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Good Thursday morning, Patriots,  and welcome back to O'Connor's Write Stand. I'm your host, John O'Connor, software programmer by day, conservative truth teller by night. Now, I need to be upfront with you about something before we dive in.  I'm recording this episode early on Wednesday afternoon, December  17th, because President Trump is giving his big address to the nation tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, and I want to actually watch it live. So.

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If you caught yesterday's episode of O'Connor's Quick Strike, you heard me break down what I thought Trump might say about Venezuela. The blockade he just announced. The foreign terrorist designation. The armada surrounding their coast. I laid out the four actions I thought America might take against the Maduro regime. Now, speaking as  this is tomorrow, I could be completely wrong about what Trump announced last night. He could have talked about the economy.

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Ukraine peace deals, some massive announcement nobody saw coming. Hell, he could have spent 20 minutes talking about his golf handicap for all I know. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Because regardless of what Trump said last night, there's something the American people desperately need to understand. Something the mainstream media is either flat out lying about or is completely ignorant about. And that's this. What has Venezuela

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actually stolen from the United States of America. When Trump talks about Venezuela owing us oil, land, and other assets, when he says Maduro regime stole from us,  the media loses their minds.  Trump's making it up. There's no stolen property. He's fabricating justification for war. And this is all freaking BS. Today,  I'm giving you the history lesson the mainstream media won't.

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We are going back to 1999. We are going back to Hugo Chavez and his oil socialism  revolution. We are walking through exactly what American companies lost, exactly how much Venezuela owes us, and exactly why Trump's escalation isn't reckless warmongering. It's about collecting a debt. By the end of this episode, you are going to know more about Venezuela than 99 % of the talking heads on cable news. And when your liberal friends start screaming,

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Trump starting an illegal war, you are going to have the facts to shut them down. Here's the question I want you thinking about. If a foreign dictator seized billions  of dollars in American assets, killed American citizens with drugs and crime, and laughed in our face for 25 years, what would you do about it? The right stand starts now.

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First, let me bring you up to speed on what's been happening over the past week, because this situation is escalating fast. On December 11th, Trump announced the United States seized an oil tanker called the Skipper off the coast of Venezuela.  When reporters asked what would happen to the oil on board, Trump said, and I quote, well, we keep it I guess. The media went nuts. Venezuela's socialist dictator, Nicolas Manduro,

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screamed about piracy and international crimes. Iran's embassy in Venezuela called it a grave violation of international law. Then, on December 16th, just two days ago, Trump took it to the next level. He posted on Truth Social that he's ordering a  total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going  in and out of Venezuela. He wrote, quote,

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Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before. And Patriots, he's not bluffing. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier,  is positioned off Venezuela's coast right now. 15,000 military personnel, multiple warships. Venezuela's airspace is closed to their aircraft.

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Trump also designated the Maduro regime as a foreign terrorist organization. That's the same designation we give ISIS and Al-Qaeda. So, when the media asks,  why is Trump doing this?  What's his justification? The answer is simple. Venezuela owes us. And I'm about to show you exactly how much. But to understand the present, we need to go back to where this all started.

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because Venezuela wasn't always a failed socialist hellhole run by a narco-terrorist. Let me take you back to 1976. Venezuela nationalizes its oil industry, creating Petrolios de Venezuela,  or PDVSA for short. Now, nationalization sounds scary, right? Government taking over private industry. But here's the thing, Venezuela actually did it right. They structured the

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PDVSA to run as a business, not a political piggy bank. They hired professionals who'd work for foreign oil companies. They maintained efficiency. They kept costs low. They had a global outlook. And it worked. By the  1980s, PDVSA was purchasing refineries in the United States, including Citgo. Yeah, that's Citgo. The one with signs all over America. That was Venezuela's company.

