A member of the delegation to the U.N. from Venezuela’s illegitimate socialist regime pretended to read a book while President Donald Trump spoke at the institution’s General Assembly general debate on Tuesday.
The delegate identified herself as Daniela Rodríguez and posted on Twitter that she was pretending to read the writings of Simón Bolívar, the founder of Venezuela. Bolívar wrote prolifically against the United States in the 19th century.
Trump spent a significant portion of his speech warning the world against the evils of communism and socialism, and particularly condemning the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro for plunging Venezuela into extreme poverty and using human rights abuses to repress political dissidents.
Maduro will not attend the U.N. General Assembly despite being invited, sending instead Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza. The U.N. insisted on inviting Maduro despite him no longer holding the office of the presidency. His term expired in January, but he refused to step down, so the National Assembly used its constitutional powers to replace him with an interim president, Juan Guaidó.
Guaidó announced that he had sent a delegation to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday despite not being invited.
Rodríguez, the socialist delegate, posted a photo of herself on Twitter reading a book with the falsified socialist image of Bolívar – created by Hugo Chávez after exhuming the founding father’s corpse in 2012 – on its cover.
“While infamy and lies speak before the U.N., we read Bolívar: ‘The United States seems destined by providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty,'” Rodríguez wrote.
Her boss Jorge Arreaza – Hugo Chávez’s son-in-law – applauded her on social media, as well.
“The best response against imperialist and supremacist aggression from Donald Trump is to submerge ourselves in our pure, luminous, sovereign fountain of independence, equality, and liberty: SIMÓN BOLÍVAR, THE LIBERATOR,” Arreaza wrote on Twitter:
During Rodríguez’s stunt, Trump condemned Maduro’s regime while assuring the Venezuelan people that “all of America is behind you” and that America had “vast quantities of humanitarian aid ready to be delivered.” Venezuela has been suffering severe food shortages and almost a total lack of basic medications for at least two years. Maduro has repeatedly rejected American humanitarian aid. On one occasion, socialist Vice President Delcy Rodríguez went on Maduro’s propaganda broadcast network and told Venezuelans that American food aid was “carcinogenic” and not safe to eat.
“Women in Venezuela stand in line for ten hours a day waiting for food,” Trump told the General Assembly. “Over 15,000 people have been detained as political prisoners. Modern-day death squads are carrying out thousands of extrajudicial killings.”
Trump referred to Maduro as a “Cuban puppet, protected by Cuban bodyguards, hiding from his own people.”
More generally, Trump referred to socialism and communism as “the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies.”
“Events in Venezuela remind us all that socialism and communism are not about justice, they are not about equality, they are not about lifting up the poor, and they are certainly not about the good of the people,” he continued. “Socialism and communism are about one thing only: power for the ruling class.”
While Trump was speaking, the State Department announced new sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry. Specifically, Washington levied sanctions on four companies working with Maduro’s oil industry and blocked the travel of four vessels used to transport Venezuelan oil.
“This action further targets Venezuela’s oil sector and the mechanisms used to transport oil to Nicolás Maduro’s Cuban benefactors, who continue to prop up the former regime,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said. “These sanctions are a follow-on to the designations and identifications announced on April 5 and 12 that targeted entities and vessels known to be involved in the transportation of crude oil from Venezuela to Cuba.”
Nicolás Maduro is currently in Moscow to “secure our historic and very positive relations of exchange and respect between our peoples.”
Russia’s Foreign Relations Ministry published a photo Tuesday of Maduro standing alongside President Vladimir Putin. Maduro appeared to continue using Twitter to condemn the world’s free societies, taking time out of his diplomatic schedule to accuse Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of “fascism” for condemning “sensationalist” media reports on fires in the Amazon Rainforest that circulated in August.
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