Joe Biden just did an interview with the Des Moines Register.
One of the main news items out of the interview was Biden saying that he wouldn’t testify if subpoenaed to appear in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
But they also asked about other topics and Joe Biden’s response on Venezuela was a classic Biden answer.
First, he chastised the Trump administration, saying “what’s going on” with Venezuela. Then he spoke about “Plan Colombia” which was a plan of U.S. aid to help Colombia fight FARC and the drug cartels that he did have a hand in but doesn’t say what relevance that would have to Venezuela.
Biden says people are crossing Venezuela’s border into Bolivia, which is actually 100s of miles awayhttps://t.co/eYG6twWAuy pic.twitter.com/JgAi8aVGqj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 28, 2019
“Now what’s happening?” Biden said. “Millions of people are crossing the border destabilizing Bolivia.”
Um, Joe? You might want to check that again, Venezuela doesn’t have a border with Bolivia, Bolivia is hundreds of miles away.
Are there Venezuelan migrants who have gone to Bolivia? Yes, no doubt. But hardly millions if UN numbers are right.
In November, The Hill detailed how many had fled Venezuela and where they went according to UN numbers, Bolivia didn’t even make the cut.
The majority of the 4.3 million Venezuelans who have fled their country — driven by hyperinflation, crime and food and medicine shortages, which all stem from the Bolivarian revolution — have stayed within the region. An estimated 1.4 million Venezuelans have settled in Colombia; nearly 860,000 in Peru; 288,000 in Chile; 330,000 in Ecuador; 130,000 in Argentina; and 178,000 in Brazil. About 300,000 Venezuelans are in the United States and more than 255,000 in Spain, according to the U.N. International Organization on Migration.
But even if you assume all the remainder that are not specifically detailed above went to Bolivia (and they didn’t), that still doesn’t equal millions.
It’s also curious, that he’s concerned about Bolivia being “destabilized” since the socialist leader was thrown out in a popular uprising. It was the socialism that “destabilized” Bolivia, not millions of Venezuelans.
The Venezuelan government has been a problem for its people for years, including when Biden was actually in office. He didn’t do anything to solve the issues at the time when he had the opportunity.
At the end of the above video, he asks, without any self-awareness, “Why do we think populist movements occur?”
Yes, the populist movement to elect Donald Trump had a lot to do with the failure of the prior administration of which Biden was a part, an administration that people felt wasn’t hearing them and was veering further left. It appealed to people to boost the economy and bring back jobs, which indeed it has done.
If Biden actually understood that than he might be able to do something to help himself win and he might see the relevance of the example of Venezuela. But he doesn’t.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member