House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Americans should see the chaos and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Venezuela before they vote for politicians who believe in socialism, including presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sander (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
“All of America should watch what is happening in Venezuela,” McCarthy said on Tuesday on Fox New’s The Sean Hannity Show. “There is [sic] about 50,000 people a day who pass over that border to Colombia to buy the essentials from milk to toilet paper… They do not have electricity.”
“The hospitals do not have electricity,” McCarthy said. “They do not have running water. Babies are being born and put in cardboard boxes.”
“This is what is scary, because 20 years ago Venezuela was the jewel of Latin America,” McCarthy said. “It was a socialist policy that promised you free health care, promised you free education.”
“Well, this is what you have done,” McCarthy said. “This is the Bernie Sanders, the AOC of the policies that are moving forward.”
McCarthy led a delegation to the Venezuela/Colombia border last month, where he spoke with people trying to survive in the country, Breitbart News reported.
“The criminal regime and those that have made a gorgeous country like Venezuela … what we have seen firsthand today, families that have to come here every three days [to Colombia] to buy milk because they don’t have electricity to refrigerate it, others who don’t even have access to medicine and it takes them half a day to walk here,” McCarthy said.
“The U.S. is with you … we want to restore liberty,” McCarthy said.
“Venezuela was once the most prosperous country in Latin America, but today almost 90% of its population lives in poverty,’ Investor’s Business Daily reported. “Venezuela’s economy is in shambles. Recently, Venezuela’s own government released a report showing that its annual inflation rate accelerated to a whopping 833,000% in October alone.
Meanwhile, the country’s fate remains unclear.
“Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro denied that he had lost control of the military and vowed to use all his power to crush legitimate President Juan Guaidó in his first public address since the latter called for a nationwide uprising on Tuesday,” Breitbart News reported.
“We have been facing various modes of aggression and coup d’etat like has never happened before in the history of Venezuela,” Maduro declared, in a speech flanked by his top military commanders.
“He blamed ‘the Venezuelan far right, the Colombian oligarchy from Bogotá and American imperialism’ for Guaidó’s moves to finally replace him,” Breitbart News reported.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter