This is an overtly political post, with bias against the current administration. If this isn’t your thing, please browse elsewhere for a few minutes.

As usual, I’m not here to bait anyone or piss anybody off. I’m simply sharing my thoughts. You’re free to disagree, of course. I just ask you bring receipts where applicable.

Here’s my “hot take”: Trump may stand to profit enormously and personally from military operations conducted in various global hot spots. To illustrate, I’ve identified three countries which could offer Mr. Trump obscene wealth.

Venezuela

So I’ve been watching the US/Venezuela situation with very keen interest. The operations the military is conducting off the Venezuelan coast are NOT from the playbook used in the 1980s and 90s.

First off, the US military wasn’t boarding suspected drug smugglers. Why? Because it’s illegal: If the US Navy boarded one of those craft, it’d be considered piracy. Anyone who watched the news back when we were all pushin’ it real good saw Coast Guard units posing with seized contraband — not the Navy.

SEAL Team Six was not blowing motorboats out of the water with orders from the Secretary of Defense to “kill them all.” ¹

The Trump Administration is going after Maduro like he owes Trump money, or at least pissed him off somewhere down the line. But my suspicion is the whole counterdrug thing is a complete fabrication to cover Trump’s one true desire: wealth.

What does Venezuela have that could possibly be so valuable? Oil. Venezuela has “the world’s largest proven crude deposits,” according to Newsweek reporting. ²

And you know Trump never met a dollar bill he didn’t like.

I’ve suspected the oil connection long before the Newsweek article. About a month ago, when NATO was working out how to counter repeated border incursions by Russia, someone floated the notion that the US would need Venezuela’s oil to reinforce the military supply chain should the US engage in sustained operations in Eastern Europe.

On balance, it doesn’t really seem to make a lot of sense that US forces would travel through Venezuela for operations in Eastern Europe, but then I’m not an expert in global navigation. Simple queries suggest military air assets would more likely leverage the jet stream over the North Atlantic than fly along an equatorial path. So that implies Venezuelan petroleum products would ship here to the US and/or get staged at friendly bases in/en route to the operations theater.

What really sold me on the notion that Trump was after the oil (profits) hasn’t much to do with Venezuela. I look to Nigeria instead.

Nigeria

Earlier this month, President Trump made a social media post which threatened probable military action (his exact words were “go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing’ “). NBC News reports he made the post in response to something he saw on Fox News. ³ A BBC investigation notes that multiple Republican lawmakers, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have been stirring this particular pot based on data BBC is unable to independently verify. ⁴ Both BBC and NBC News characterize reaction from Abuja as one of surprise, reasoning that Boko Haram are equal opportunity terrorists (phrase mine), attacking innocents indiscriminately in a bid to overthrow the Nigerian government.

In no way do I intend to downplay the violence happening in Nigeria. But I do doubt that Trump has suddenly grown a heart and feels compassion for the Nigerians. What I don’t doubt, is that something has attracted President Trump’s eye, and my surmise it’s black, but it’s not skin: Nigeria is is the largest oil and gas producer in all of Africa.⁵

Well, imagine that.

Somalia

In a White House press conference on November 28, 2025, President Trump remarked that Somalia is “ripping us off for a lot of money” and inferred the US is kicking out Somalis because they’re “nothing but trouble.” ^{6 7}

The US has a very long and troubled relationship with Somalia. It has a history of intervention in Somalia since at least the early 1990s.

Now, while I believe Trump’s current anti-Somalia stance is far more politically motivated than anything else (see footnote 7), I also believe it should be noted that billions of potential barrels of crude lies untapped beneath Somalian soil, with drilling set to begin in coming months. Putting boots back on the ground would give Mr. Trump an opportunity to actually “get in on the ground floor” of Somalia’s new oil industry. ⁸

¹ Gardner, David. “Pentagon Pete in Legal Peril Over ‘Kill Them All’ Orders.” Daily Beast, 28 Nov. 2025.

² Daftari, A. (2025, November 28). How a win in Venezuela could be great news for Trump. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/how-win-venezuela-could-be-great-for-trump-11123801

³ Gutierrez, G., et Al. (2025, November 3). A Fox News report prompted Trump to post about Nigeria, setting off White House scramble. NBC News. Retrieved November 29, 2025, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/fox-news-report-prompted-trump-post-nigeria-setting-white-house-scramb-rcna241648

⁴ Alo, O. (2025, November 6). Donald Trump says Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria – is he right? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgqlzkdeeqjo

⁵ Wikipedia contributors. (2025, November 27). Petroleum industry in Nigeria. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Nigeria

⁶ Diario AS. (2025, November 28). TRUMP blocks SOMALI entry to the U.S. and launches an EXPLOSIVE ATTACK on SOMALIA [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ike_SuF_P08

⁷ Trump’s reference to “kicking them out” may refer to the Somali community in Minnesota. He may have singled out Minnesota because Trump may consider Gov. Tim Walz a political enemy, and because sending community members back to Somalia would rob the blue state of voters in a very active blue bloc (see https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-minnesotas-somali-community-helped-vote-trump-out).

⁸ Somalia – oil and gas. (2024, January 22). International Trade Administration | Trade.gov. https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/somalia-oil-and-gas