Only eight months ago, the United States conducted a dramatic and historic midnight op in Venezuela that snatched El Presidenté Dictatór and narco-terrorist final boss Nicolás Maduro— and hauled him to face justice in the U.S. You’re fired.

Since January, U.S. officials have been working closely with what’s left of Venezuela’s government at breakneck speed. The day following Maduro’s capture, Caracas’s public tone shifted noticeably from “Death to Yankees!” to “Would Señor Yankee like the corner office?” The U.S. has intercepted the country’s oil revenues and, like a parent putting a teenager on a budget, is carefully doling them back to Caracas to ensure the funds are used to benefit the Venezuelan people.

Hardest hit were the Chinese, Russians, Cubans, and Democrats— all of whom Maduro used to snuggle up with. They’ve been advised strongly to “get the Flock out of the Western Hemisphere and stay where you belong.” The Cubans are still trying to figure out how to move the island.

Yesterday, President Trump threw another monkey wrench into global geopolitics and Democrat ambitions by announcing a 100-year deal with Venezuela in which America gets the right to buy Venezuela’s vast oil reserves at no cost to the American taxpayer. It’s a very big deal, which he modestly called “the biggest oil deal in world history!”

Trump posted that the deal will put America in control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

“Venezuela is thought to have the world’s largest oil reserves,” the article explained. The 65 billion-barrel bonanza “is almost as much as all of the proven reserves in the United States, which is the world’s biggest oil producer,” the Times said.

In short, the world’s biggest oil producer just got hold of the world’s largest oil reserves. Of course, the Times lied, because the U.S.’s reserves are around 41 billion, so Venezuela’s are +41% bigger, not “almost as much.” But whatever.

Venezuela’s acting president, former vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, said the deal would revive her country. Nothing accelerates a South American leader’s journey toward the free market like watching her predecessor get removed from it shackled to a Black Hawk. “The deal involves the development of 17 oil fields,” the Times explained, “more than $100 billion of investments and projected taxes of $209 billion for Venezuela’s strapped government.”

For comparison, Venezuela’s national government just proposed a 2026 budget of about $20 billion. So the projected new taxes from just the 17 oil fields exceed the country’s entire annual budget more than 10 times over. Not too shabby. It’s a lot better than Venezuela’s previous socialist model of nationalizing the oil industry, which produced the exceptional result of empty grocery shelves and toilet paper shortages.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it a “huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people.”

The Art of the Deal. In our lifetimes, we’ll never have another president like this one.

The actual terms of the deal, the fine print, have not yet been disclosed. But at least one as-yet-unnamed “experienced” U.S. oil company —probably Chevron, which already operates in Venezuela— will also participate as a joint venturer with the U.S. The revolution will not be televised. It will be operated by an experienced private contractor.

The usual suspects are already complaining bitterly. The Times sneered that Venezuela has become “something resembling a client state.” But this deal is not colonialism. It is a strategic hemispheric energy partnership with an unusually assertive onboarding process.

Previous presidents preferred to describe overseas adventures as efforts to advance peace, democracy, and the sacred right of bureaucrats to attend swanky NGO conferences. But Trump just said oil, saving taxpayers an estimated nine syllables per barrel.

The United States will now control more proven oil than it already has at home. In strategic terms, we have acquired a backup America in case the original one forgets its password.

JEFF CHILDERS