When senior officials from the Joe Biden administration — including the National Security Council’s director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan Gonzalez, and the US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens — were dispatched to Caracas over the weekend for talks on the issue, they were the highest-ranking Americans to have visited the country in years, a CNN report confirmed on Tuesday.
The Venezuela visit is a result of President Biden’s urgent global search for help after shutting off Russia’s oil revenues. This, the CNN report pointed out, is leading, in some instances, to regimes Mr. Biden once sought to isolate or avoid.
U.S. government officials arrived in Venezuela over the weekend for talks on potentially allowing the country to sell its oil on the international market, helping to replace Russian fuel. CNN reported that Biden may travel to Saudi Arabia as the U.S. works to convince the kingdom to increase its production.
Already, however, the political costs of engaging Venezuela have been plain, the CNN report pointed out.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — a state that’s home to a large population of Venezuelan Americans who oppose the Maduro regime — has already criticized the discussions. He said over the weekend that “rather than produce more American oil,” Biden “wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator.”
And Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who is the head of the Senate GOP campaign committee, said: “We should stop importing Russian oil, period. And we shouldn’t be going to Venezuela. … When are we going to learn that we can’t be relying on these thugs?”
Rank-and-file Republicans had equally harsh words for Biden: Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, called it “kind of nuts” and warned it would “empower Venezuela” and “enrich Iran.” And Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said he was “speechless” and hoped the reports weren’t true.
“I don’t think anybody could be this much of an imbecile. And I say that painfully because it’s too reckless, too stupid, too idiotic, too dangerous for it to be true,” Diaz-Balart said. “This will do nothing, by the way. Venezuelan oil? They’re barely producing right now.”
It’s not only Republicans who are criticizing the idea. Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who’s the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would “strongly oppose” any action that enriched Maduro.
“In the last month, the international community has come together in an unprecedented way to reject military aggression by Russia and stand up for democracy. But the Biden administration’s efforts to unify the entire world against a murderous tyrant in Moscow should not be undercut by propping up a dictator under investigation for crimes against humanity in Caracas,” Menendez said.
Source: CNN
