John Addison, front right, energy trader for Vitol, attends a meeting with oil company executives hosted by US President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House on January 9, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Trump took Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint, and gave it to one of his biggest campaign donors,” wrote one US senator.
The first US sale of Venezuelan oil since the Trump administration illegally attacked the South American country earlier this month went to the company of a trader who donated millions to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The roughly $250 million sale of Venezuelan crude went to Vitol, a Geneva-based energy and commodity trading firm whose US arm is headquartered in Houston. The Financial Timesreported late last week that John Addison, a senior trader at Vitol, was involved in his company’s efforts to secure the deal.
Addison, who attended a recent White House meeting with other top oil executives, donated $6 million total to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign via several super PACs, including $5 million to MAGA Inc.
“Addison pledged to Trump at the [White House] event that Vitol would attain the best price possible for Venezuelan oil for the US, ‘so that the influence you have over the Venezuelans will ensure that you get what you want,’” according to the Financial Times.
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), noted on social media that Vitol has a “criminal history of bribing foreign governments” and called the Venezuelan oil deal “fundamentally corrupt.”
“Trump took Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint, and gave it to one of his biggest campaign donors,” Murphy wrote. “Vitol had to buy access to Trump because under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t be able to get a deal like this.”
Vitol is one of a number of corporations positioned to reap windfall profits from the Trump administration’s assault on Venezuela, abduction of its president, and efforts to seize and indefinitely control the country’s vast oil reserves.
Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer’s firm Elliott Investment Management has for years been in the process of acquiring distressed Venezuelan-owned assets in the US and is on the cusp of owning them. After clearing final regulatory and legal approval, the firm can use them to make a considerable profit turning newly available Venezuelan oil into gasoline. The company that would be acquired by an Elliott affiliate is Citgo, the Houston-based refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Citgo owns refineries in Illinois, Louisiana and Texas that are well-positioned to profit off the millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil that Trump says will be steered to US refineries because it is a particularly heavy blend of crude that is difficult to process. Only certain refineries, like those run by Citgo, are equipped to handle it.
Proceeds from the US sale of Venezuelan oil are being stashed in Qatar—an arrangement that critics said opens the door to additional corruption.
“After illegally and unconstitutionally striking Venezuela, Trump is now selling Venezuelan oil through a campaign donor, and funneling the proceeds to an offshore account in Qatar—creating a potential slush fund with no accountability, oversight, or guardrails for Trump and his allies,” US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote late Sunday. “His continued abuse of power doesn’t serve the Venezuelan people or the American people—and it certainly doesn’t lower costs for Americans.”
“This outrage,” Booker added, “is yet another example of his unchecked corruption as he again ignores laws and enriches his friends, donors, and himself.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Protesters chant outside New York Supreme Court ahead of former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial, Oct. 2, 2023 in New York. Many argue he needs to be tried again – this time for war crimes. | Brittainy Newman / AP
What a start to the New Year! The shocking invasion of Venezuela by the U.S. and the brutal kidnapping of the head of state and his wife, the [killing] by ICE of a 37-year-old mother of three on the streets of Minneapolis followed the very next day by a Border Patrol agent shooting of a couple in Portland, Ore., and then another ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
2026 started with the Venezuela outrage. The U.S. invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president and his wife are the actions of a racist rogue state headed by a convicted criminal and should be sanctioned by the United Nations. The Trump regime brazenly and blatantly violated international law and killed dozens in its attack.
The run-up to the incursion were the Trump-ordered boat strikes that have so far killed 115 people. The U.S. military has declined again and again to providence any evidence to justify its slaughter on the seas. The reason being that there is no evidence to condone the wanton murders.
For this reason alone, Trump and the U.S. military should have been charged with war crimes before the appropriate tribunal of the United Nations. But no case was ever brought, as it should have been, by the countries of which these poor souls were citizens. The Trump regime was let off the hook for these dozens of homicides by the international community. The killings were simply a pretext for more imperialist atrocities.
In the wake of these continuing murders, which began in September, the war criminal Trump planned further outrages, culminating so far in the bloody, illegal raid of Jan. 3. This was emblematic of a shameless imperialism that knows no boundaries when it comes to international law. That it was illegal is beyond any sensible doubt. Remember, also, that the issue of whether the killing of two survivors of a Sept. 2 boat strike was a war crime has been dropped from the news feeds.
There was never any evidence to substantiate the barbarous boat strikes, and even if there was some so-called evidence, it still would not justify the summary boat strike executions.
If the same standards were applied to the United States which it holds over other countries, it would suffer the condemnation of the international community followed by appropriate and severe sanctions. Trump and his cohorts would be charged formally as war criminals and have their assets frozen. This would extend to the U.S. military personnel who followed illegal orders.
