[rad-green] Elizabeth Warren Endorses Trump’s E conomic War on Venezuela, Soft-Pedals Far-Right Bolivia Coup

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/20/elizabeth-warren-endorses-trumps-economic-war-on-venezuela-soft-pedals-far-right-bolivia-coup/

*Consortium News          November 20, 2019*

Elizabeth Warren Endorses Trump’s Economic War on Venezuela, Soft-Pedals
Far-Right Bolivia Coup
*The Democratic contender parroted neocon regime-change myths in an
interview on “Pod Save America”.*

*By Ben Norton <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ben-norton/>*
*The Grayzone
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/20/elizabeth-warren-venezuela-sanctions-bolivia-coup/>*

*For the millions of Venezuelans suffering under a suffocating U.S.
blockade
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/11/life-resistance-venezuela-ben-norton-us-blockade/>,
there is no functional difference between Donald Trump and Elizabeth
Warren. In fact, the liberal Democratic presidential candidate has
enthusiastically endorsed the far-right president’s strategy of relentless
warfare against Venezuela
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/07/un-rapporteur-says-us-sanctions-against-venezuela-are-the-bluntest-way-to-engineer-regime-change-and-are-causing-blanket-starvation/>
and
its nearly 30 million inhabitants.*

After praising the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, which violate international
law and have led to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/23/us-sanctions-threaten-famine-in-venezuela-leading-economist-warns/>
of
civilians, Warren went on to whitewash the far-right military coup in
Bolivia, where the Trump administration has helped put racist Christian
extremists <https://twitter.com/GrayzoneProject/status/1196484126221713410>
 and actual fascists in power
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/>
.

Warren’s eagerness for economic war on Caracas earned her the recognition
of right-wing news websites like The Federalist
<https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/18/elizabeth-warren-aggrees-trump-strategy-venezuela-support-economic-sanctions/>,
which gleefully emphasized that “Elizabeth Warren Agrees With Trump’s
Strategy In Venezuela.”

The Massachusetts senator wanted to show off her foreign policy bona fides
in a softball interview with a former Barack Obama administration
apparatchik on the podcast “Pod Save America
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUvqJ6VpXf0>,” which is known for its
centrist politics and close links to Hillary Clinton.

Warren praised Trump’s strategy of appointing the deflated Venezuelan coup
leader Juan Guaidó
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/>
as
president and declared, “I support economic sanctions.” She also described
the country’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/06/interview-venezuelan-president-nicolas-maduro/>
as
a “dictator.”

In the interview, the Democratic presidential candidate agreed
wholeheartedly with her host Tommy Vietor, who previously served as a
spokesperson for President Barack Obama and the U.S. National Security
Council.

Both spread lie after lie about Venezuela, based on hyperbolic corporate
media myths.

Although the interview was conducted back in February, video clips have
recently resurfaced and gone viral on social media.

[image: image.png]

*Supports Economic Sanctions*

Tommy Vietor, an implacable critic of Trump and a prominent symbol of the
liberal self-declared “Resistance,” kicked off the interview segment
singing the praises of the far-right president’s strategy of economically
and diplomatically strangling Venezuela.

“The Trump administration has recognized the National Assembly president
Juan Guaidó as the president, and encouraged a bunch of other countries to
follow suit, in frankly what was a pretty impressive diplomatic play by
them,” Vietor applauded — failing to mention that more than 80 percent of
Venezuelans <https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1090338861761392641>
 had never heard of Guaidó
<https://www.vtv.gob.ve/hinterlaces-81-venezolanos-desconoce-a-guaido-como-lider-politico/>
at
the time Washington anointed him as the unelected head of state.

“Mm hmm,” Warren uttered in agreement, echoing Vietor’s endorsement of the
Trump administration for attempting to install Guaidó through a coup.

Trump “also sanctioned Venezuela’s oil industry, which is a major step to
cut off all their supply of dollars and their ability to have an economy,”
Vietor continued.

Warren chimed in: “Start with the fact that Maduro is obviously a dictator;
he’s terrible; he’s stolen this election; it’s a nightmare for the people
of Venezuela.”

The Democratic presidential candidate, who portrays herself as a
progressive, proceeded to endorse all of the major planks of the Trump
administration’s hybrid war against Venezuela.

“This notion of using our diplomatic tools, I’m all for it,” she continued.
“I think recognition [of Guaidó], I think getting our allies to do it; it’s
a way to bring diplomatic pressure.”

“Economic sanctions? Yeah, I support economic sanctions,” Warren added.
“But we have to offer humanitarian help at the same time.”

“We should be leading the international community to get help to those
people,” she said of Venezuelan migrants. “That puts more pressure on
Maduro,” Warren boasted.

