accused Trump of allegedly having participated in the “assault” of the seized oil tanker, asserting that the United States wants to “steal the oil, steal the gold, steal the gas, steal the water.” Cabello considered the incident as a “direct attack” on Venezuela’s resources.
“They believe that all the psychological terrorism they have subjected the Venezuelan people to these days will make us give in, but they are mistaken. Our people are joyful,” Cabello said.
Cabello, who leads the Maduro regime’s brutally repressive apparatus, warned that there are sectors in Venezuela that celebrate “these actions” and then complain and denounce that “we have them on file.”
The Interior Minister further claimed that the seizure of the tanker allegedly seeks to “divert international attention” from Opposition Leader María Corina Machado receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on Wednesday “because they are actually trying to cover up the disaster they caused in Norway.”
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