OMAHA — Rep. Don Bacon said Wednesday that the United States “believes in the rule of law” and that he opposes “putting in one dictator for another, and doing it for oil,” after quoting a clip in which President Donald Trump said America was “taking a lot of oil from Venezuela” and added, “To the victor belong the spoils, right?”
Bacon, a Nebraska Republican from the 2nd District and a retired Air Force brigadier general, posted the statement on X on Sept. 23. He quoted an Aug. 5 post by CBS News White House reporter Kathryn Watson that carried the Trump line from a Las Vegas event. No White House transcript of that remark was posted. Bacon said he was “glad Maduro is gone.”
America believes in the rule of law. We are better than this. I’m glad Maduro is gone, but I oppose putting in one dictator for another, and doing it for oil. De Tocqueville said, “America is great because she is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
The Tocqueville sentence is commonly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville. It does not appear in Democracy in America.
Operation Absolute Resolve and who governs
A Department of War inspector general quarterly on Operation Southern Spear, posted at defense.gov, states that on Jan. 2, 2026, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia de Flores de Maduro from a compound in Caracas under Operation Absolute Resolve, moved them to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, and then to the United States to face charges from a 2020 Justice Department indictment. CRS report R49186 dates the capture as Jan. 3 and says Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president and oil minister in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, became acting president. Edmundo González Urrutia, whom the State Department had called the “rightful” winner of the 2024 presidential election, and opposition leader María Corina Machado have remained in exile, CRS wrote.
On Jan. 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the United States would follow a three-step process: stabilization, recovery, and transition. In those remarks he said a quarantine had left oil “stuck in Venezuela,” that the United States would “take between 30 and 50 million barrels,” sell it at market rates, and control how the proceeds were disbursed “in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people.” He later told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the end state was “a friendly, stable, prosperous Venezuela, and democratic,” and that “we’re not going to get there in three weeks.” On June 3 he told Congress that “in order to truly transition, they have to have multi-party, free and fair elections,” CRS recorded. Sen. Tim Kaine introduced S. 4809, the Venezuela Democratic Transition Act, on June 17. It remains in Foreign Relations.
Bacon made the same oil warning in January. His office posted a New York Times op-ed arguing that capturing Maduro could succeed “if the president changes course,” that Rodríguez was “an illegitimate leader,” and that “narrow American commercial interests” should not drive Venezuela’s future.
Oil revenue, the August deal, and the “spoils” line
On Jan. 9 the president signed an executive order titled “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People.” It defines “Foreign Government Deposit Funds” as money paid to or held by the Treasury from sales of Venezuelan natural resources or diluents, finds that those funds are property of the Government of Venezuela, and bars attachment, judgment, lien, or other judicial process against them unless licensed.
On Aug. 31 the White House issued a fact sheet saying the United States had secured “majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela” through a partnership with North American Blue Energy Partners. The sheet said Venezuelan interim authorities granted NABEP 100-year concessions on 17 fields; NABEP granted the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35 percent equity stake in its corporate parent; and NABEP granted the State Department the right to buy, at production cost, 20 percent of offtake. It projected about $200 billion in royalty and tax payments over 25 years and tied production growth to “democratic transition following the incredible success of Operation Absolute Resolve.” A Sept. 2 White House release repeated those terms and said amounts allocated to PDVSA would go through a U.S.-managed and audited account.
Bacon’s post treats “one dictator for another” as his description of the post-Maduro arrangement and of oil as the motive. The White House and State Department texts frame the same arrangement as energy supply, Treasury custody of sovereign oil proceeds, and a three-phase political transition. Those are competing characterizations of the same official record. Nebraska’s 2nd District votes Nov. 3.