The Democratic presidential candidate made it clear that she would continue
the hybrid war on Venezuela, which has caused large numbers of Venezuelans
to leave the country, while also incentivizing Venezuelans to leave the
country with promises of aid on the other side of the border. In other
words, Warren pledged to exacerbate Venezuela’s migration crisis, which is
already at epidemic levels thanks to crushing U.S. sanctions.

A study published in April by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot at
the Center for Economic and Policy Research
<http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-venezuela-are-responsible-for-tens-of-thousands-of-deaths>
found
that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, which are illegal under international
law, caused at least 40,000 deaths from 2017 to 2018.

“The sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of lifesaving medicines, medical
equipment, food, and other essential imports,” said Weisbrot.

Warren has promised to continue lethal sanctions, fueling more migration
from Venezuela, but simultaneously boosting aid — just like liberal war
hawks who supported the international proxy war on Syria
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/24/the-syria-you-wont-see-max-blumenthal-on-visiting-damascus-after-the-proxy-war/>,
which created millions of refugees, while pledging to help those displaced
people.

The only Trump tactic Warren disapproved of was his “saber-rattling,”
referencing his belligerent tone. Instead of threatening direct military
intervention, Warren argued, the United States should continue polices of
hybrid and economic warfare to destabilize Venezuela’s leftist government.

And Washington should continue this hybrid warfare while “working with our
allies,” she stressed, in a way “that increases the pressure on Maduro.”

While demonizing Venezuelan President Maduro, who was first elected in 2013
and then re-elected in 2018, host Tommy Vietor and Elizabeth Warren went on
to praise German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is from a center-right
religious party.

Reiterates Her Neoconservative Policies Against Venezuela

Elizabeth Warren repeated her support for regime change in Venezuela in an
interview in September with the Council on Foreign Relations
<https://www.cfr.org/article/elizabeth-warren>, a central gear in the
machinery of the military-industrial complex.

“Maduro is a dictator and a crook who has wrecked his country’s economy,
dismantled its democratic institutions, and profited while his people
suffer,” Warren declared.

She referred to Maduro’s elected government as a “regime” and called for
“supporting regional efforts to negotiate a political transition.”

Echoing the rhetoric of neoconservatives in Washington, Warren called for
“contain[ing]” the supposedly “damaging and destabilizing actions” of
China, Russia, and Cuba.

The only point where Warren diverged with Trump was on her insistence that
“there is no U.S. military option in Venezuela.”

*Soft-Pedals Far-Right Coup in Bolivia*

While Warren endorsed Trump’s hybrid war on Venezuela, she more recently
whitewashed the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.

On Nov. 10, the U.S. government backed a far-right military coup against
Bolivia’s democratically elected President Evo Morales
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/14/oas-us-coup-bolivia-evo-morales/>, a
leftist from the popular Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and the
first Indigenous head of state in a country where nearly two-thirds of the
population is Native.

Warren refused to comment on the putsch for more than a week, even as the
far-right military junta massacred dozens of protesters and systematically
purged and detained elected left-wing politicians from MAS.

Finally, eight days after the coup, Warren broke her silence. In a short
tweet, the putative progressive presidential candidate tepidly requested
“free and fair elections” and calling on the “interim leadership” to
prepare an “early, legitimate election.”
[image: image.png]

What Warren did not mention is that this “interim leadership” she helped
legitimize is headed by an extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, the
unelected “interim president” Jeanine Añez.
<https://twitter.com/GrayzoneProject/status/1196484126221713410>

Añez has referred to Bolivia’s majority-Indigenous population as “satanic”
and immediately moved to try to overturn the country’s progressive
constitution, which had established an inclusive, secular, plurinational
state after receiving an overwhelming democratic mandate in a 2009
referendum.

Añez’s ally in this coup regime’s interim leadership is Luis Fernando
Camacho
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/>,
a multi-millionaire who emerged out of neo-fascist groups and courted
support from the United States and the far-right governments of Brazil and
Colombia.

By granting legitimacy to Bolilvia’s ultra-conservative, unelected
leadership, Warren rubber-stamped the far-right coup and the military
junta’s attempt to stamp out Bolivia’s progressive democracy.

In other words, as *The Grayzone* editor Max Blumenthal put it, Liz’s Big
Structural Bailey
<https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1190377701946875906?lang=en> compliantly
rolled over for Big IMF
<https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1196621593755213825> Structural
Adjustment Program
<https://thegrayzone.com/2016/05/31/neoliberal-imf-neoliberalism-inequality-hurts-growth/>
.

*Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone,
and the producer of the “**Moderate Rebels*
<http://moderaterebelsradio.com/>” *podcast, which he co-hosts with Max
Blumenthal. His website is **BenNorton.com* <http://bennorton.com/>*, and
he tweets at @**BenjaminNorton* <https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton>*.*

*This article is from **The Grayzone* <https://thegrayzone.com/>*.*

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