Official denies U.S. is stealing Venezuela's oil, one hour after boasting it was 'forced to work' with American buyers

…(cont) Now here's the part where I need you to hold two clocks in your head at once, and I know that's a lot to ask on a Sunday. Same interview, near enough. About an hour later, the paper says, Wright is telling that same audience the United States is not stealing Venezuela's oil. Not stealing it. About sixty minutes after "forced to work."

I got a neighbor does something close to that. Tells the fella at the corner store he clipped my fence once, just the once, and I don't say nothing, I just start keeping a little list on the back of a gas receipt in the glovebox. Then that same afternoon he's telling the same fella my whole yard is basically his now, on account of I'm too old to fight him on it. So which is it, once or the whole yard? I'm not saying. I'm asking. How many times does a man have to tell it two different ways in one hour before you start writing both ways down?

Because it didn't start with the denial. Let me back up, I got the earlier pages too. Eight days before that — August 28th — people in Congress were being asked to stop what was being called a takeover of Venezuela's oil fields, and the line coming out of the administration at the time was that the whole arrangement would secure "America's energy future for generations to come." Generations to come. That's the phrase they reached for.

Two days after that, the 30th of August, the President's on his social media saying the oil is headed for the Strategic Reserve, and I want to get this exact, so bear with me — he says the "topping out" process will begin very shortly, and he calls it a gift. A gift from Venezuela to the people of the United States. A gift, from a country whose president we drove here in handcuffs a few months prior.

By September 1st it's not a gift anymore, it's a deal — majority control of more than 65 billion barrels, is what got reported, nine months after that raid on Caracas. And this morning, the Energy Secretary is on Fox crediting a military operation — thirty minutes, is what they're saying, thirty minutes — for unlocking 300 billion barrels for American buyers.

Sixty-five billion barrels in one week's paper. Three hundred billion in this week's. I'm no oil man, I do all right with a carburetor when the car'll let me, but even I know that number didn't grow because the wells got deeper. Thirty minutes is a shorter conversation than I have most mornings with the fella at the toll plaza.

So before you go — one more thing, and then I'll let you get on with your day. If the country's "forced to work" with us, and nobody's stealing anything, and the number keeps climbing every time somebody explains it to a different camera, I only got the one question left, and it's close to the one I started with. Forced to work for who? I already told you. American buyers. It's wrote right there on the page.