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In a lengthy press conference Saturday detailing the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump confirmed, with stunning frankness, the classic leftist critique of American foreign policy: that, at least for as long as he’s in power, it’s all about the oil.

Over the past few months, Trump and his aides had characterized their pressure campaign against Maduro’s regime as a war on “narco-terrorism” and a fight to restore democratic rule. But following Maduro’s extraction in a complex military and intelligence operation, the American president was clear about its true motive.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he said, adding, “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.” Then came the kicker: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in” and spend billions of dollars fixing the energy infrastructure that they developed decades ago, until socialist regimes nationalized their wells, then wrecked them. The wealth resulting from this grab-back will benefit the Venezuelan people, he said, but added that much of it will reimburse America’s oil companies.

Finally, Trump said, U.S. troops will be sent to enforce Big Oil’s rule, if necessary. “They always say ‘boots on the ground,’ we’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said. “We had boots on the ground last night,” as part of the operation to extract Maduro. He said the military was poised to go in again if necessary.

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