Under the Trump administration, a large focus this year has been on the measures that should be taken in order to ensure that Venezuela is freed from the Maduro regime and turned into a democratic country.
Earlier in the year, Juan Guaido incited hope in the people, but Maduro maintained that he would not be stepping down. Instead, the Venezuelan dictator doubled down on staying in power, and he also launched attacks at President Trump, who was among the first world leaders to express support of Juan Guaido.
In an exclusive interview with Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R), Rubio detailed to The Floridian the threat that Maduro poses to democracy across the world, and he also explained why it’s necessary to stop the spreading of the communist ideology that seems to have touched American soil.
“Maduro will largely remain in power as long as the people in his regime that surround him calculate that they are better off with him than without him,” assured Rubio.
Moreover, he added that “what he’s done – He’s used patronage. He’s used access to corruption opportunities to keep these people loyal to him.”
In Rubio’s opinion, “two things are keeping them with Maduro.”
The first reason is that “he’s allowing them to make money selling drugs and stealing oil profits. And the second thing he’s doing is that they don’t trust the opposition. A lot of these people that surround Maduro believe that if the opposition takes over, they are going to seek vengeance against them and they are all going to wind up in jail and losing their money.”
The Florida Senator explained that “Until that dynamic changes, these people are going to stick with him. But I think that the amount that they can steal from oil profits is rapidly declining.” Specifically, “their ability to move around the world is beginning to rapidly declining. We saw yesterday that the countries that invoked the Rio Treaty voted, about ten of them, to impose sanctions themselves on a long list of individuals, many of whom we’ve sanction ourselves.”
Ultimately, Rubio noted that “it’s beginning to get harder for these people to enjoy the money they stolen and harder for them to keep stealing money.”
One measure he does believe that the government has to hone in on is “the drug dealing,” which he believes “is the part that we still need to address more strongly.”
