Venezuelan Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello on Wednesday expressed his support of the new oil deal with the United States — marking a stark contrast to past anti-U.S. statements and demands that “not a drop” of oil be given to America.
Cabello delivered his defense of the U.S.-Venezuela oil deal during the latest episode of Con el Mazo Dando (“Hitting with the Mallet”), his infamous socialist propaganda show. The interior minister stated that the agreement contains “very clear” terms, royalty rates, and taxes favorable to Venezuela.
“And a $100 billion investment for the country that is said to be coming over the next 25 years,” Cabello said, affirming that the deal is based on the “reality” that Venezuela has the oil, but it is buried, and “it’s no use to us” buried.
“And how much is Venezuela going to receive? That’s why it’s very clear in the agreement,” he stressed.
President Donald Trump announced last week that the United States and Venezuela reached a historic oil agreement that grants the U.S. control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil reserves. The Wednesday night broadcast of Con el Mazo Dando aired just hours after U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to Caracas and met with Acting President Delcy Rodríguez to finalize the terms of the deal.
The U.S. Department of Energy detailed that Sec. Wright also oversaw the signing of several energy agreements between Venezuela and Chevron, Eni, and GE Verona to expand oil production in the South American country and modernize its ailing and dysfunctional power grid. The agreements, the Energy Department detailed, build upon the oil deal announced by President Trump last week.
Per VTV, the Venezuelan socialist regime’s flagship propaganda broadcaster, Diosdado Cabello defended all of the signed agreements — affirming that all of them are allegedly “fully in line” with guidelines and plans established by late socialist dictator Hugo Chavez. The interior minister claimed during his propaganda show that Chávez had allegedly developed a plan that aimed to increase Venezuela’s oil production to “four million, then six million” barrels of oil per day.
Venezuela was capable of producing upwards of 3.2 million barrels of oil per day during the early 2000s. However, decades of severe socialist mismanagement and lack of maintenance and investment in the nation’s oil industry significantly diminished Venezuela’s oil output capabilities. Prior to his arrest, Nicolás Maduro sought the help of the fellow anti-U.S. regime of Iran to repair and restore some of the lost output. The Iranian-led efforts ultimately found minimal success and instead reportedly contributed to further environmental damage to the country through significant oil spills.
According to VTV, Cabello pointed out that, even though Hugo Chavez maintained “anti-imperialist rhetoric,” the late dictator “responded with commercial pragmatism and asserted that the U.S. was the main consumer and that its refineries were designed to process Venezuelan crude oil.”
The interior minister also reportedly rejected criticism of the deal from individuals who point to a “loss of sovereignty” of Venezuela’s oil. Cabello asserted that using the oil resources to generate riches for the Venezuelan people “is precisely to exercise sovereignty.”
Cabello is widely known to feature letters from “cooperating patriots” during broadcasts of El Mazo. “Cooperating Patriot,” a socialist term used in the past by Cabello and Nicolás Maduro, is used to described alleged pro-regime spies or whistleblowers who expose “counter-revolutionary” individuals or reveal information beneficial to the ruling socialists. The interior minister once again read a purported letter from a “Cooperating Patriot” and stated, “Only the [Boliarian] Revolution is capable of guaranteeing a win-win agreement.”
“Chavismo is the only guarantee of peace in this country. Chavismo. That is why the opposition is attacking the structures of Chavismo,” Cabello claimed.
“And it is important to make one thing clear: this energy pact opens the door to new investments, the restoration of productive capacity, and opportunities for national development. Venezuela is once again on the radar of major economic players,” he continued, reading from the purported letter.
Diosdado Cabello’s defense of the U.S. oil deal with Venezuela comes after years of his vitriolic anti-U.S. rhetoric. Cabello has recurrently and publicly accused the United States of wanting to “steal” Venezuela’s oil resources.
In December 2025, just weeks before U.S. forces arrested Nicolás Maduro in a law enforcement operation in Caracas, Cabello used Con el Mazo Dando to order workers of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA to not give “a single drop” of oil to the United States, which he once again accused of wanting to “steal” the nation’s oil.
“Not a single drop, my colleagues at the oil company, not a single drop, not even half a drop by force. You know what I’m saying: there must be absolutely no way, not a single one, that allows even a single drop of our oil to be extracted, because that resource belongs to the Venezuelan people,” Cabello said at the time, per the show’s own website.
Diosdado Cabello is actively wanted by the U.S. on multiple drug trafficking charges and has an active $25 million bounty on his head for information that can lead to his arrest and/or conviction.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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