20.02.2019, Washington.
US President Donald Trump’s speech, in which he delivered an ultimatum to the supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was essentially an election campaign speech, an expert on US internal politics, Arystan Siraliev, said on February 19 in an interview to a correspondent of the Rossa Primavera News Agency.
“Trump’s speech focused not only and not as much on the internal situation in Venezuela, and even not on his promise of regime-change in Cuba and Nicaragua after Venezuela. His speech focused on reinforcing the strong association in the American people’s minds between the word ‘socialism’ and the words ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘corruption,’ and ‘poverty,’” the American studies expert began.
“After finishing his ultimatum to the supporters of the legitimate Venezuelan president, Trump, in his typical emotional tone, started telling his audience the same myths about the alleged conflict between socialism and human nature, and that the socialists’ only goal is to ensure unlimited power for the ruling class through poverty and death for regular people. It is revealing that the main phrase in Trump’s speech was not something like ‘Venezuela will be free!’ but it was ‘America will never become a socialist country!’,” the expert noted.
Answering the correspondent’s question why Trump chose this issue as the main subject for his speech, the expert explained, “Trump has already begun to prepare his re-election campaign. Even at this early phase he is looking for a way to disarm his major competitors. Last time, the Democrats did that for him, taking the nomination away from Bernie Sanders, who had socialist positions, and giving the nomination to the less popular Hillary Clinton. Today, politicians who openly position themselves as democratic socialists, sometimes even taking an antiwar stance, are coming to the front.”
As examples, Siraliev mentioned such prominent members of Congress as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard.” Despite his age, Bernie Sanders remains quite relevant.
“Offering his voters McCarthyist anti-socialist horror stories, and talking about the impossibility of a socialist future for the USA, Trump,first and foremost, is trying to discredit the democratic socialist wing inside the Democratic Party,” the American studies expert concluded.
On February 18, Trump and a number of his assistants talked in front of a large group of Venezuelan and Cuban emigrants in Miami. Their address included ultimatums against the supporters of the legitimate President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro, they revealed plans to change the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua as well, and they declared socialism dead in Venezuela and in the Western Hemisphere.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
