THE ABSURD TIMES

Nixon: "We are all Keynesians."

Venezuela and Ignorance

Or Fear and Loathing, May, 2019

Czar Donic

We have done a tremendous feat and keeping people as ignorant as they are. In fact, it is good business and good capitalism. So long as the people are unaware of what is being done to them, on their behalf, all is well with the wealthy and powerful and damn the rest of the world's population.

What about "free and fair" elections in Venezuela? Is that what we have here? Is that why the improbably Donald Trump is there in the White House or the nearest golf course instead of Bernie Sanders? But that's no going to get us anywhere. So we go back to Venezuela. The puppet we want to put in power got zero votes for President. Maduro over six million. Six million, just to be clear, is more than zero.

We talk a great deal, or hear a great deal from corporate media, about military action in the country and the psychopathic John Bolton and his crew complaining about not enough military strategy from the Generals. Times are strange when Generals make more sense than our civilian government, but that is the situation. After all, the final sane advisor in the Trump Administration was called "Mad Dog". That will give you an idea.

OK. So forget about military intervention. If we try to invade the country, we wind up with a situation than found in Viet Nam. Generals at least have a memory. We are not hearing a word about the vast forests down there. "Whet, you ask, what forest is in Venezuela?"

"The Goddamn Amazon forest, that's what."

"What? I thought that was down in Brazil and we own that now."

What can you tell these people? What the hell do they learn about geography? Mark Twain once observed that "War is God's way of teaching us geography," and it turn out he was right. There is far more forest available for Venezuela to launch Guerra-type action than was ever in Vietnam and how many lives that did one cost us?

Well, the truth is that it doesn't matter. Our would be puppet, Guido, has promised to "privatize" the oil fields, in other words, make them available to corporations which, as we all know, have our best interests at heart. It is the same crowd that Castro kicked out of Cuba.

But the people are starving, I hear. Yes, but few mention why. We, the U.S. has launched an enormous blockade of the country, not allowing them to import the needed medical supplies nor food of any type. The only food approved has USA stamped on it and labeled as "Humanitarian." aid. Somehow, the United Nations still considers Morales as the ruler of the country. "But the International Community doesn't," I hear.

Well, the so-called "International Community, as defined in our corporate press and news media, can be quite accurately defined as the United States and whatever other countries we can force to agree with us. With countries all over the world being taken over slowly by fascist interests, that community is growing and will continue to grow.

You may have heard, although it is only a slight possibility, that sympathetic citizens of this country, mostly women by the way, are currently holding the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington. The question, of course, becomes "why did the country leave the embassy, and the answer is that they cut ties with us some time ago over these crippling and inhumane sanctions. I'll try to join them, although it is a very long car drive from here.

Another lie that spread was that Maduro was going to flee the country until the Russians stopped him. Hey, the Russians are not much better than us. They have no interest in having more oil on the market either.

A few other notes: Eliot Abrams in now running things for Trump. Now, the Late George Bush, ex-CIA Director, [yes, the same guy who promised never to expand Nato eastward to fat old drunk Yeltson] pardoned him, Eliot, for his part in helping ship arms to Iran and money to Honduras. This was illegally done to overthrow the government in Nicaragua. Ollie North, who testified under immunity, orchestrated the deal out of the Reagen White House basement. Ollie is now spokesman for the NTA but have a power struggle with wigged out Wayne.

Never mind. Here is some documentation on Venezuela and also on the hate campaign against Ilhan Omar, duly elected representative from Minnesota who, by the way, got more votes than any other representative elected this time (at last, I can't think of an exception).

* * * *

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is claiming to have defeated a coup attempt launched by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. On Tuesday morning, Guaidó appeared in an online video standing among heavily armed soldiers, calling for the military to back what he called the "final phase" of an effort to topple Maduro's government. Guiadó appeared alongside Leopoldo López, a longtime opposition leader, who was reportedly released from house arrest by renegade officers. Guaidó has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since January, when he declared himself to be Venezuela's interim president. The Trump administration, as well as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and others, openly supported the coup attempt. Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox Business that military action in Venezuela is possible, "if that's what is required." We speak to Miguel Tinker Salas, Venezuelan historian and professor at Pomona College.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is claiming to have defeated a coup attempt launched by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. On Tuesday morning, Guaidó appeared in an online video standing among heavily armed soldiers, calling for the military to back what he called the "final phase" of an effort to topple Maduro's government. Guaidó appeared alongside Leopoldo López, a longtime opposition leader, who was reportedly released from house arrest by renegade officers. Guaidó has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since January, when he declared himself to be Venezuela's interim president.

