Vladimir Putin is exactly the person that you would expect to find manipulating a situation like this. This is right up his alley. Putin is backing Nicholas Maduro, who is considered to be a strongman, staying in power in Venezuela due to the result a fraudulent election. The situation got incredibly tense when Juan Guaido, President of the National Assembly, declared himself acting president, saying that last year’s re-election of Nicholas Maduro was illegitimate, largely due to the fact that in 2017 Maduro created a second legislature, filled with his own loyalists, which was subsequently condemned as fraudulent. Understandably, major world powers were drawn into the controversy, with the U.S. backing Guaido and Russia and China backing Maduro. John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and others said that Maduro’s days were numbered, in no uncertain terms. That was official U.S. foreign policy on the subject — until Donald Trump phoned up Vladimir Putin on Friday. Take a look at this time line.
Wednesday John Bolton said, and this is quoting from the Washington Post, “that if the Russians continue to ignore U.S. warnings about malign influence in Venezuela, they ‘will do so at their own cost.'” That same day, Mike Pompeo was on the line with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who he’s scheduled to meet with in Finland in a few days, and he said,
Russia had told Maduro not to step down and accept an offer of passage to Venezuelan ally Cuba.
“It’s the case that Maduro may rule for a little while longer, but he’s not going to govern,” Pompeo told Fox News on Thursday. “Structurally, there’s no way he stays in power. It’s time for him to leave, and we need the Cubans and the Russians to follow him out the door.”
This seems pretty plain. That was on Thursday. Now, on Friday, Donald Trump telephones Vladimir Putin and the two of them have a nice chit chat for one and a half hours. It was not a Skype call, but be that as it may, Trump reported Putin smiling when they spoke of the Mueller investigation. Mike Pence hears Jesus and Trump sees visions of Putin, it all fits.
“We discussed it. He actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse,” Trump said. “But he knew that, because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever.”
The Post reports that Putin had stated last month that the Mueller investigation made a “mountain out of a molehill,” but even this hoary old cliche is apparently beyond Trump’s level of sophistication. It only bears mentioning here because, besides showing once again what a moron Trump is, it establishes that what Putin says and what Trump hears are two very, very different things.
Another thing Trump heard Putin say during their phone call, is that “He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela.” This is in direct contradiction to what Mike Pompeo says, which is, again quoting the Post, “that Russia propped up embattled Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and blocked what might have been a peaceful transfer of power to the U.S.-backed opposition.”
That takes us up to Saturday, where Maduro went on television, in the presence of 5,000 troops and instructed them “to be ready to defend the homeland with weapons in your hands if one day the US empire dares to touch this territory, this sacred earth.”
The United States has refused to take the threat of military action off the table in its push to oust Maduro — although so far has so far limited its campaign to ramping up sanctions.
Guaido’s cause gained renewed support Saturday however from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who issued a video address to the Venezuelan people, telling them: “The time for transition is now.”
“You can hold your institutions, your military and their leaders to the highest standards and demand a return to democracy,” Pompeo said in the message. “The United States stands firmly with you in your quest.”
This episode is a replay of what Trump did in Helsinki, when all the U.S. intelligence agencies were in agreement Russia had interfered in the U.S. election, but Trump took Putin’s word over theirs that nothing had happened. Now Trump is openly contradicting his own secretary of state and other advisers, and claiming that Putin has no interest in Venezuela. Since Russia has substantial investments in Venezuela and since election interference in foreign elections is his forte, and dictators his kith and kin, the suggestion is ludicrous — and no one besides Trump would ever make it.
Friday’s telephone chat with the Kremlin does not bode well for foreign affairs in Venezuela. And don’t forget that North Korea is working to develop its military. In recent weeks, spy satellites picked up activity which could only be nuclear proliferation, or other missile work. And by the by, Kim Jong-Un “demanded that Mike Pompeo be removed from nuclear negotiations,” purportedly because Pompeo misrepresented comments Kim made last week.
Kim and Putin must be having the time of their lives. They both have Trump deluded into thinking that he is in control, and they’re all pals, going forward arm in arm into a brighter future. Trump’s tweets say it all. Politico:
“Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it,” the president wrote hours after the rogue state fired several unidentified short-range projectiles from its eastern coast into the sea. “He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!”
