We Must Stop Propping Up Venezuela’s Dictator

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The death spiral of Venezuela induced by Hugo Chavez and his hand-picked successor, Nicholas Maduro, has just entered its terminal phase. To the destruction of the economy, the resulting, horrific privation and the murder of over 100 people protesting the regime’s growing despotism, must now be added another cruel injustice:  Maduro engineered a fraudulent vote effectively to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in his country. 

President Trump rightly warned of intensified sanctions if the Venezuelan dictator went ahead with his referendum. Some relatively modest ones have already been instituted.

Now, America must take steps to impose real costs on Maduro’s government. The place to start is by terminating further imports to the United States of Venezuelan crude oil and exports of gasoline to that country.  Such transactions amount to life-support for the regime and can no longer be justified.

This is Frank Gaffney.