Author	: Bill Kochman
Publish	: Jan. 12, 2026
Update	: Jan. 12, 2026
Parts	: 09

Synopsis:



Continuing our discuss from part four, for those of you who may be wondering if Syria is also currently receiving any US foreign aid, the answer is "Yes!", it most certainly does. However, it is not even close to what Israel and Egypt get. Based on online statistics, in Fiscal Year 2024 -- which is the last fully-reported year -- $524.6 million in US foreign aid was allotted to Syria. Another $41.8 million has been reported for Fiscal year 2025. However, this is not the full amount for all of 2025. The majority of aid in recent years has been in the form of life-saving humanitarian assistance which is channeled through international organizations and NGOs -- both US-based and foreign-based -- and not directly to Syria's government. This aid covers emergency shelter, food assistance, healthcare, education, sanitation for the millions of vulnerable Syrians and refugees in the region, and for water.

Before moving forward in our discussion, let me just mention here that while I have used the title "president" with the aforementioned leaders of Egypt, please understand that I do so hesitantly, because that is how they happen to be referred to in the politically correct secular world. In reality, they are ALL dictators. Furthermore, while I've also politely used the phrase "US foreign aid", the truth of the matter is that in the case of Egypt and Israel, the money amounts to nothing more than an annual political bribe in order to force Egypt and Israel to maintain peace between themselves.

As I explained to you earlier, one of the criteria which the US government uses as a measuring rod to determine whether or not a foreign country is a potential friend, partner and ally, is by how much that nation aligns itself with American interests. However, as we have already discussed, that isn't the only thing that America looks at. It also determines if there is something that country has which America wants. It could be a particular natural resource -- such as rare earth minerals, oil, coal, uranium or something else -- or perhaps that nation is a strategic location where the United States can establish a US military base that hosts American missile batteries. This is precisely why the island of Guam -- where I have resided for forty years now -- is so strategically important to the United States. As I mentioned in part two, we have three US military bases here, and we are a part of the Second Island Chain of American defense against Chinese expansionism.

However, what happens when a country refuses to yield to the United States by giving it what it wants? Well, as we are now clearly seeing in the case of Venezuela, that is when the US government will begin to pressure that nation, and seriously apply the screws until it really hurts. Venezuela's interim president -- Delcy Rodríguez -- is without a doubt feeling tremendous pressure right now. However, that pressure did NOT begin with her. As we discussed earlier, it began when Hugo Chávez became Venezuela's president and renegotiated all of the contracts with the big US oil companies which were still in Venezuela at the time. It grew worse when Nicolás Maduro later took over upon the death of Chávez.

In August of 2017, during Trump's first term in office, the United States imposed sanctions which prevented Venezuela from accessing the U.S. financial markets. Then, to hurt the country even more, in May of 2018 the Trump administration expanded those sanctions even more in order to totally block purchase of Venezuelan debt. These events occurred during Nicolás Maduro's first term in office. So Donald Trump was already applying pressure to Venezuela over eight years ago.

As you will recall from our earlier discussion, while Chevron chose to remain in Venezuela, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refused the new deals which Chávez offered them, and so they went into arbitration and left the country. Eventually, they partially succeeded in recouping some of their losses when due to assistance from the United Nations, they were awarded billions of dollars in compensation. However, Donald Trump was NOT done with applying serious pressure to Venezuela by any means. His ultimate goal was to force Nicolás Maduro to step down during the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. Of course, if he were to accomplish that -- which he didn't at that time -- Trump then hoped to install a more pro-American president through whom he could grab all of that Venezuelan oil.

In short, what President Trump is doing now by applying the financial screws to Venezuela by means of the U.S. military blockade, is merely a continuation of what he first started doing in 2017, because he wanted Maduro out of office. Those are the plain and simple facts which you can easily verify for yourself if you wish. It was NOT about the drugs back then, and it isn't about the drugs now. It is about the oil and Trump's desire to control it and profit from it.

