Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro has responded to U.S. sanctions banning him from the country Monday with an outrageous tirade in which he claimed the White House was in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and calling the sanctions a sign of America’s “impotence, desperation, and hate.”
“I am against the Ku Klux Klan that governs the White House and I am proud of being this way,” Maduro said during a nationally televised broadcast Monday.
“Sanction us however you want, but the Venezuelan people have decided to be free, and I will be the president of a free people,” he declared.
Maduro repeatedly referred to U.S. President Donald Trump as an “emperor”—a moniker he rolled out for the president last week—and called Trump “repudiated” throughout the United States “even more than George W. Bush.” The dictator compared sanctions on his regime following Sunday’s election to strip the nation’s legislature of its powers to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and called Bush, a longtime favorite enemy of his late predecessor Hugo Chávez, “an illegitimate, repudiated president.”
“They see Latin America as a lapdog that wags its tail and says ‘yes,'” Maduro said of America. “I am a free and independent president, in addition to anti-imperialist. I am against the American empire, I am anti-colonialist and anti-racist,” Maduro claimed.
He went on to decry Trump’s “infernal wall” proposal for the U.S. southern border, accuse Trump of “persecuting the Mexican people,” and condemn Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto for maintaining stable and friendly relations with the United States, claiming he would personally go to the border and prevent wall construction if he were president of Mexico. He claimed, however, that he had “extended my hand” to Trump and offered to speak to him personally, without elaborating on what that conversation would entail. Dialogue with the opposition throughout 2016 yielded no solutions, as the government refused to free political prisoners, allow for free and fair elections, or accept international humanitarian aid.
“I am proud of the sanctions,” he said, before asking the audience how to send his message in English. With some help from fellow sanctioned Venezuelan official Tibisay Lucena, head of the electoral commission, Maduro said in English, “I’m so proud.”
In an appearance at the White House’s daily press briefing Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster announced a new round of sanctions against Maduro personally. The U.S. government has frozen any of his assets in the country, banned him from entering, and banned American citizens and corporations from doing business with him. Mnuchin said the Treasury would consider further sanctions on Venezuela’s military and oil industry but had nothing else to announce for the time being. Reports suggested in July that the Treasury had prepared for sanctioning Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López and National Assembly minority leader Diosdado Cabello, a ranking officer with close ties to Maduro.
Last week, the Treasury sanctioned 13 individuals tasked with organizing Sunday’s fraudulent vote, including election commission head Lucena, public defender Tarek William Saab, and other senior officials.
The Venezuelan government held elections Sunday to choose members of the “national constituents’ assembly,” a fabricated body Maduro intends to use to replace the opposition-held National Assembly and draft a new constitution. The candidates on all ballots were socialist Maduro sympathizers, preventing any dissent from government ideology within the body. The opposition and the international community have condemned the election as an unconstitutional “sham” meant to institutionalized Maduro’s rule permanently. As Caracas banned protests through the election, the military attacked, injured, and killed anyone participating in public assemblies, leaving at least 16 dead and 96 behind bars.