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And you know what? Nobody cared because they were a reliable partner. Between 1995 and 1998, Venezuela was the largest supplier of imported oil to the United States. They provided 13.7 % of America's oil imports.  13%. That's massive. Why were they so successful?  Geography. A tanker could reach the U.S. East Coast from Venezuela in just  one

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week. Gulf of Mexico refineries? Only four days. Compare that to Middle Eastern oil that takes weeks to arrive. It was a symbiotic relationship. Venezuela made billions selling oil to America. America got reliable energy from a stable democracy just 1,500 miles from our coast. Everybody won. Think about that for a second, Patriots.

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Venezuela was once one of the richest countries in Latin America. They had the world's largest oil reserves, a thriving middle class, a functioning democracy. So here's my question for you. Why would any country destroy that golden goose? Why would you take a partnership that's making you billions and just light it on fire? The answer is socialism. And his name was Hugo Chavez. December 1998.

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Hugo Chavez, a former Army Lieutenant Colonel who tried to launch a coup in 1992 and spent time in prison, wins the Venezuelan presidency. Oil prices had collapsed to $10 per barrel. Venezuela's economy wasn't in freefall. People were desperate. And Chavez promised to reshape and restore Venezuela by taking control away from the elites and giving it to the people. Sound familiar? It's the same socialist playbook

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every time. At first Chavez moved slowly, but by 2003 he was ready to show his true colors. He started what historians now call his  expropriation rampage. In 2007 Chavez seized operational control of the Orinoco heavy oil projects.  These were massive oil fields being developed by international companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips,  Chevron and others.

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American companies that had invested billions of dollars. Chavez didn't just nationalize them. He kicked them out, told them their contracts were void, took their equipment, took their infrastructure, took  everything. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips refused to accept Venezuela's low-ball compensation offers. So they did what American companies are supposed to do. They went to international arbitration. But  Chavez didn't care. He kept going.

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He nationalized the telecommunications company, CanTV. He nationalized  Banco de Venezuela. He seized cement companies, took over SEMEX operations. He grabbed steel companies, including Sidor. And he took fertilizer plants. And it wasn't just corporate assets.  Chavez seized land, hundreds of thousands of acres. British company Vesti Foods, which had operated cattle ranches  in Venezuela,

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got their land stolen under Chavez's land reform laws. Now here's what kills me, Patriots. Chavez claimed he was doing this to help the Venezuelan people, to redistribute wealth, to fight imperialism. But you know what actually happened? PDVSA, which had been one of the most professional oil companies in the world, got turned into a corrupt political machine.

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Chavez fired 40,000 employees and replaced them with political loyalists who didn't know the first thing about running an oil company. Production started falling.  In 1998, Venezuela produced 3.4 million barrels of oil per day. By 2008, that dropped to 2.4 million, and it kept falling. Think about what Chavez did here. He took a company that was making Venezuela rich.

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A company that employed skilled professionals, a company with global respect, and he destroyed it  all for political power. Here's my question. If someone came into your business, fired all your trained employees, replaced them with their unqualified friends, and then ran your company into the ground while pocketing the profits, what would you do? Would you just accept it, or would you demand justice?

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because that's exactly what happened to American companies in Venezuela. All right, patriots, let's talk numbers because this isn't abstract, this isn't theoretical, this is real money that Venezuela stole from American companies and American investors. Let's start with ConocoPhillips.  When Chavez seized their oil projects in 2007, ConocoPhillips went to international arbitration and they won. The International Chamber of Commerce awarded them 8.7

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billion dollars. That  award was upheld as recently as January 2025. 8.7 billion with a B. But wait, there's more. Because that award has been accruing interest since 2007. We  are now looking at over 11 billion dollars owed to ConocoPhillips alone. Has Venezuela paid them?  Nope, not a dime. Now, let's talk about ExxonMobil.

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They also went to arbitration. They were initially awarded $1.6 billion. That got reduced on appeal, but Venezuela still owes them hundreds of millions. Paid? Nope. Then there's the Crystal-X International, Canadian mining company. Venezuela nationalized their gold mine in 2008. Crystal-X won an arbitration award for $1.4 billion. To try to collect,

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They went to US courts and got a judgment allowing them to seize shares of Citgo, Venezuela's US-based refinery company. Venezuela screamed bloody murder, you can't take Citgo, that's our asset. Oh really? You can steal their gold mine, but they can't recover compensation from your assets? How's that work? And there's more. Rissuoro Mining, another Canadian company, was awarded 1.28

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billion dollars for Venezuela nationalizing their operations. Still unpaid. Let's start adding this up just from these four cases alone. 11 plus for ConocoPhillips, 1.6 reduced but still owed to ExxonMobil, CrystalX 1.4 billion, Rissuro 1.28 billion. That's over 15 billion dollars in confirmed arbitration awards.

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and we are not even done yet. There are dozens and dozens of other cases. Companies whose land was seized, whose factories were taking, whose investments vanished when Chavez's goons showed up with soldiers and said, this belongs to the revolution now. When you add up all the seizures,  all the unpaid arbitrations, all the stolen assets, we're looking well over $20 billion of Venezuela O's American companies.

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20 billion dollars. Now I want you to imagine something. Imagine if your neighbor came onto your property, claimed half your land as his own, started drilling for oil, and told you, too bad, it's mine now. Then when you sued him and won, he just laughed and said, come take it. What would you do? Would you just shrug and walk away? Or would you get your property back? That's what Trump is doing. He's collecting a debt. And Venezuela can pay up

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or they can watch their oil industry get strangled by a blockade until Maduro begs for mercy. Now, you might be thinking, okay, but Chavez died in 2013.  Surely things got better under the new guy, right? Wrong. Nicolas Maduro took power in 2013 and he's made things worse, way worse. Under Chavez, oil production fell from 3.4 million barrels per day to about 2.4 million. Under Maduro,

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It collapsed. By 2020, Venezuela was producing just  400,000 barrels per day. That's an 88 % drop. The country with the largest proven oil reserves on earth can barely pump enough oil to keep the lights on. Why? Because PDVSA is run by corrupt socialist bureaucrats who steal everything that isn't nailed down. Equipment breaks and doesn't get replaced. Skilled workers fled the country.

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Oil fields that took decades to develop are sitting idle because nobody knows how to operate them. But that's not even the worst part. Maduro turned Venezuela into a narco state. His interior minister, a guy named Diodado Cabello,  is widely suspected of being one of the biggest drug lords in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

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Venezuela's regime is directly involved in trafficking cocaine into the United States.  They work with Colombian cartels. They work with Mexican cartels. They even work with Hezbollah. Yeah, the terrorist organization to smuggle drugs and launder money. And get this, during the Biden administration, Maduro sent Venezuelan criminals to the United States.

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Members of the Tren de Agua gang, a brutal criminal organization responsible for murders, kidnapping, and human trafficking, were deliberately released from Venezuelan prisons and pushed across the border into America. Why? Because Maduro wanted to export his crime problem and destabilize the United States at the exact same time. The numbers are staggering. 7.9 million Venezuelans have fled the country since Chavez took power.

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That's 28 % of the entire population. Imagine if 28 % of Americans fled the country because things got so bad. That's over, would be over 90 million people. And where does Maduro get support? From our enemies,  Iran, Cuba, China, Russia. They are propping him up because they want a hostile regime 1500 miles from America's coast. So let me ask you this, Patriots.

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dictator steals $20 billion from American companies,  floods America with drugs that kill our citizens,  sends criminals across our border to murder and rape, and allies himself with every enemy America has. At what point do we say enough? Because  that point is  now. So the mainstream media is having a meltdown over Trump's Venezuelan actions. They're calling it warmongering.

