MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow, in an interview with host Jen Psaki, discusses the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and argues that it appears to be part of a broader regime-change effort aimed at securing access to the country’s oil.

JEN PSAKI, MS NOW HOST: Today, the United States government seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, accusing it of transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran and escalating what is already a group of mounting tensions in the region. Now, to be honest, we don’t exactly know what is going on here or what the end goal is at this point. But earlier tonight, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that the tanker was previously sanctioned by the U.S. for its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations. Though I should note, Bondi has not yet provided any evidence to back up those claims. And listen to what Trump himself said when a reporter asked him what happens to the oil now that the U.S. has seized this tanker. What happens to the oil on this ship? Well, we keep it, I guess. We keep it, I guess. I don’t know. I mean, so what happens now? I mean, we were trying to figure that out. We’re learning more. But thankfully, I have just the person to ask, who’s probably been thinking about this too, back with me is my friend and colleague, Rachel Maddow. So I don’t expect you to know exactly the answer to that, but you, as I noted before the break, I mean, you wrote a book a few years ago called Blowout, which of course covers how the oil and gas industry effectively corroded and corrupted democracy. It feels quite relevant to all of this. Given what we saw today, I mean, what went through your head when you saw this news about all the reasons for it, when you saw Trump’s answer as to whether he would keep the oil? What was going on in Rachel Maddow’s head? RACHEL MADDOW, MS NOW HOST: Oh, Jen, this is, I just feel like, I mean, I feel like if you stop somebody on the street, just like a man on the street interview, like, why are we going to war with Venezuela? Anybody like, if you asked 100 people, would a single one of those people have an answer that would be the same answer as anybody else that would match anything that the administration was saying? They’d all be different. And so first it was, we’re blowing up those drug boats off of Venezuela because of fentanyl. Fentanyl doesn’t come from Venezuela. No, okay. No, no, no. We’re not doing that anymore. No, we’re just trying to stop drug trafficking. These are all, that’s why we’re doing, this is all about drug trafficking. It’s drug trafficking boats. It’s Maduro is involved in drug trafficking somehow. So that’s okay. And then simultaneously Trump pardons the president of Honduras, former president of Honduras, who is one of the most prolific drug traffickers ever convicted in this country. Now they’re saying, oh, it’s violating Iran sanctions. Oh, okay. Violating Iran sanctions. That’s why we’re going to war with Venezuela. While Trump just pardoned the Binance guy, what did the Binance guy need to be pardoned for? $ 898 million worth of Iran sanctions violations, right? Plus funding Al Qaeda and ISIS and Hamas and the Islam, I mean, and Islamic Jihad. So like all of the things that they keep saying it is, clearly they’re not. And so what is it? Apparently it’s a regime change war so we can try to take their oil. Well, that’ll work out great. That’s always worked out great for us in the past. I mean, what, what, what’s going on here and who’s driving this? Trump doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on here or why. PSAKI: No, which is, which is an evergreen statement about Trump and national security in general, it seems. I keep thinking, and again, it’s important, we don’t totally know what’s going on here, but about his obsession over the course of time with taking oil from other countries, which he has talked about for so many years. And I am betting his oil baron friends are in his mind, but we will learn more over the coming days. I mean, this is all kind of to your point. I mean, these, these extrajudicial strikes, the seizure of this oil tanker, it’s so many things going on that feels over the legal line and feels like it’s setting incredibly dangerous precedents. As you look at the totality of it, I mean, what concerns you most about what you’re seeing and really where this goes? Because this is a very slippery slope. They could, I think they feel justified to seize more oil tankers. We’ll see what happens. MADDOW: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s basically three things going on here. I think one is that Trump wants to demonstrate that he is unconstrained by law, politics or public opinion. Like he wants to, the reason there’s no King’s protests against Trump is not just because he calls himself a King and, you know, looks the part, but because he is trying to create an illegal or, or sort of non-legal regime around himself in which he is unconstrained by any of the things that legally constrain an American president. So that’s, that’s dangerous. That’s part of what this is. The other thing that’s really bad about this is it looks like we might get a war and it really looks like a regime change war to try to take their oil, which really is something we know a lot about in this country and is supposedly part of the reason that Trump arose in Republican politics because he was against those sorts of things. Like that’s supposedly the whole theory of the case for why J.D. Vance exists, right? As a political figure. But the last thing I think is the weirdest thing to worry about, which is that Trump really doesn’t seem to have any idea why he’s going to war in Venezuela, nor does he seem to be in charge of any of the decisions that are leading us to this war. And so we also have to worry about who’s actually running the government right now and who is actually driving us toward this regime change war that the president doesn’t seem to be at the helm of. We don’t know who is and we don’t know why. And that sort of careening feeling that you’re having right now is the most worrying part of all of this to me. PSAKI: It is. I work for two presidents. I’ve never seen such a lack of interest in what we are doing with our military power from the commander in chief. Rachel Maddow, I could talk to you for a long time, but we got it. We are going to wait for Senator John Ossoff, who’s standing here, and I’m looking forward to talking to him. Thank you so much.

RealClearPolitics Videos