Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made a gaffe on Monday during a Fox News interview, mistakenly saying he was in Venezuela instead of Louisiana.
Burgum appeared on America Reports to discuss how Venezuela is shipping 15,000 tons of aluminum to the U.S. in a deal with Heeney Capital, a U.S. private investment firm, and Mercuria, a Swiss-founded energy trading company. The first shipment arrived Monday at the Port of Avondale in New Orleans. Burgum and two Louisiana members of Congress, Steve Scalise and Julia Letlow, were there to meet it.
On Fox, Burgum, 70, spent about two minutes touting the benefits of the influx of aluminum from Venezuela before he misspoke.
“The place where this is offloading here—this was an abandoned shipyard and now has over 600 or 700 jobs here in Louisiana, and on the other end, the smelter that’s producing this aluminum, is operating at about one-tenth of its capacity, so there’s an opportunity in Venezuela for economic development and here in Louisiana, it’s happening and of course Louisiana is on fire,” he said.
“Louisiana is showing, as a state, showing what it’s like when you embrace progress and actually get back to building great things in America,” he added moments later. “So, great to be here in Venezuela today.”
Burgum promptly corrected himself.
“Or, not Venezuela, I’m sorry. Louisana,” he said, as he and co-anchors John Roberts and Sandra Smith chuckled about it. “I’m in Louisiana. I’m not in Venezuela.”
Burgum credited Scalise, Gov. Jeff Landry, and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana for the development.
“They are all rolling together and all pro economic development, whether it’s super intelligence being manufactured here in some of our largest data centers, whether it’s oil and gas, whether it’s processing Venezuelan oil in these refineries in Louisiana that were designed 25 years ago for Venezuelan crude,” he said.
“We are thrilled at the successful delivery of this shipment,” said Henry Heeney, Co-Founder of Heeney Capital. “This will be one of many future shipments of Venezuelan aluminum to the United States and is part of a larger initiative of American investment into Venezuela.”
The shipment comes ten months after Donald Trump ordered the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in part to clear the way for U.S. access to the country’s oil. Trump said he gave the leaders of top U.S. oil companies advance notice about the special forces mission to capture Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges.
As of July, the U.S. had collected $13 billion from Venezuela’s oil.
