COMMENTARY Because President Trump insists he "runs" Venezuela today, he shares in its regime's abysmal response to last month's earthquakes — and bears the onus for the country's reconstruction.
You’ve heard by now of the Donroe Doctrine, President Donald Trump’s Monroe Doctrine “corollary” that makes America — meaning Trump — master of the Americas.
Venezuela’s earthquake misery reminds me there’s a corollary to the corollary. Call it the Donrownership Doctrine.
It’s the rule that says when you declare ownership of a country — when you announce, as Trump did on Jan. 3, that you’re now “running” Venezuela — you also own the failure when, say, that country’s response to a catastrophic natural disaster is a disgrace.
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Since two powerful quakes rocked Venezuela’s central coast two weeks ago — killing at least 4,000 people, with tens of thousands still missing — disgraceful is about the only way to describe the performance of Venezuela’s government. That would be the socialist dictatorship Trump left in place in January when U.S. special forces removed the dictator, Nicolás Maduro.
Make no mistake, that regime and its acting president, Maduro lieutenant Delcy Rodríguez, deserve every angry, acidic ounce of criticism they’re catching at home and abroad for their alternately AWOL and obstructive disaster management.
The dereliction started years ago, when the regime’s late founder, Hugo Chávez, put up hundreds of low-income residential buildings that collapsed like sand castles in hard hit La Guaira state last month.
Compounding the regime's utter unpreparedness for the earthquakes was its quarter century of surreal corruption that left the once oil-rich nation bereft of adequate rescue and recovery tools.
By partnering with Rodríguez, Trump effectively fixed his logo on Venezuela's shoddy ship of state as vaingloriously as he'd slap it on one of his casinos.
When the quakes hit, Venezuela’s security forces — a glorified Sopranos crew that human rights groups point out is better trained for shooting citizens than saving them — looked lost.
What they did instinctively know to do was impede first responders arriving from the U.S. and across the world, or loot what goods had spilled from wrecked edifices.
Apocalyptic rubble
So, despite the efforts of U.S. troops and foreign rescue teams like those from Miami, too many Venezuelans have been left to dig for loved ones in the apocalyptic rubble with their bare hands.
But while it’s tempting to pin this only on Delcy, not Donald, Trump made that all but impossible six months ago — when he partnered with Rodríguez to “run” Venezuela after Maduro’s ouster.
From that merger moment, like it or not, he effectively fixed the Trump logo on Venezuela’s shoddy ship of state as vaingloriously as he slaps it on his casinos.
That’s preposterous, Trump and his backers will argue: when he said he’s now “running” Venezuela with the Maduro regime holdovers, he meant the oil industry, not civil defense.
Maybe that’s what Trump meant; it’s probably exactly what Trump meant. But he doesn’t get that pass.
When he crows that he rules Venezuela — two months ago he even said he was “seriously considering” making it the 51st U.S. state — that unequivocally means not just extracting crude from Lake Maracaibo, but extracting survivors from La Guaira, too.
Which in turn means the Venezuela reconstruction onus is on the Trump administration. It is providing $300 million, but billions are needed. In fact, the earthquake damage is estimated at almost the $8 billion that Trump-driven Venezuelan oil exports have brought in this year.
Hence another important Donrownership Doctrine question:
If those petro-billions are meant to rebuild Venezuela, why keep betting them on a rotted regime like Rodríguez’s — why keep insisting, as Trump brazenly does, that she’s a “terrific person” doing a “great job”?
The quake calamity is a painful reminder that she and her cabal, especially U.S.-indicted Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, are terrifically brutal authoritarians whose incompetence, well before the earthquakes, had plowed Venezuela into economic ruin and the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history.
Yet Trump and his own lieutenants seem to refuse to acknowledge that as long as the Chávez revolution, Chavismo, remains seated in Venezuela, the new oil cash risks being squandered on, well, more brutal authoritarianism and incompetence.
Yes, it was in the interest of Venezuela’s stability to work temporarily with Maduro’s minions after the Jan. 3 upheaval. But this new, deadlier upheaval underscores that it’s in the interest of Venezuela’s future to start phasing them out.
If Trump really is “running” Venezuela today, then he has the leverage to have new elections held as soon as the earthquake recovery allows it.
The Donrownership Doctrine demands it.