So while Venezuela did begin making the agreed upon payments to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, those payments came to a halt in January of 2019 when Donald Trump applied the screws even more on Venezuela by imposing very heavy sanctions which specifically targeted Venezuela's state-owned oil company -- Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. The 2019 sanctions effectively prevented Venezuela from even selling its oil to the United States, and also from accessing the U.S. financial system for oil-related transactions. The primary effects of those 2019 sanctions were the following:

1. Blocking Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. from receiving payments for petroleum exports to the U.S..

2. Freezing approximately $7 billion of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.'s assets within U.S. jurisdiction.

3. Prohibiting American companies -- with limited exceptions like Chevron at times -- from engaging in business with Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A..

My friends, while some of you may find all of this detailed information a bit tedious, I hope you can see the connection between what US President Trump began doing nine years ago, and what he is doing right now. To reiterate this important point, the bottom line is that he began a financial blockade to purposely cripple Venezuela, and to weaken its leader -- Nicolás Maduro -- in order to force Maduro from office; and now, nine years later, Trump has implemented a complete and total military blockade of the country. I previously shared with you what Stephen Miller had openly stated just a few days ago, and why Donald Trump views himself as now being in complete charge, and in total control of Venezuela. With the financial blockade, and now the military blockade, Trump has trapped Venezuela and Delcy Rodríguez in a powerful financial vice. Either they do as Trump demands, or else they will NOT survive. Trump is a merciless, cutthroat businessman who only smiles for the cameras.

In fact, just a few hours ago, I was reading how despite the fact that Russia had sent a naval vessel to escort it, the U.S. Coast Guard finally managed to catch up with the oil tanker -- formerly known as the Bella 1 and recently renamed the Marinera -- which had tried to escape from the military blockade around Venezuela. In fact, to escape detection, the tanker had even begun to fly the Russian flag. The latest word is that the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro has boarded the tanker in the North Atlantic Ocean in waters between Iceland and the British Isles, according to the U.S. European Command. Upon the capture of the sanctioned vessel, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the "blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT -- anywhere in the world."

Then, just now as I continued to work on this series, I was informed by a post on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's X account that there were actually TWO back-to-back operations during the predawn hours. Besides the Bella 1, Noem reports that the SECOND vessel, the Motor Tanker Sophia -- which Noem referred to as "ghost fleet" tanker ships -- was boarded in in international waters near the Caribbean Sea. Quoting from the US Southern Command, it says the following:

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"The interdicted vessel M/T Sophia was operating in international waters and conducting illicit activities in the Caribbean Sea. The U.S. Coast Guard is escorting M/T Sophia to the U.S. for final disposition."

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Furthermore, two days later today -- I have been working on this series for nine days now -- I was reading a Fox News article in which the US Southern Command has announced that in a pre-dawn action, marines and sailors from Joint Task Force Southern Spear have just boarded a THIRD oil tanker called the Motor/Tanker Olina in the Caribbean Sea. On the X platform, Homeland Security Security Secretary Kristi Noam posted the following:

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"Early this morning, the USCG executed a boarding and seizure of the Motor Tanker Olina in international waters east of the Caribbean Sea. As another "ghost fleet" tanker ship suspected of carrying embargoed oil, this vessel had departed Venezuela attempting to evade U.S. forces.

Close coordination with the DeptofWar, StateDept, and TheJusticeDept ensured a safe, effective boarding consistent with law.

The ghost fleets will not outrun justice. They will not hide under false claims of nationality.

The Coast Guard will seize sanctioned oil tankers, enforce U.S. and international law, and eliminate these funding streams for illicit activity including narco-terrorism."

----- End Quote -----

So as should be quite evident to you by now, President Trump is very serious about placing a total and complete chokehold on Venezuela's ability to generate revenue from any of its oil exports. Similar to what Stephen Miller recently said in his CNN interview, Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the very same thoughts this past Sunday when he explained that the oil quarantine is specifically designed to choke off any oil revenue until the leadership in Caracas fully meets the conditions which have been set by the Trump administration. Rubio's exact words were the following:

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"We have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met."

