Truth Social’s Discussion of Venezuela Shifts From Drugs To Oil After US Strikes

TLDR

• On Truth Social, a microblogging platform owned by President Donald Trump, user discussions about Venezuela’s alleged role in drug trafficking have decreased.

• This shift mirrors the Trump Administration’s own shift in messaging, particularly since the US military raided Venezuela’s capital and captured President Nicolás Maduro.

• Since then, Truth Social users’ discussion of Venezuela has shifted focus to the country’s trillion-dollar oil reserves.

Background

On Jan. 3, the United States military carried out a raid against Venezuela’s capital, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to New York City to face criminal charges related to narcotics trafficking and firearms.

The operation followed months of US military escalation against Venezuela, including 35 known strikes against alleged drug smuggling vessels in South American waters beginning as early as Sept. 2, 2025.¹ Throughout the conflict, Trump Administration officials claimed these efforts aimed to stop drug traffickers moving fentanyl into the United States.

Shortly after the US captured Maduro, Trump announced that US officials would temporarily “run” Venezuela in Maduro’s absence. Further, he said the US would provide military support to American oil companies moving into Venezuela² in the aftermath to capitalize on seized oil reserves worth trillions of dollars. Trump Administration officials have since suggested they are considering additional military operations in Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, and Iran.

First Drugs, Then Oil

Since September 2025, after the first reports of US military strikes against alleged drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean Sea, Truth Social users have frequently mentioned keywords associated with narcotics trafficking in posts discussing Venezuela or Maduro. From September through early December 2025, comparatively few Venezuela or Maduro-focused posts mentioned oil.

That changed in December 2025, after the Trump Administration seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast and ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers traveling in and out of its ports.

Caption: A timeline chart shows the daily number of posts on Truth Social that mentioned Venezuela or its ousted president Nicolás Maduro and included keywords related to narcotics trafficking or the country’s oil reserves between Sept. 1, 2025, and Jan. 10, 2026.

Before these US military operations took place, the most-shared Truth Social post mentioning oil that our researchers identified seemed to cast doubt on the “official” reasoning for the operations.

The December 10 post read:

I’m not exactly sure what is going on in Venezuela that has Trump’s attention, but I think it has to do with more than just drug cartels. Venezuela, and South America in general, has been a historical CIA hotspot. My guess is, that Venezuela has some sort of Obama/Deep State assets, similar to Iran and Ukraine. Hence why Trump is after it, and hence why the Dems are freaking out about “unlawful orders”, Hegseth, “war crimes”, drug boats, etc.Is it about cartels, drugs, election fraud, oil, precious metals, something else? I’m not sure, but the enemy always tells us what they value most, based upon what they squeal about the loudest.

After the US military captured Maduro and claimed it would take control Venezuela on Jan. 3, mentions of keywords related to drug trafficking initially spiked on Truth Social – but as the administration’s messaging on attacking Venezuela shifted, so did Truth Social users’.

Within a few days, users were mentioning oil in relation to Venezuela and Maduro more often than drug operations (the original justification for military escalations against Venezuela).

Links to Conspiracy Theories

Researchers also noted that as discussion of Venezuela’s oil reserves picked up, so did the number of posts implicating Venezuela in conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. Posts claiming Venezuela had a role in alleged 2020 election conspiracies were infrequent on the platform prior to Maduro’s capture.

Caption: A timeline chart shows the daily number of posts on Truth Social that mentioned Venezuela or its ousted president Nicolás Maduro and included keywords related to narcotics trafficking, the country’s oil reserves, or 2020 election conspiracy theories between Sept. 1, 2025, and Jan. 10, 2026.

What We’re Watching

Open Measures will continue to monitor trend shifts related to discourse surrounding US military operations in Venezuela and other countries. In addition to the narratives identified in this article, our researchers have also observed hostile rhetoric on Truth Social aimed at critics of the Trump Administration’s military actions and the judge overseeing Maduro’s criminal case in New York.

As seen in prior research, the discourse on Truth Social largely echoes the Trump Administration’s own – often contradictory – messaging. As these international conflicts escalate and online narratives become more disparate, our researchers will continue using Open Measures’ platform to clarify narratives, monitor threats, and report on changing trends across dozens of alt-platforms.