The Trump administration, as well as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and others, openly supported the coup attempt. Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox Business military action in Venezuela is possible, quote, "if that's what is required."

On Tuesday, clashes broke out in the streets of Caracas and other cities. There are reports that one person has died and a hundred people were injured. On Tuesday night, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro gave a televised address and denied claims by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he had prepared to flee Venezuela.

PRESIDENT NICOLÁS MADURO: [translated] Mike Pompeo said in the afternoon that Maduro had a plane to flee to Cuba and that the Russians got him off the plane and forbade him from leaving the country. Mr. Pompeo, what a lack of sincerity! Mr. Bolton also gave orders to military and civilian personnel in Venezuela to join the coup. The skirmish in Venezuela has been defeated, and Mr. Trump set off a thousand expletives and lies. My god, how far are the men in the United States government willing to go?

AMY GOODMAN: Maduro and Guaidó have both called on supporters to take to the streets today. At the United Nations, Venezuela's U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada accused the United States and other nations of backing the coup attempt.

SAMUEL MONCADA: [translated] This was not a domestic event growing from within. No, this came from abroad. Without the power of the United States, the CIA, with the intelligence apparatus, without the money from the United States, without the economic war, without the government of President Duque in Colombia, this would have been impossible, without the help of the government of Chile, which gives protection to the leader of the coup, without the help of the Brazilian president, Mr. Bolsonaro, who gives help to the soldiers. This is an international conspiracy.

AMY GOODMAN: In Washington, national security adviser John Bolton repeated the Trump administration's position on Venezuela, saying all options are on the table. He also insisted Tuesday's events were not a coup.

JOHN BOLTON: We want, as our principal objective, the peaceful transfer of power. But I will say again, as the president has said from the outset, and that Nicolás Maduro and those supporting him, particularly those who are not Venezuelans, should know, is all options are on the table. … This is clearly not a coup. We recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela. And just as it's not a coup when the president of the United States gives an order to the Department of Defense, it's not a coup for Juan Guaidó to try and take command of the Venezuelan military.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the situation, we're joined by two guests. Miguel Tinker Salas is a Venezuelan historian and professor at Pomona College in California, author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela and Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know. He's joining us from Claremont, California. And here in New York, Jeffrey Sachs, leading economist and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, is with us. He recently co-authored a report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research on the deadly impact of the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. The center is estimating more than 40,000 Venezuelans have died since 2017 as a result of the sanctions.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, let's begin with you. What do you understand is happening on the ground right now in Venezuela? What has taken place? And the significance of Juan Guaidó standing together with Leopoldo López?

MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: What took place yesterday was an intended coup. The problem is, if you're going to stage a coup, you normally would have the generals and the admirals standing at your side. So, obviously that didn't happen. So it was an attempt on the part of Guaidó and López and his faction within the right-wing opposition to try to create greater divisions within the military. It was obviously that he did not have that support. What had happened was, they had a handful of lower-ranking officers from the National Guard. They had one general from the military intelligence service. But they did not have the core within the Army or the Navy or the Air Force. They tried to leverage that. It failed. It failed miserably. And here we are, once again, with a crisis scenario in Venezuela.

But again, there's two audiences here. One is an audience internal to Venezuela to assure Guaidó's support and consolidate his support within the opposition, which was beginning to seem shaky. And the other is the audience internationally, appealing to Donald Trump, appealing to Pompeo, appealing to Iván Duque, appealing to Bolsonaro. So there's two audiences that Guaidó was directed at yesterday. The internal one failed.

And today we have protest on both sides for March 1st, which again could repeat a cycle of violence. The expectation is that they will be separate marches and hopefully peaceful marches.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Mike Pompeo. This is in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked what the U.S. would do if Maduro arrests Guaidó, and also asked about Russia's role in keeping Maduro in the country.

SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO: I'm not going to get into specifics, but we have made very clear we would consider that a major escalation. Wolf, we've watched throughout the day. It's been a long time since anyone has seen Maduro. He had an airplane on the tarmac. He was ready to leave this morning, as we understand it. And the Russians indicated he should stay. … We have made clear all along, Wolf, that Maduro is surrounded by Cubans and has been supported by Russians there in Venezuela. And we've told the Russians and we've told the Cubans that's unacceptable.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that's Mike Pompeo, Miguel Tinker Salas, saying that Maduro was ready to leave with a plane on the tarmac to fly to Cuba, but got a call from Russia and so he stayed. Is this fake news?

MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: It's a false flag operation. Why would Maduro want to leave the country, when, by all accounts, the so-called coup had already failed?

But, yes, there is a side note to that. And that is that Guaidó has tried to provoke Maduro, trying to provoke a crisis, because under these conditions, anyone leading a coup committed an illegal act. So what Guaidó would like is Maduro to arrest him, to provoke a crisis, to escalate the scenario, and therefore create the context in which the U.S. can operate either through direct action, through a naval blockade, or through action by the part of Colombia or Brazil.

So, as I said earlier, this is an effort to provoke this crisis, to try to escalate it, because we've already had three separate incidents previously. Guaidó claimed he would be president on January 23rd. He wasn't; it failed. He claimed that on February 23rd, from the border in Cúcuta, he would re-enter the country, assume the presidency. It failed. So, once again, we have Guaidó claiming that he will assume the presidency. This time it appears to have failed, as well.

And, in fact, there are criticisms within the opposition to his all-or-nothing strategy. There has to be a reflective period for the opposition to think of what they've done and to really consider the option, again, once again, of negotiations, rather than this idea that through military action they're going to come to power.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about where in Caracas this coup attempt took place? And who exactly you—

MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: The coup—

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: The coup took place in the center of Caracas, what's called eastern Caracas, in the Altamira corridor, the Altamira district, which has been historically the center of the opposition's base—in Chacao, in Altamira, in Palos Grandes. They attempted to move down towards La Carlota, the air base that resides in the middle of Caracas.

Some of the military personnel that were present said they were tricked. They were told to show up to receive a medal, to receive a decoration, and they were brought to Guaidó's side, again, by a certain number of captains and colonels of the National Guard. That's important, because they don't represent the core of the military. There were several lieutenants and several colonels present from intelligence, from the National Guard, but, again, not the general staff of the military, not those individuals that command bases, not those individuals that command regiments or battalions. And that was the most important thing.

But, again, what we saw was a repeat of a series of actions that have been led by Guaidó and his opposition trying to topple the government, which for the moment have seemed to fail again, and basically in the core area of support, which is the east part of Caracas.

More than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result of U.S. sanctions, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research co-authored by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot. The report examines how U.S. sanctions have reduced the availability of food and medicine in Venezuela and increased disease and mortality. We speak with Jeffrey Sachs in our New York studio. In the report, he writes, "American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela's economy and thereby lead to regime change. It's a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman. Our guests are Miguel Tinker Salas, a Venezuelan professor at Pomona College in California; Jeffrey Sachs is with us here in New York, leading economist and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He's recently co-authored a report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research headlined "Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela."

So much is being used against the presidency of Maduro, saying he's brought the country to an economic standstill. You make a different case, Jeffrey Sachs.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, it's not an economic standstill. It's a complete economic collapse, a catastrophe, in Venezuela. There was a crisis, for sure, before Trump came to office, but the idea of the Trump administration, from the start, has been to overthrow Maduro. That's not a hypothesis. Trump was very explicit in discussions with presidents of Latin America, where he asked them, "Why shouldn't the U.S. just invade?" He said that already in 2017. So the idea of the Trump administration has been to overthrow Maduro from the start. Well, the Latin leaders said, "No, no, that's not a good idea. We don't want military action." So the U.S. government has been trying to strangle the Venezuelan economy.

It started with sanctions in 2017 that prevented, essentially, the country from accessing international capital markets and the oil company from restructuring its loans. That put Venezuela into a hyperinflation. That was the utter collapse. Oil earnings plummeted. The earnings that are used to buy food and medicine collapsed. That's when the social, humanitarian crisis went spiraling out of control. And then, in this year, with this idea, very naive, very stupid, in my view, that there would be this self-proclaimed president, which was all choreographed with the United States very, very closely, another round of even tighter sanctions, essentially confiscating the earnings and the assets of the Venezuelan government, took place.

