In the two photographs, Venezuela's deposed leader Nicolás Maduro is wearing a gray tracksuit and making peace signs with his hands.
Page A13From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
US holds Venezuela's president in prison, then says Venezuelan oil will refill U.S. reserves.
As it ran on the front
They took the man, and then they took the ground under him, and somewhere in Washington somebody typed 'deal.'
Let's walk it in the order it actually happened, because order is the whole trick. First the capture: Nicolas Maduro is photographed in a New York prison cell, standing firm, flashing peace signs like a man auditioning for his own defense. That part's real, it's in the record, dated this week. Then, days later — not before, after — the President of the United States announces that Venezuelan oil is going to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Same week. Same breath, practically.…
…(cont) Nobody in either press release used the word 'regime change.' Nobody had to. You capture the head of state of a country that happens to sit on the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, and then you announce you're topping off the tank with product from that same country, and you call it a deal, like two guys shook hands over a used Buick. A deal implies somebody had the standing to refuse. Ask Maduro how the negotiation went from where he's currently housed.
This is the oldest trick in American foreign policy and they're not even bothering to dress it up anymore. Grab the asset, announce the transaction, let the wire copy do the laundering. 'Replenish the reserves' — sounds like a farmer restocking a grain silo. It is a captured head of state's country's oil, headed for our tanks, timed to a photo of the man in a cell.
You want to know who benefits when the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fills back up cheap? Not the guy paying four bucks a gallon in Ohio. Refiners benefit. Traders benefit. Whoever brokered the 'deal' benefits. The reserve exists so a President has leverage in a crisis — it is now being restocked with oil extracted from a leverage crisis of our own making, on a man in our own custody.
I'm not saying it's a heist. I'm saying every fact needed to call it one is sitting right there in the wire copy, dated, sourced, printed above the fold of outlets that aren't exactly rooting for me. Read the two stories next to each other. Then tell me what you'd call it if it happened in a country that wasn't ours.
“They grabbed the guy, then they grabbed his oil, and called it a deal — that's not diplomacy, that's a stickup with a press release. Fill up cheap this winter and remember whose president is sitting in a cell to make it happen.”
“This is a legitimate energy agreement between two — well, between one government and whatever's left of the other one's, which, okay, we're currently holding the head of. It's not regime change, it's supply chain diversification. Did I say we're holding him? Strike that.”
The receipts
President Trump said the U.S. will begin "topping out" its strategic petroleum reserve with Venezuelan oil under last week's agreement. But that's unlikely to provide much relief to Americans facing sustained high gas prices. Olivia Gazis…
Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appeared in his first photos from a New York prison, smiling as he awaits trial on federal drug trafficking charges.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Venezuelan oil will replenish the United States’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves after announcing a historic deal with the country on Friday. “One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuela…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.