“Very good call yesterday with President Putin of Russia,” Trump tweeted Saturday, one of some 19 tweets or retweets posted by the president before 11 a.m. “Tremendous potential for a good/great relationship with Russia, despite what you read and see in the Fake News Media. Look how they have misled you on ‘Russia Collusion.’ The World can be a better and safer place. Nice!”
Kim Jong-Un was in Vladivostok for a summit with Putin recently and the two of them must have been laughing their asses off. The only one in the world who thinks that Putin isn’t undermining American foreign policy in Venezuela, or that Kim Jong-Un isn’t increasing his nuclear stockpile, is Donald Trump.
When Saigon fell, I recall there was a popular question on who lost Vietnam. When this admin wraps, there will never be any question on who lost the whole world.
You know, there are days that I honestly wonder if Putin is going to take over the whole world and Trump is going to hand it to him. What else can I think? Venezuela has been up the creek for some years now, and it’s ripe for this kind of a takeover — and who is engineering it, but Russia?
I honestly wonder where and how this will all end. This Trump fiasco is destructive, I’m just wondering how much of the entire world will be affected.
Do NOT give Putin the Bond villain bona fides he has not earned, Ursula, please. Get past the ruthlessness and lack of scruples and all I see is another old man who, like Trump, is trying to recapture a youth he’s never getting back.
Russia’s biggest structural problem is that the minute Putin dies, a political vacuum roughly the size of the Marianas trench is going to open up. He has no successors, brooks no rivals and has a petro economy that is already slowing down. So any influence that he may be picking on the world stage may well be as fragile as spring ice.
The whole world is already laughing out loud at our country so lost with DJT at the helm … his lies at every moment of any day make him the impossible representative of our wishes for a peaceful world with co-existing countries of every Continent on this troubled, weather-beaten orb we call Earth … DJT’s unsuitable comments and words of the 3-1/2-to 4 year old he is so fond of using ….
Barr may have inadvertently handed the solution to us with all his miss-begotten obstruction and OBVIOUS protection for Trump …
Direct charges to Barr for his proven lies to Congress … IMPEACH BARR!!
Practice round for DJT AFTER we get the whole story from Mueller next week … (Wed. May 15, 2019)
DJT’s continued sandbox games with Putin has worried me so much since his stooped over sad little boy stance after the big private meeting with Putin and his immediate acceptance of Putin’s denial over our own Intel’s conclusions … He made that statement to the whole world, and at that moment, it WAS my opinion DJT is at least until now, one of Putin’s best agents here in the USA …
It has gone beyond time to impeach Trump, so all the evidence we can compile from the sworn-to Mueller Report and all of it’s gems of discovery, we may just have McConnell and Graham as well as Pence involved to clear the boards and start over … the guilt levels of the Republicans in the whole fiasco that is Trump … this latest twist in the WH/State Dept. has to be how off course DJT IS …..
https://www.codepink.org/embassyprotection
As you read (after it loads) the brief summary of the violence described here regarding Venezuela, please do not miss the fact that this is NOT happening in Venezuela, but IN WASHINGTON, D.C., at the Venezuelan Embassy, and it is American citizens who are being assaulted IN AMERICA. Did someone predict another Kent State recently? There is a petition to sign, and comments if you want to read them. This one moved me the most of the ones I read:
“I am old enough to remember the wintertime Venezuelan airlift of fuel oil to our isolated, Alaskan villages when no one in our own country would do so. I can not forget their generosity.”
Sorry to say it, but this is the only time I have ever agreed with Trumpian thought. The oil interests in the US have stirred this pot from the beggining. Venezuela has one of the top five oil reserves in the world and you better believe that US petroleum producers want to get their hands on THAT SUPPLY! Russia and China have political and economic interests in the region but that is not a reason to call for regime change. The Venezuelan people are suffering mightily and much of that has to do with the US sanctions. Maduro is not a hero but there have been a whole lot of US restrictions that were politically and economically motivated on the part of US controlled petro carbon based corporations. There is no reason for the US government to side with those corporations wishing to take over Venezuelas oil reserves.