These sanctions would be directed against not only Trump and his immediate partners in crime, such as Hegseth and Rubio and the military, but also against members of Congress who support his lawless, imperialist terrorist actions and corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The United States would be treated like the international outlaw that it is. Nations would terminate diplomatic relations with the U.S. and expel its ambassadors. U.S. games and tournaments would be boycotted, including the future World Cup and Summer Olympics. The countries of the world would be issuing travel advisories to their citizens discouraging visits to the U.S. in order to negatively impact its tourism industry.
If the U.N. gave some teeth to its pronouncements, the U.S. would certainly feel some pain for violating the U.N. Charter and international law.
Moving forward, the argument that the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores was a justifiable “law enforcement” procedure is beyond being legally absurd. That simply is not how international law works. One country cannot simply indict a citizen, a national living in another country, and proceed to physically remove said citizen. International law mandates that such a removal must take place by utilization of an extradition treaty for that purpose, if one exists between different sovereign nations.
To invade and abduct is blatantly illegal by any stretch of the imagination, to say the least. This is against the policy of international peace embodied in the U.N. Charter.
But, alas we live in a world where imperialist outlaws like Trump hold sway. We live in a world where there is no effective opposition party in the U.S. to step forward. We live in a world where the power of mass protests, the raw power of the people, must come forward to confront the raw, naked power of brazen imperialism represented by the Trump regime.
This writer, who is also a former public defender, has taken the time to examine and review the indictment against Maduro, his wife Flores, and others of his government. The indictment says precious little about Maduro. It is a kangaroo court document of only 25 pages. It is legally inadequate to substantiate criminal charges against Maduro even if he had been residing in the United States. There are even some who opine that Maduro can beat the charges in a court proceeding. That is if the court is fair.
On the comical side of matters, Trump has just said that the “only thing” restraining his actions is his “own morality.” Trump—a convicted felon, a sexual predator, a purveyor of the foulest racism, a fraudster, a misogynist, and flagrant imperialist—has no morality. Or, should I say, no decent morality.
More comedy, this on the international level, is exhibited by right-wing Venezuelan political figure María Corina Machado, who just gave her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump. How much more absurd is the world of the right wing going to get? First, I did not know that a Nobel Peace Prize could be so passed on so routinely to another party. Second, the Nobel Peace Prize has been forever tarnished by it being awarded to Machado in the first place. Third, to even think of giving the Peace Prize to the most bellicose political figure in U.S. history is absurd. If anything, Trump should be awarded the Nobel War Prize, if such existed.
Equally absurd is the response evinced by Trump and his underlings to the murder of 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good. They call her a “domestic terrorist” to supposedly justify her killing. Incredibly, the next day after her homicide, Border Patrol agents shot a couple in Portland, alleging that the vehicle they drove was “weaponized.” This was also alleged in the murder of Good, which seems to be the standard pretext in these heinous shootings. Now, there’s been another ICE shooting in Minneapolis, an event sure to spark more protests.
But back to international affairs. Perhaps the global community, as represented by the United Nations, should level severe sanctions against the United States government to bring its politicians to their senses. Absent that the world is headed on an unalterable course of slaughter and carnage, with Trump on a steamroller course to full-blown fascism the likes of which have not been seen the days of Hitler. Also, as crazy and demented as Trump seems, he is but the representative of the political, economic, and military aims of the far-right section of the U.S. ruling class.
What is needed is not just the removal of Trump, which would mean only a leadership change, but a regime change—which means the removal of his whole administration. With the Democratic Party also controlled by billionaires at the national level and seen by many as a lite version of the Republicans these days, it’s easy to conclude the U.S. has no effective opposition party. But there are Democrats—the liberated, unbought, unbossed, and unafraid politicians who run on the Democratic ticket—who can be a force in the people’s movement for liberation from the Trump tyranny.
But it must be noted that sanctions are a two-way street. The Trump regime is not immune to the actions of the international community if the latter has the courage to step forward. The world is beset by an imperialist monster the likes of which has not been seen in decades. The world must rise to the occasion for the sake of humanity.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
Albert Bender is a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance reporter. He is currently writing a legal treatise on Native American sovereignty and working on a book on the war crimes committed by the U.S. against the Maya people in the Guatemalan civil war. He is a consulting attorney on Indigenous sovereignty, land restoration, and Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) issues.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents walk during an immigration raid, days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Ryan Murphy/Reuters
The US president wants Americans to believe they are facing an emergency. The real danger is from his administration
…
In Trumpism, rules and restraint are portrayed as a corruption of the people’s will instead of the essence of American democracy. A man who pardoned supporters for an actual insurrection seeking to keep him in power now threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests. In October, the president told generals: “It’s a war from within.” ICE has been transformed into a paramilitary force apparently answerable only to Mr Trump. Imagine its potential uses in future.
