It’s an elastic stretch to compare Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to Donald Trump, as pundits and critics of the Hugo Chavez successor have done for the last year and a half. Maduro’s opinion of immigration from Colombia into his country—”Who comes over from Colombia? It’s people practically without education,” was his own “they’re not sending their best” comment in summer 2015—has been conflated with his action, which includes a declaration of martial law and the ordered bulldozing of homes along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Say what you will of Trump’s deportation policies and wall fancy: They won’t end with Texas becoming a police state, or with the road from Juarez to El Paso being paved with siding.
Trump upbraided the leaders of Venezuela’s government during last year’s presidential campaign. “Venezuelans are good people, but they have been horribly damaged by the socialists in Venezuela and the next president of the United States must show solidarity with all the oppressed people” in the Americas, he said during a stop in Miami. The socialists include Maduro, who was once praised as Chavez’s capable deputy and, to no surprise, has continued his destructive agenda, overseeing the catastrophic decline of his economy. Trump might call it “failed”.
Now comes this from the Associated Press, indicating Maduro understands his osteoporotic strength:
It’s doubtful they’ll improve—the two men aren’t exactly one and the same.
