Within his first weeks in the White House, Trump designated Venezuela’s then-vice president a drug kingpin and called for the release of the prominent political prisoner Leopoldo López after meeting with his wife in the Oval Office. He’s frequently pointed to the country as a prime example of socialism’s failures and a cautionary tale of what will befall the United States if his opponents come to power (a popular talking point on the American right).
Fernando Cutz, who as director for South America on the National Security Council was summoned to brief Trump on the issue during the first days of his presidency, said the president has in private focused on the humanitarian emergency in Venezuela. Maduro’s reign as Hugo Chávez’s anointed successor has brought severe political repression, hyperinflation, acute food and medicine shortages, and an exodus of millions of desperate Venezuelans—now the largest refugee and migrant crisis anywhere in the world outside Syria.
He “would ask, ‘Why are [the Venezuelan people] suffering so much? They’re all going hungry. … They have everything to be a rich country. How is this happening?’” Cutz recalled.
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