As Heather Cox Richardson wrote last night, bonkers, but can you actually say this surprises you?
"Today has been bonkers, and tonight's letter will reflect that. But while we are copyediting that letter, I want to call out something in it, toward the end, that I don't want to have overawed by everything else that's happened today. It's this:
"Today, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told an audience at a Goldman Sachs energy industry event in Miami, Florida, that the United States will take control of all oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Lisa Desjardins and Nick Schifrin of PBS Newshour reported this afternoon that Trump administration officials have told lawmakers that they plan to put the money raised from their seizure of Venezuelan oil into bank accounts outside the U.S. Treasury. Desjardins clarified that '[s]ources said they understood these as similar [to] or decidedly "off-shore" accounts.'
Yesterday, Trump announced that, as president of the United States, he would control the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil."
I'll put the sources for this paragraph in the comments.
This note is not tonight's letter, which should be forthcoming before midnight (I hope!). But this information— which sure looks like Trump just announced he was planning to take control of Venezuela's oil personally and is planning to stash the cash in off-shore accounts— jumped out at me, and I wanted to make sure people didn't lose it in under the weight of today's other crushing news."