In his United Nations address on September 22, 2026, Trump described the January operation in Venezuela as a military conquest. “In January, at my direction, the United States military conducted a massive military operation, penetrating deep into the Venezuelan capital, Caracas,” he said, adding that U.S. forces had breached a “heavily defended and fortified military base, one that was supposed to be flawless against attack.” On the oil: “When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60% of the oil in the world. So it's perhaps the biggest deal. It was a war, but it's perhaps the biggest deal ever made. To the victor belong the spoils. You've all heard that.”
That is not what his administration said when it happened. At the United Nations on January 5, U.S. Ambassador Michael Waltz said there was “no war against Venezuela or its people,” and, “We are not occupying a country. This was a law enforcement operation in furtherance of lawful indictments that have existed for decades.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress in late January, “We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.” CNN, which flagged the contradiction, reports that the Justice Department “also said in a legal memo that a president could order such an operation because he is not constrained in carrying out law enforcement operations overseas.”
The label is not a matter of tone. Under the Constitution, Congress declares war; the administration's position in January was that this was police work abroad, carried out under existing indictments, and therefore not something requiring congressional authorization. Trump has now called the same operation a war, in public, at the United Nations, while describing the resulting oil as spoils of victory. Neither the White House nor the State Department has reconciled the two accounts.
The oil arithmetic does not hold either. PolitiFact checked the 60 percent claim and found the United States and Venezuela together hold 21.9 percent of the world's proven reserves, and account for 23.2 percent of current production. For the invasion itself see Trump Launches a Military Operation to Capture Maduro and Says, 'We're Going to Run the Country'; for what has happened to the oil money since, see The Administration Has Made About $13 Billion Selling Venezuela's Oil. Only $300 Million Can Be Publicly Traced..