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So as I first pointed out to you in part two, these guys are all going out on the American news circuit, speaking fully in unison and propagating the exact same story. The story is NOT about capturing and punishing drug traffickers as it was in the very beginning. It is about US military might, American hegemony and expansionism, and oil, oil, oil. Trump officials are not even trying to hide their true motivations and goals anymore. Why the sudden shift? Because that is what it's been about since the very beginning. In fact, since nine years ago when Trump first took office and began pressuring Venezuela. I have already shared the facts and the history with you so that you can plainly see it for yourselves, if you will just open your eyes and stop drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid.

To reiterate the point one more time, while drug trafficking played a role in everything that has been happening over the past week, drug trafficking was not and is not what this is really all about. The drug trafficking charges against Maduro were just the bait and the hook to get the American public on board with what Trump had already put in motion and intended to do. He had to get the American people -- at least some of them -- on his side. He knew that fighting against the evil drug traffickers would do the trick and gain him support, as it has most certainly done.

However, if you are a keen observer who judiciously reads the news as I always do, you may have noticed that a subtle but very noticeable change has occurred in the narrative over the past few days. Exactly what am I talking about? Consider the following. Initially, all of the comments which were coming from the Trump administration were about how Nicolás Maduro was a terrible narco-king who had to be stopped because he's responsible for the deaths of millions of American citizens. While any number of deaths resulting from a drug overdose is a tragedy, if you know anything about Donald Trump, it's that he is a terrible liar and an exaggerator. He will constantly embellish facts in order to enforce and supposedly validate his personal opinions, and to convince others to accept his views as the truth. We have all seen him do it, right?

Having said the above, allow me to inform you that as much as Nicolás Maduro may be a very wicked man, he is most certainly NOT responsible for the death of millions of Americans, or as Trump has also stated "countless Americans". The actual facts are these. In 2023, there were 105,007 drug overdose deaths in the United States. Of those, approximately 72,776 involved fentanyl. Furthermore, provisional data for a 12-month period ending in April 2025 indicates a significant decline in drug overdose deaths to around 76,516. Of those, around 48,422 are attributed to fentanyl. Where does the fentanyl come from? Just keep reading, my friends.

If we consider a twenty-year period from 1999 to 2020, average drug overdose deaths fluctuate between 70,000 to about 100,000 per year. This means that there has been roughly 840,000 total deaths during that twenty-year period from 1999 to 2020. Again, that is indeed terrible. It is a human tragedy. But it is NOT the millions of drug deaths which President Trump has at times stated. It's not even one million after twenty years. In fact, that averages to about 40,000 drug-related deaths per year for that twenty-year period. So where is Trump getting his figures from? Obviously from his own mind, because he had to demonize Nicolás Maduro and make him look like the most vile, wicked, "narco-king" who has ever existed, so that Americans would buy into his story, and agree to his bombing of Caracas, Venezuela and to the capture of Maduro.

