During his triumphalist press conference following the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, Trump never used the word 'democracy.' However, he mentioned 'oil' 27 times, declaring: 'We are going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.'

Even so, whatever we are doing in Venezuela is not really a war for oil. It is, rather, a war for oil fantasies. The enormous wealth that Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken does not exist,” he stated.

From Krugman's perspective, the tycoon's big mistake The New Yorker's mistake was failing to analyze that, while Venezuela possesses the world's largest known oil reserves, some of these are heavy oil, which is extra-heavy, has low recovery rates, and a high production cost.

“Venezuela's claims of having immense usable oil reserves were pure politically motivated propaganda.

In short, Trump's belief that he has struck it rich in Venezuela's oil fields would be an unrealistic fantasy even if he actually had control of a nation that, in practice, is still controlled by the same thugs who controlled it before Maduro was hijacked,” he emphasized.