Trump is using the Venezuela crisis to warn about socialism and attack Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders.
President Donald Trump seems to care deeply about the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela — but it might not necessarily be for the reasons you’d think. His focus on Venezuela today is little more than a ploy to help his chances against Democratic challengers in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump used a Monday speech in Florida to trash Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for having run his country into the ground — and he has good reason to. Under the dictator’s rule, inflation and hunger rates have skyrocketed, and diseases once thought eradicated from Venezuela have sparked a new health crisis. Unsurprisingly, all of this and more have made Maduro an unpopular leader both at home and around the world.
But Trump’s aim was not only Maduro the man, but Maduro the socialist. In fact, the president spent ample time making the case that socialism is the real culprit for Venezuela’s ills.
“Socialism has so completely ravaged this great country that even the world’s largest reserves of oil are no longer enough to keep the lights on,” Trump said at Florida International University.
