Ilhan Omar won't recognize Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president

It seems she’s chock full of sound policy views, as people with garbage opinions about Jews so often are.

Open your mind and try to believe simultaneously that (a) U.S. military intervention in Venezuela would be a very bad thing and (b) Maduro is a rodent and Juan Guaido is the legitimate interim president under the country’s constitution. It’s … shockingly easy when you try. Unless you’re Omar.

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MH: So, what do you want to see happen in Venezuela? Do you have a solution, a preferred option of what should happen?

IO: Well the constitution of Venezuela says that there needs to be an election called within 30 days and we’re waiting for that to happen. What we should be involved in is having diplomatic conversations and bringing people to the table and being a partner in facilitating that. But we are threatening, we are threatening intervention. We’re sending humanitarian aid that is in the guise of, you know, eventually invading this country and the people of the country don’t want us there.

MH: You don’t support your fellow Democrats and, like the U.S. government does and the Canadian government does, you don’t support the leader of the opposition as being the president right now, not present leader?

IO: Absolutely not.

I thought we were sending humanitarian aid because people are literally foraging for food in garbage trucks, not “in the guise of eventually invading this country.” Oh well. This is the sort of analysis you should expect from someone who believes the Guaido-led opposition to Maduro is “far right.”

Guaido’s party is part of the Socialist International. He’s “far right” only in the sense that he’s an archenemy of the caudillo Maduro, whom some American leftists have a difficult time opposing given his status as heir to the “progress” made under Hugo Chavez.

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If you’re wondering about her analysis of the Venezuelan constitution, she’s sort of right and sort of not. Here’s the key provision, Article 233:

When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.

She’s right that 30 days have come and gone since Guaido was named interim president without an election. But she’s glossing over whether an election is feasible so long as Maduro continues to insist that he’s rightfully in charge. Guaido has been out of the country for the past week trying futilely to arrange humanitarian aid shipments from Colombia, but he’s vowing to return this weekend despite threats being made against him. The country’s at risk of civil war. Logically, for Venezuela to be able to comply with the 30-day rule for elections, Maduro would need to relinquish power so that the National Assembly can proceed with organizing a national ballot. Instead Omar seems to be blaming Guaido for Maduro’s refusal to recognize the National Assembly’s verdict on his legitimacy. The country can’t choose a new president because Maduro won’t leave — yet, to her, somehow that means Guaido shouldn’t be recognized. That’s what a Maduro shill sounds like.

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Via the Free Beacon, here she is riffing on Guaido and Maduro with an inane analogy to the Trump/Clinton election of 2016. We would scoff if a foreign government chose to recognize Hillary as the legitimate president just because she received more votes than Trump did, she notes, since that’s not the constitutional yardstick we use in deciding who’s president. That’s true. And it’s also true that Venezuela’s constitution, as interpreted by the country’s own National Assembly, makes Guaido rather than Maduro the rightful president. It’s not Guaido who’s the counterpart to Hillary in her 2016 analogy, it’s Maduro. So why is she maintaining this curious agnosticism about who the lawful president of Venezuela is?

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