WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has said Venezuela could “someday soon” become America’s 51st state with an elected governor instead of a president, as he showcased a tanker carrying Venezuelan crude at a campaign rally in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“It will become a prosperous country, and who knows, maybe someday soon it will become a prosperous 51st state. That’s possible. Let’s make it. Let’s make it the 51st state. And instead of a president, we’ll have an election for a governor. How about that?” Trump told the rally at the Port of Corpus Christi on Tuesday.
Pointing to a vessel docked nearby, he said: “See that little ship out there? It’s got one million barrels of oil on it from Venezuela. And we’re celebrating the greatest oil victory in history.”
“To the victor belong the spoils, right? But thanks to our big victory in our recent war with Venezuela,” he said, adding that the oil “is being provided to the United States at zero cost to the American taxpayer.”
The remarks went further than his comments hours earlier at Joint Base Andrews, where he told reporters: “We took over Venezuela very successfully. And they’ve sent me as a gift, a boatload of a million barrels of oil.” At the rally, he moved from describing the cargo as a gift to openly floating annexation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled with Trump and was invited on stage. “It’s an honor to work for the greatest country in the world, for the greatest president in the history of the United States of America,” Rubio said. Trump joked that he would “drop him off in Cuba” and said Rubio would “settle that one in about 15 minutes.”
On the war with Iran, Trump said: “And you’ve got to understand that America did not start the war with Iran. Iran has been waging this war against America since 1979, killing many, many of our great people.”
He acknowledged the impact on fuel prices. “I knew that oil would go up, I actually thought it would go up 2 or 3 times higher, and I was still willing to do it,” he said, adding: “It’s going to end very soon.”
He also said “your country is making an absolute fortune because of the situation in the Middle East.”
Trump was in Texas to campaign for Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom he called “the best attorney general in the history of Texas”, along with Governor Greg Abbott and other Republicans ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. He later travelled to Lubbock for a second rally.
US forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, and the interim government has since struck oil agreements with Washington.