Little wonder that Minnesotans say this feels like an invasion, and the state’s governor, Tim Walz, describes it as an occupation. The communities who are now defending and supporting each other are not only challenging the demonisation, mistreatment and removal of undocumented migrants. They are pushing back against the fear on which Trumpism feeds and the manufacturing of a crisis which would consume many more victims.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
US Vice President JD Vance addresses the National League of Cities: Congressional City Conference at the Marriott Marquis on March 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
With Trump a distinct question mark and while the Trumpian current ebbs and flows, one wave is pushing the 2028 candidacy of Vice President JD Vance, but this shouldn’t be a relief.
Donald Trump may, of course, be the Republican candidate for president in 2028, the US Constitution notwithstanding. Although it is clearly written in the 22nd Amendment that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” it may well be a majority vote of the Supreme Court that determines whether that applies to Trump.
In the past, that court has gotten around the Constitution without a single word of it being changed. Rather, its judges have let an innovative interpretation prevail. In 1896, for instance, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ignored the unambiguous language of the 14th Amendment that demanded “equal protection” and so upheld racial segregation by creating the fiction of “separate but equal.” It would take 58 years before that lie would be overturned.
Harvard law professor and Trump legal whisperer Alan Dershowitz has told the president that “it’s not clear” if it is constitutionally settled whether he can serve another term, even if elected. Reportedly, Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer is working on a book on the subject to be published in March 2026. And MAGA world—from the White House to members of Congress to far-right media figures—is stirring the pot on Donald Trump’s potential fourth bid for president.
Trump is also clearly worried about his legacy. Branding federal buildings and institutions with his name, building an outrageous ballroom, pimping out the Oval Office in gold, and constructing an unnecessary “Triumphal Arch” are all desperate attempts to be remembered as “great” at any cost. Yet, he has to know that the next Democratic president will be under tremendous pressure to remove most, if not all, Trump-brand edifices as quickly as possible. In the end, his real memorials will undoubtedly be the authoritarian policies and conduct that will label him as one of the worst, if not the worst, presidents in American history.
Keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.
That said, Trump remains a question mark when it comes to a third term. There are a number of reasons he might not try for one, not the least being his deteriorating mental and physical health. It didn’t take the New York Times to question his capabilities, not when anyone watching him could hear him slurring his words, dozing off in front of the cameras, barely moving even on a golf course, and sounding more incoherent than ever.
His manic putting up of sometimes hundreds of posts a day or in the wee hours of the night—although his staff may be responsible for some of it—should be considered a cry for help, if ever there was one. And it’s not just the volume of his postings, but their increasing extremity. The hate has become more hateful, the taunts more vicious and racist, and the fabrications more outlandish and divorced from reality. And keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.
Finally (should it get to that point), a majority of the Supreme Court—I certainly don’t think all of them, no matter the situation—could follow the Constitution and rule against a third term. It should be considered ironic at this point that the 22nd Amendment was proposed and passed in response to a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning his fourth consecutive presidential race.
The Vance Option
With Trump a distinct question mark and while the Trumpian current ebbs and flows, another wave is pushing the 2028 candidacy of Vice President JD Vance. Trump found his avatar in 2024 when the junior senator from Ohio and former harsh Trump critic joined the crew of Republican senators fighting to be the most sycophantic to the party’s new Führer. Like his compatriots Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, there were no morals or principles that superseded Vance’s ambition and lust for power. Under the circumstances, that “JD” could easily have stood for “just as dangerous.”
As Vance confirmed at the recent Turning Point USA gathering, not only are White nationalists like Nick Fuentes and unrepentant conspiracists like Candace Owens not denounced, but they are welcomed and embraced. Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with Fuentes roiled MAGA, but before that he was interviewed by Owens on her podcast. Again, there are no discernible objections from GOP leaders, including Vance.
While Vance opportunistically inserted himself into the Charlie Kirk martyr-building project—he was a pallbearer and spoke at his memorial—he has yet to call out Owens for her wild and unfounded claims that Turning Point USA staff, Israel, the French Foreign Legion, and God knows who else were somehow involved in Kirk’s assassination.
If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents.
Vance’s most eye-raising statement at the TPUSA event was when he said, “You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” First, it is a pretty sure bet that no one at the event (or in MAGA) ever apologized for being white. Second, Vance reinforced the view that white supremacy will not be a barrier to any future campaign of his.
Vance’s message is clear: Every imaginable far-right extremist, from white supremacists and technofascists to offensive fabulists, is welcome in his coming 2028 campaign. And he will assumedly have Trump’s blessing (if the president doesn’t indeed decide to try to run again himself).
