Did a light bulb go on at the White House about Venezuela?
As street protests over the nakedly fraudulent election result dissipate across Venezuela and the Maduro regime sends in its henchmen, rounding up hundreds of dissidents and issuing arrest warrants for opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González, the White House seems to be stirring from its torpor.
According to The Hill:
The Biden administration is ratcheting up its tone on Venezuela, pushing President Nicolás Maduro to publish automatically generated election results to back up his claims of winning Sunday’s election.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing Wednesday that the administration is reaching the end of its rope with Maduro’s deflections.
“Our patience, and that of the international community, is running out, running out. I’m waiting for the Venezuelan electoral [authority] to come clean and release the full detailed data on this election so that everyone can see the results,” Kirby said.
Kirby was referring to precinct-by-precinct printouts of election tallies, which Venezuela’s electronic voting machines automatically emit at the end of a voting day.
Those printouts, the opposition says, will show a landslide victory for Edmundo González, a former ambassador and the unified opposition’s presidential candidate.
The opposition has already gotten hold of most of those printouts, or actas, as they are called in Spanish, and knows it won the election. It posted its results online below.
Acá agarré los datos de https://t.co/r2Gd0giENy y los grafiqué por distrito.
— Andrés Snitcofsky (@rusosnith) July 31, 2024
1. Actas digitalizadas pic.twitter.com/1NRK1XISaQ
Maduro claims his side won instead, but piece by piece, the actas add up to approximately a 70% to 80% vote in favor of Machado and González, and about 15% for the miserable Maduro. Voters don't want that guy.
Rather than take their word for it, as many Latin American presidents have done, particularly Argentina's libertarian president, Javier Milei, Kirby is still calling on Maduro to release what he's got soon, which, while better than the previous mealy-mouthed responses seen so far, could be problematic, based on this credible report from conservative Colombian former vice president and ambassador to the U.S., Francisco "Pacho" Santos, who by trade is a journalist:
"π¨π»πͺ Former Vice President of Colombia, Pacho Santos, reveals that in the CNE warehouses in Filas de Mariche,there is a team of 150 employees from the Venezuelan electoral body, supervised by a group of Chinese engineers, with the purpose of creating false documents!! pic.twitter.com/VHdYahbPUI
— Gateway Hispanic (@GatewayHispanic) July 31, 2024
π¨π»πͺBREAKING: EX-COLOMBIAN AMBASSADOR ALLEGES ELECTORAL FRAUD IN VENEZUELA
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 31, 2024
Francisco "Pacho" Santos, journalist and former Colombian ambassador to the United States, has made serious allegations of electoral fraud in Venezuela's recent presidential election.
Santos claims the… https://t.co/fCBijvMshf pic.twitter.com/7QFAMuU00y
He's got sources.
His report is buttressed by the Cuba-watchers, who can see the supporting role. This is from the daughter of a top Cuban dissident who was murdered by the Castroite oligarchy several years ago:
This, from someone who has had bitter experience with brutal dictators β¬οΈ https://t.co/8Kq2JwpnJi
— Eric Farnsworth (@ericfarns) July 31, 2024
Meanwhile, Maduro's Chinese and Russian sponsors have moved quickly to give Maduro the support he needs to cling to power, given their stakes Venezuela as their catspaw ally to check Uncle Sam up north.
Which is why we see such a confident rounding up of dissidents now:
π« General Prosecutor Tarek W. Saab threatens human rights NGOs and says security forces detained 749 citizens. "I want to give a preliminary figure that may grow over the course of the day, so far there are 749 of these criminals detained," he reported. https://t.co/lmle3yh4qt
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) July 30, 2024
BREAKING:
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2024
Maduro and his thugs have launched a wave of arrests of election observers who saw too much and spoke out in public.
This woman thought she would help safeguard honest elections.
Now, she gets arrested from home while just in her underwear.
Via @AlertaMundoNews pic.twitter.com/O866LgfyGf
#BREAKING | The regime of Nicolás Maduro created an app so that Chavistas can denounce their opposition neighbors for demonstrating against the fraud.
— Orlando Avendaño (@OrlvndoA) July 31, 2024
Then, the regime's security forces kidnap the demonstrators from their homes.
They're also trying to memory-hole their violence:
π« Maduro’s chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab is on live TV saying that the opposition have been staging deaths by taking pictures of protesters covered in ketchup laying on the ground.
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) July 31, 2024
And much of the press is following:
Ughhhhh Venezuela is getting pushed WAY down on major US news outlets this morning by Hamas - but also other news. Go look. Much of world’s attention is already moving on. It shouldn’t. π
— Brian Winter (@BrazilBrian) July 31, 2024
This tweet, by the way, was from a sitting Reuters correspondent, a good one.
Maduro got the foreign backing from the world's rogue states he wanted, while the U.S. is still chasing pieces of paper of "proof" that the election was stolen, which turns out are easy to forge with the time Biden has given them. They're always in a reaction mode.
As for Maduro, he's asking for even more time so his Chinese worker-ants can get the job done to produce the results to his liking for gullible Western observers and his leftist amen-corner in the West. He has this additional excuse to stall them:
This was always going to be the strategy. Maduro will say the voting data was corrupted by a “ fascist cyberattack.” https://t.co/LqVIXOAfnQ
— Brian Winter (@BrazilBrian) July 31, 2024
Soon enough, he'll come out with the actas of the Chinese and Cuban making, and then the White House will have to try to prove that they were not the actas, which will mean weeks and weeks of wrangling and argument, while Maduro keeps rounding up the dissidents and consolidating his power further and the Bidenites will wonder why they can't prove anything.
Had the Biden administration called out the fraud immediately, there would not have been time for this current charade that stands to waste a lot of time and will only give Maduro the space he needs to make his dictatorship stronger, viler, and nastier. The Russians and Chinese acted quickly because they know they have got a lot at stake. The U.S. also has a lot at stake, as in, are we safe from Russian weapons and spying while Maduro runs Venezuela, and will we get another seven million fleeing migrants once this guy seals his power?
The Bidenites got to quit reacting to events and call a fraud a fraud. It's a sensitive topic for them, of course, for obvious reasons. Anybody think Joe Biden or his minions are up to that?
Image: Twitter screen shot