Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again. So today, we're going to talk about oil

tankers, Trump, Venezuela, and escalation. At the direction of the Trump administration,

an oil tanker named the skipper was seized.

It was loaded with Venezuelan crude.

The administration is alleging a connection to its other operations down south.

Trump has already started bragging about the seizure, saying, quote,

We've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large,

the largest one ever seized actually. He did say on the coast, not off the coast,

but we know it wasn't on the coast as in shipwrecked, because it's still intact.

Just a quick thought exercise.

Do you think the current backlash against Trump's campaign down there would be occurring if the Navy had seized the other boats instead of, you know, sinking them?

Tough guy foreign policy fails. Real life is in a 1980s action movie,

and acting like it is turns the world against the United States. The Venezuelan government

said the action, quote, constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy. I never thought the pirates and

emperor's analogy would be quite on the nose like this. The oil tanker seizure has led the

Venezuelan government to state that the real reason for U.S. aggression has been revealed, adding quote,

it has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong

exclusively to the Venezuelan people. Probably want to add rare earth to that.

As far as how the action is being seen on the world stage,

Russia's foreign minister said, quote,

I really hope that the United States,

although they consider themselves entitled to conduct such operations,

...