Poor Secretary of State Marco Rubio has as much chance of getting Trump’s support as Black GOP Congressional Representative Byron Donalds did of becoming his vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Trump 2.0 is wholly built on racial profiling, especially of Latinos, and asserting White power. Merely “looking” Latino is enough in these Trumpist times to attract armed masked men and a trip to an immigration hellhole. Rubio has vigorously defended such illegal arrests and detentions and the racist demonization of immigrants of color that’s gone with it, but he’s rolling the dice if he thinks the MAGA base will see him as the exception to their rule.
Just ask Vance. As hillbilly-centric and pro-white working class as he has tried to portray himself, despite being a millionaire many times over, the fact that he is married to Usha Vance, a woman of color and a non-Christian, has generated lots of racist blowback. Fuentes, for example, called Vance a “race traitor” for marrying Usha. Many MAGA adherents were shocked to discover Usha was not white. One report found that, between January and August 2024, there were at least 1,800 racist, gender, or religious-based attacks on Usha that reached an audience of an estimated 216 million.
While Vance has pushed back against such threats and insults, he’s ignored any possible relationship between Trump’s and his racism against Haitian and other immigrants of color and the blowback he’s experienced against Usha. His default position (rather than directly challenging MAGA bigotry): Usha is “tough enough to handle it.” In addition, instead of defending Usha’s right to practice whatever religion she chooses, he pandered to the religious extremist crowd by stating that he hoped she would convert to Catholicism and “eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church.” He then added, “I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”
Vance Courts the Extremists
If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents. Few will forget that he personally led the outlandish racist claims that Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio. When busted on that fabrication, he admitted that he had known the truth, but didn’t care as long as it served his interests. He stated in an interview during the 2024 election campaign, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
Vance’s “stories” were blatant lies about immigrants (of color) and their role in US society. According to him, undocumented (and perhaps, maybe, kinda legal) immigrants are to blame for high medical prices, rising housing costs, education crises, crime, antisemitism, and illegal voting. In other words, there isn’t a problem in the United States that can’t be linked to undocumented aliens.
A Time When Vance Was Truthful
The next time around, Democrats would be wise to highlight Vance’s past criticism of Donald Trump. After all, he referred to Trump as “Hitler” and as a “morally reprehensible human being“ in emails that plausibly were not supposed to be publicly seen. However, he did publish an article in The Atlantic only weeks before the 2016 election that he clearly wanted to be on the record. In a piece entitled ”Opioid of the Masses,“ he called Trump ”cultural heroin.“ He argued that, while Trump’s blather might make people feel good, he was anything but the answer to the deeply rooted causes of the multiple crises facing poor whites, particularly and ironically, opioid drug addiction. Like heroin, he wrote, its poison ”enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.“ Vance’s own mother, as he noted in the article, abused heroin and prescription opioids, giving him a highly personal stake in the issue.
What he wrote then is no less true today: “Trump offers an easy escape from the pain… Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” Continuing with that addiction metaphor, he added, “Perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of ‘Make America Great Again’ for real medicine.” That Vance is long gone.
It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly.
Of course, his most important pre-Trumpian links weren’t to his largely made-up hillbilly upbringing—he was born and raised in Ohio—but his ties to far-right billionaires in Silicon Valley. They have been dubbed “techno fascists” for their reactionary, racist, misogynist, and anti-democratic views. His bids for the Senate and then the vice presidency weren’t just supported by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other big names in the billionaire tech world, but opened the door to their increasing role in shaping policy, especially but not exclusively in relation to the artificial intelligence and technology industries.
Vance has, of course, also been in lockstep with Trump’s imperialist and self-serving foreign policy. He crudely sided with the president when he attempted to browbeat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their infamous Oval Office meeting on February 28, 2025. He also defended, and even cruelly joked about, the deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean by the US military. He justified Trump’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, echoing all the false claims of Trump, Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about drug trafficking and stolen oil.
It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly. Will Vance abandon Trump as he deteriorates yet more? The main lesson Trump learned from his late lawyer, the notorious Roy Cohn (of McCarthy-era fame), was to use people until they are no longer useful. Cohn counseled Trump in his early years and introduced him to influential and important people who facilitated his rise in New York City. They became “friends” until Trump (of course!) abandoned Cohn in his time of need once he contracted AIDS and was dying. Trump simply brushed him aside when he was no longer useful and reportedly did not even attend his funeral. Can Trump expect the same treatment from Vance?
Or will the vice president be like Kamala Harris and, as she did with President Joe Biden, pretend Trump is well when he clearly is not? As Trump struggles to make it for three more years, Vance will be questioned about his cognitive state and physical health. Will he gaslight the public and hope for the best?
Given what we have seen and that Vance has demonstrated no loyalty to principles or ethics, no one should be surprised if he turns on Trump at some point, should he determine that it is in his interest to do so.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
