Dave Chappelle once called Donald Trump an “honest liar,” which struck me as an apt description.

Trump’s also a pathological liar, which is problematic, and he’s a shameless grifter, but being shameless inadvertently lends itself to honesty: When you’re not concerned about decorum, you often stumble into truth-telling because it doesn’t occur to you when propriety demands a lie.

On Wednesday, following news that the US military seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, Trump was asked what would become of the ship’s cargo. “Well, we keep it I guess,” he said. “I assume we’re going to keep the oil.”

“Respect” isn’t the right word because Trump’s honesty didn’t come about… well, honestly. Rather, it was a product of his no-cares approach to running the world. Most presidents would’ve assiduously avoided any sort of rhetoric that validates sundry pirate jokes or otherwise suggests an ulterior motive for aggression against a foreign government. Not Trump.

The fallout from the incident was relatively contained on Thursday, but Russia pretended to be perturbed. “Although they consider themselves entitled to conduct such operations, I hope the US will somehow explain, out of respect for other members of the world community, what facts led them to take such actions,” Sergei Lavrov mused, while participating in an event ostensibly convened to work towards a ceasefire in Ukraine.

“I don’t know how the United States views the Venezuelan situation,” Lavrov went on. “President Trump has spoken publicly demanding a regime change, but Chevron is operating in Venezuela, buying Venezuelan oil.”

The Justice Department says the cargoes loaded on the vessel were part of “an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.” The tanker itself was sanctioned by the US in 2022. When it was commandeered this week, it was flying a Guyanese flag, but Guyana rushed to clarify that it wasn’t registered in the country. It was, quite literally, a false flag operation.

Long story short, the Skipper is a dark fleet vessel. Efforts to place the ship around the globe suggest it routinely falsified its position in the course of transferring Venezuelan oil to Iran and China, which buys a majority of Maduro’s sanctioned crude.

The ship’s registered owner is Marshall Islands-based Triton Navigation Corp, which the US Treasury in 2022 linked to Viktor Artemov, a shadowy Ukrainian based in Switzerland who OFAC identified as the ringleader of an Iranian smuggling network which helped fund the Quds and Hezbollah.

“Artemov oversees a vast, complex and interwoven global network of front companies that are used to facilitate oil shipments,” Treasury said at the time. Triton’s a subsidiary of Centrum Maritime, one of Artemov’s companies which the US said bought and sold oil tankers worth as much as $30 million. One of those tankers was the Adisa, later re-christened the Skipper.

Shortly before the US military seized the ship, María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize, was a no-show for the presentation of her award, which was accepted on her behalf in Norway by Ana Corina Sosa, her daughter.

Machado indicated a day previous that she intended to make an in-person cameo. She’s lived in hiding in Venezuela for nearly a year and is barred by Maduro from leaving the country. At 2:30 in the morning local time, Machado emerged from Oslo’s Grand Hotel to engage supporters. She made it after all.

The Wall Street Journal described a daring — nearly to the point of being implausible — escape from Caracas. Amusingly, Machado’s enablers were compelled to tip off the US military in order to prevent a mix up that might’ve found Machado incinerated by one of Pete Hegseth’s anti-narcotics strikes. As one source put it, bluntly, “We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so they would not blow up the boat.”

Importantly, Machado’s somewhat controversial. As The New York Times noted, she’s faced criticism “for overstating the Venezuelan government’s role in drug trafficking, for promoting unfounded claims that it had meddled in US elections [and for] backing aggressive tactics and US military pressure.”

When queried by reporters in Norway on Thursday, she was noncommittal on support for US military action to remove Maduro, but she did praise Trump whose actions she described as “decisive.” “Before, the regime thought it had impunity,” she said. “Now they’re beginning to understand that this is serious.”

In an irritable message posted to social media, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil derided Trump’s seizure of the Skipper as “a blatant act of international piracy.”

“The true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed,” he said. “It’s not about migration. It’s not about drug trafficking. It’s not about democracy. [Trump wants] to take Venezuelan oil without paying for it.”

Later, Treasury announced new sanctions on the regime, including measures targeting three of Maduro’s nephews. “Maduro and his criminal associates are flooding the US with drugs that are poisoning the American people,” Scott Bessent declared.