Now Venezuela is in complete, utter catastrophe, a lot of it brought on by the United States deliberately, creating massive, massive suffering. We know there's hunger. We know there's a incredible shortage of medical supplies. We can only imagine, because we won't know really until the dust settles and careful studies are done, how much excess mortality there is, but, surely, in a context like this, this is a catastrophe largely created by the U.S., because, as was said earlier, this is an all-or-nothing strategy. What the U.S.—what Trump just doesn't understand and what Bolton, of all, of course, never agrees to, is the idea of negotiations. This is an attempt at an overthrow. It's very crude. It's not working. And it's very cruel, because it's punishing 30 million people.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you come up with the number 40,000 dead as a result of these crippling U.S. sanctions?

JEFFREY SACHS: Let me be clear: Nobody knows. This was a very basic, simple calculation based on estimates of universities in Venezuela that mortality had increased by a certain proportion after the sanctions. I don't want anyone to think that there is precision in these numbers. What is certain, though, staring us in the face, is that there is a humanitarian catastrophe, deliberately caused by the United States, by what I would say are illegal sanctions, because they are deliberately trying to bring down a government and trying to create chaos for the purpose of an overthrow of a government.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

JEFFREY SACHS: Why are they doing that? This is normal U.S. right-wing foreign policy, nothing different. This is the same foreign policy that we saw throughout Latin America in the 20th century. It's the same foreign policy that we saw catastrophically in the Middle East. This is Mr. Bolton. This is Mr. Bolton's idea of diplomacy. This is Trump's idea of diplomacy. You punch someone in the face. You crush your opponent. You try whatever way you can to get your way. It's very simpleminded. It's very crude. And, Amy, it never works. It just leads to catastrophe.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Miguel Tinker Salas back into this conversation, professor at Pomona College. As these protests were taking place in—or this coup attempt was taking place in Venezuela, in Honduras there were massive protests against privatization, also huge demonstrations in Paris. You certainly don't get the same kind of coverage.

MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: No, you don't. And the reality is that what's happening in Honduras is fundamental. You have an effort at privatization. You have layoffs of doctors and of professors and of teachers. And there's massive street protests happening in Tegucigalpa and all the major cities. And the attention is all on Venezuela. And the same thing is happening, in other contexts, for Central America, the immigration that's happening as a result of failed U.S. policies. As a colleague was saying earlier, the reality is this was tried elsewhere. The regime change that's being tried in Venezuela has been tried elsewhere in Latin America and has led to humanitarian crisis throughout Central America—Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, in Mexico until very recently. So, again, we know the formula. We know it doesn't produce the change that most people want. And what it does is it aggravates conditions for the majority of the population. So, you have, in the case of Venezuela, mistakes made by the Maduro administration that are now exacerbated by the sanctions and that take a toll on humans and on the population of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: We've been showing, for our radio audience, video, just to let you know, of the tear-gassing of people in Paris and Honduras right now. Of course, Honduras is a U.S. ally. We're not getting as much coverage of this. Finally, I wanted to ask Jeffrey Sachs about this issue you raise of collective punishment, and saying that collective punishment of a civilian population, as described by both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory—in that way.

JEFFREY SACHS: And, I would say, of the OAS also, which explicitly prohibits this kind of hostile action against another country. U.S. sanctions are now being imposed to bring down governments everywhere. You have, similarly in Iran yesterday, a big announcement of the collapse of the Iranian economy, and the IMF attributed it to U.S. sanctions. So, this is what the Trump administration is trying to do also vis-à-vis Nicaragua. Trump said yesterday, total blockade on Cuba, if they don't smart up. This is pure bullying. It is completely against international law. It creates havoc. It's hard enough to achieve economic progress, but when the U.S. is using its political power to break other countries, the results absolutely can be devastating.

And we see it in Venezuela, that it was the kick that pushed Venezuela into this catastrophic, spiraling decline and hyperinflation. It's always blamed in our press on Maduro, but people don't even look and understand how the U.S. has the instruments of sanctions blocking access to financial markets, pushing enterprises into default, blocking trade, confiscating the assets owned by the Venezuelan government, precisely to and with the design of creating this kind of crisis, because the idea is, if the pain is enough—in the thinking of people like Bolton—then there will be a military overthrow. So they're trying to create absolute disaster.