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They're saying Trump's fabricating justification for an illegal war. They are comparing it to Iraq. Let me be crystal clear. This is not about starting a war. This is about collecting a debt. First, let's talk about the legal basis. Venezuela has been ordered by international arbitration tribunals. Tribunals that Venezuela agreed to, to pay American companies over $15 billion.  They have refused.

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When you win a judgment in court and the other party refuses to pay, what do you do? You seize their assets. That's exactly what Trump is doing. The tanker he seized,  was carrying Venezuelan oil in violation of US sanctions. That oil is being used to finance Maduro's regime, the same regime that's trafficking drugs, committing human rights abuses, and refusing to pay its debts. Seizing that tanker isn't piracy, it's enforcement.

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Second, let's talk about the moral basis. American companies invested billions of dollars in Venezuela based on contracts and international law. They created jobs, they developed infrastructure, they took  risks. And then a socialist dictator stole everything and laughed in their faces. If America doesn't stand up for American companies when foreign governments steal from them, why would any company invest abroad?

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Why would anyone trust international law? Third, the blockade. Trump isn't invading Venezuela. He's not bombing cities. He's not sending  troops into Caracas. He's cutting off the oil reserve that Maduro uses to finance terrorism, drug trafficking, and oppression. That's not an act of war. That's economic pressure. It's the same thing we did to apartheid South Africa. The same thing we did to Iran.

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The same thing we've done to North Korea. And here's the beautiful irony, patriots. Venezuela is screaming about piracy and theft. But they are the ones who stole American assets. They are the ones who've refused to pay court-ordered judgments. They are the ones financing terrorism with stolen oil money. So when Maduro calls Trump a pirate, that's projection. He's accusing Trump of the exact

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thing Venezuela's been doing for 25 years. Now here's my question for you. When someone steals from you, refuses to pay what they owe, and then calls you the criminal when you try to collect, is that justice? Or is that gaslighting? Because from where I'm sitting, Trump is the first president in 25 years willing to actually do something about Venezuela's theft. Obama didn't do it. Bush didn't do it. Biden certainly didn't do it.

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Trump is,  and the establishment is terrified because it sets a precedent. Steal from America and there will be consequences. Patriots, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Venezuela doesn't  owe us money because Trump made it up. Venezuela owes us money because they stole American assets  and international courts ordered them to pay restitution. Over $20 billion dollars confirmed, documented,

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legally binding. And for 25 years they have laughed at us. They have called us imperialists while stealing our property. They have trafficked drugs that killed our citizens. They have sent criminals across our borders. They have allied with every enemy we have. And American presidents did  nothing. Until Trump. Now, I don't know what Trump announced last night in his address to the nation.

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Maybe he talked extensively about Venezuela. Maybe he didn't mention it at all. Maybe he's planning military action. Maybe he's just tightening the economic screws until Maduro collapses. But regardless of what he said, you now know the truth. You know the history. You know what was stolen. And you know that Trump's actions aren't about warmongering. They are about justice. So when your liberal friends start screaming that Trump's starting an illegal war,

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or acting like a dictator, you hit them with the facts.  You tell them about ConocoPhillips  and their $11 billion judgment. You tell them about Crystal X Gold Mine. You tell them about the 7.9 million Venezuelans who have fled Maduro's socialist nightmare. And then  you ask them, if someone stole $20 billion from you, what would you do about it? Because that's the question every American should be asking. And Trump

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seems to have given his answer. Well, patriots,  that's our show for today. The truth about Venezuela isn't complicated. It's just ignored by the media that hates Trump more than they love facts. If you haven't already, make sure to hit that subscribe, follow, and or like button.  It really helps me out. And again, thank you in advance. Once done here, head on over and check out O'Connor's Quick Strike. Remember, Quick Strike airs Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This podcast is Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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You can find me on X at O'Connor podcasts. Share this episode. The mainstream media won't tell you the truth about Venezuela, so it's up to us to get the word out. Have a great rest of your day. Until next Tuesday, hold the line unapologetically. This is John O'Connor signing off.