Rich Lowry

We don't want to see that happen.

So in some respects, Trump feels completely new because he's very old and represents traditions we'd gotten away from for better or worse.

He's had a fixation with this, right?

His critique of the Iraq war was in part, we didn't keep the oil, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he likes the idea of gaining assets and benefiting from any transaction.

So I'm not a huge fan of this in that sense.

The oil in Venezuela is for the Venezuelans.

If we're going to help them develop it and have American companies there investing for the good of Venezuelans and our companies are going to benefit too, that's fine.

And maybe that's ultimately what would happen.

But the way he presents it, I think,

counterproductive.

The same thing with running Venezuela.

We're not running Venezuela, right?

You have the vice president running Venezuela, and we're hoping to coerce her into doing what we want.

And I think we'll probably have some success with that, at least in the short or medium term.

But we're not running Venezuela.

And usually when you're not running a country, you don't go out of your way to say you're running the country.

But Trump, again, he likes his name on stuff.