But there is more, my friends. As it turns out, analysts from the U.S. government and independent think tanks believe that Venezuela plays a relatively MINOR ROLE insofar as bringing cocaine into the United States is concerned. Furthermore, it is believed that Venezuela has virtually NO LINK to fentanyl entering into the United States. Furthermore, Venezuela is NOT listed as a source or a transit country for fentanyl in any edition of the Drug Enforcement Administration's annual "National Drug Threat Assessment". This info is based on a review that was conducted by one Jeffrey Singer, who is a practicing surgeon and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Allow me to provide you with a few more drug trafficking facts which blow even more holes in the bogus narrative which Trump and his warmongering cronies have thrust upon naive American people. While it is indeed true that the State Department -- which is now run by spin doctor Marco Rubio -- has designated Venezuela as a major transit country for cocaine, the drug is primarily produced IN COLUMBIA, moves through Venezuela, but is actually destined for Europe, and NOT for the USA, as was explained by Vanda Felbab-Brown, who studies drug policy, and who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Let me share a final tidbit with you, and this one is a real doozy. You have no doubt noticed how a number of the alleged drug boat strikes have been occurring in the EASTERN PACIFIC OCEAN. That's rather strange when we consider that Venezuela is located in the NORTHEASTERN part of South America and is bordered by the Caribbean Sea, and NOT by the Pacific Ocean in the west. You see, Trump and his gang are NOT telling you the entire story, because it does NOT fit into the narrative they are promoting, which is that Nicolás Maduro is the vile "narco-king" who is killing millions of Americans. Now, if you look at any map of South America, what you will quickly discover is that Colombia is in fact located in NORTHWESTERN South America right against the PACIFIC OCEAN. So why is this point relevant? Because according to the aforementioned Vanda Felbab-Brown:

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"A lot of cocaine that goes to the United States BYPASSES Venezuela. It goes through the Pacific, smuggled by sea FROM COLUMBIA around Mexico to the U.S."

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Now please stop for a minute and think back to what I told you earlier regarding Colombian president Gustavo Petro, and how President Trump issued a strong warning to him and said that he would be next. If Nicolás Maduro is really the big, bad wolf as Trump and his cronies have painted him, why is Trump issuing such a strong warning to Gustavo Petro? I will tell you why. Just as the vast majority of the fentanyl that enters the United States is produced IN MEXICO, the majority of cocaine entering the USA is manufactured IN COLOMBIA. In fact, Colombia is the leading producer of cocaine on a global scale. Therefore, I conclude it must be cocaine from Colombia which is in those boats in the Eastern Pacific Ocean which are being blown up by the US military.

My dear friends, are you starting to understand how you have been majorly gaslighted by the Trump administration, because Trump has been after Maduro for eight years now, and he wants you to hate the man? Let me say it one more time. Most of the fentanyl entering the USA is really produced IN MEXICO. Most of the cocaine entering the United States is actually produced IN COLOMBIA. Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro have very little to do with it. Yet Donald Trump and his spin doctor cronies have purposely made Maduro the "narco-king" poster child, because they wanted his oil. Can I say it any more clearly than that?

As I informed you at the very beginning of this series, to soften us up, and to prepare us for what was about to happen on January 3rd, 2026, Trump and his cronies embarked on a major psychological manipulation campaign whereby we were all bombarded with news story after news story regarding military strikes on suspected drug boats. We were being set up for the "long con", and many Americans -- particularly all the MAGA fanatics -- fell for it and now believe that it is all about stopping the drugs and drug trafficking. But here again, we see another strange thing happening. Originally, these drug activities were simply being referred to as drug trafficking, and the people who engaged in doing it were drug traffickers.

But then Trump and his team decided that it was time to start designating drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, for the reasons I previously explained to you, which is that they can now use the US military against them. At least that is what they believe and tell us. So what happened next? The president began labeling drug trafficking as narco-terrorism, and drug traffickers as narco-terrorists. In short, if Trump wanted to bomb something, he simply labeled it as an FTO, or Foreign Terrorist Organization. In Trump's mind, doing that justified bombing something to hell. Suddenly, Venezuela's very government itself was a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and Maduro became the very face of the evil "Narco-King". It was gaslighting at its finest, and a shining example of bait and switch. We all know what happened next: January 3, 2026.

So here we were being bombarded with story after story about one alleged drug boat after another being bombed for about four months straight, even though we were really never given any clear evidence that they were actually connected to drugs and drug trafficking. We were simply supposed to trust that Mr. Trump and his team were telling us the truth, I suppose.

But then I noticed something unusual, and I hope that you've seen it too. For some odd reason, ever since the capture of Nicolás Maduro, there have been fewer reports about military strikes on suspected drug boats. What is going on with that? Did the drug boat strikes stop being reported because it was beginning to create too much heat, friction and resistance with the public? Or did it stop because it had already served its purpose in psychologically preparing the public for what was soon to occur on January 3, 2026 when Nicolás Maduro was captured? In other words, as I have already made clear, the Trump administration wanted to create a convincing narrative that the January 3rd invasion of Caracas was all about drug trafficking, and NOT about taking control of Venezuela's oil. Thus, the drug boat strikes created the perfect narrative for doing that, and was used to condition people to believe that the attack on Maduro's compound was about drug trafficking.

However, now that Maduro has been captured, if you pay close attention to the various comments which are coming from all of the key players -- namely Trump, Hegseth, Rubio and Miller -- they talk a lot more now about oil, boarding oil tankers, and how taking control of Venezuela's oil will enrich the USA, and supposedly the Venezuelan people as well. In short, aside from Maduro's trial in New York, drug trafficking and striking drug boats is being pushed more into the background, while taking control of Venezuela and its oil fields has come a lot more to the fore. The minute that Maduro was caught, they switched the narrative on us. In fact, as we have already seen, Trump and his warmongers now proudly boast of being fully in charge of Venezuela due to the US military blockade. Not only that, but they even have the audacity to claim that they OWN the oil, and that they will TAKE the oil from Venezuela, as they have already begun to do to a small degree. This was confirmed by a post which President Trump made on the official White House account on the X platform on January 7, 2026. Trump wrote as follows:

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"I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

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As further evidence that the Trump administration's intention is to grab as much oil from Venezuela as it possibly can, two days earlier on January 5, 2026, President Trump engaged in a phone interview with MS NOW's Joe Scarborough. The following day, Scarborough shared some of the details of the interview on his "Morning Joe" program. Following are some quotes that Joe shared with his viewers:

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"Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that [former President George W.] Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil.

In 2016, I said we should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil. And we're going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we're going to keep the oil."

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Exactly why does President Trump and his faithful acolytes insist that they OWN the oil and will TAKE the oil, while it is found in the ground in a separate and sovereign country? Why do they even go so far as to make the ridiculous claim that Venezuela stole the oil from them? From everything I've read, my impression is that this strange mentality goes back to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who renegotiated the contracts with the American oil companies who were still in Venezuela at the time of his presidency. Chávez gave them a choice. As we have already seen, Chevron chose to accept the new deal, while both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips chose to reject it. Thus, they went into arbitration.

That is the cold, harsh realities of the business world. You make deals and decide if something is advantageous to you. If it is not, then you walk away from it, even if it means you have to suffer some degree of loss. So does the decision that was made by both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to reject the offer made by Chávez really constitute theft on the part of Venezuela? I am not a worldly businessman with any degree of expertise; but from the little I know, I would say that it does not. Then there is the issue that Venezuela stopped the payments to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. So does that even constitute theft on the part of Venezuela, or give the USA the right to invade Venezuela, take down its president, and then claim that they OWN the oil and will TAKE the oil?

While some observers may say "Yes, that does in fact amount to theft", I would have to disagree based on the available information. That information -- which I already shared with you -- is that President Trump is the one who made a choice to intentionally put the financial screws on Venezuela when he first acquired the US presidency nine years ago. When he regained the presidency with the 2024 election, he resumed what he had started during his first term. In short, he made it impossible for Venezuela to continue making the payments to both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

As you will recall from earlier in our talk, Trump purposely put Venezuela in a financial bind so that it could no longer fulfill its obligations, and so that he could falsely claim that Venezuela had stolen from the United States what never even belonged to America in the first place. To make matters worse, now Trump has fully implemented his military blockade in order to tighten the financial screws even more. Trump is acting like a dictatorial thug, and is no better than the man he now condemns, and who he just captured and imprisoned.

Please go to part six for the continuation of this series.

⇒ Go To The Next Part . . .

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