Well, what's so stupid about these American policies, these neocon policies, is they do create disaster, but they don't achieve even the political goals of these nasty people like Bolton. It's not as if they're effective and nasty; they're completely ineffective and totally nasty at the same time. But Congress, in our country, nobody looks. It's unbelievable that you have this basically one-man show of Trump doing damage, rampaging around the world. There is no oversight at all. And in the international institutions, like the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, people are scared to even say the truth, that this bully, of the United States, especially with the kind of president we have right now—no one wants to speak the obvious facts of how much damage is being done, how many lives are being lost, how much suffering is being created, how many refugees are being created—deliberately. And then, of course, you get The New York Times or someone else saying it's Maduro's whatever, because they don't even look at the obvious process.

AMY GOODMAN: And you Democratic leaders, as well, in Congress saying the same thing. And so, we're going to turn right now to a Democrat in Congress. We want to thank Jeffrey Sachs, who is a leading economist, director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University. We'll link to your report that you put out with the Center for Economic and Policy Research headlined "Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela." And, Miguel Tinker Salas, thanks for joining us, professor at Pomona College in California.

Amid an ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela, we speak with Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who questioned U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams on Capitol Hill in February about his record. Abrams is a right-wing hawk who was linked to the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela that tried to topple Hugo Chávez. In the 1980s, Abrams defended Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt as he oversaw a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people. Ríos Montt was later convicted of genocide. Rep. Ilhan Omar says that there is a direct correlation between this type of detrimental U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and "the kind of mass migration that we're noticing right now from Central America and South America to the U.S."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, as we turn now to Congressmember Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota congressmember. She is the first Somali American elected to Congress, the House of Representatives, one of the first Muslim women in Congress. In February, Ilhan Omar questioned U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams on Capitol Hill.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Congressmember Ilhan Omar, before we talk about the remarkable rally held for you, in defense of you, yesterday, just outside the Capitol next to the Reflecting Pool, if you can comment what's taking place right now in Venezuela, the U.S.-supported coup attempt against President Maduro?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Thank you, Amy, for having me. It's really great to join you all this morning.

I concur with what Professor Sachs was saying. You know, I mean, a lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela. And we've sort of set the stage for where we're arriving today. This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States. And I think, finally, we have folks in Congress that see what Professor Sachs was referencing.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn right now to your questioning, Congressmember Ilhan Omar, your questioning of Elliott Abrams, the man who President Trump has made the special envoy to Venezuela. Elliott Abrams, the person who was convicted of lying to Congress twice, ultimately he was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. But this is Elliott Abrams before you, in committee.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: In 1991, you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: If I can respond to that—

REP. ILHAN OMAR: It wasn't a question.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ilhan Omar, if you can talk about the significance of Elliott Abrams being made the point person on Venezuela, and what you do think Congress can do? I mean, congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others, a bipartisan group, are supporting Guaidó, the man who simply announced that he's president of Venezuela.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: People like Elliott Abrams, neocons and warmongers, you know, for so long have pushed for policies that are now—we can see, not only in Central America, but many parts of the world, the kind of devastations that they've had for decades. I could not pass up the opportunity to not only remind the American people that this was someone who was convicted of lying to Congress, but also someone who had a heavy hand in some of the most devastating policies that we imposed on Central America, and that there is a direct correlation between the kind of mass migration that we're noticing right now from Central America and South America to this country.

I think, for so long, we've used muscle memory to sort of generate our foreign policy. And it's about time, like Professor Sachs said, that we pause and we look at the kind of implications that our policies have, what our ultimate goal is, what is being successful, and what are some policies that we should do away with. I remember talking to Madam Secretary Albright and talking to her about the success of sanctions we impose around the world and how some of them have devastating effects on the actual population and not on the governments that we see as our adversaries. And she concurred with me that many of the sanctions that we impose ultimately lead to devastations—and we are seeing it now in Venezuela—and ultimately lead to having severe problems in that country, which doesn't stabilize life for the people, and certainly puts us here in the United States at risk.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ilhan Omar, we're going to break and then come back to talk about this unusual rally that was held just outside the Capitol building next to the Reflecting Pool yesterday. Black women from around the country came in, led by, among others, Angela Davis. You stood with your sister congressmembers, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley. And people expressed their support for you, deeply concerned about the spike in the number of death rates against you and President Trump's singular attack on you. We're going to go to that in one moment.

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African-American women leaders gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday in defense of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim congresswomen in history and the first member of Congress to wear a hijab. Omar has been the target of numerous right-wing attacks since taking office, including by President Donald Trump himself. Omar says death threats against her have spiked in number since President Trump tweeted a video juxtaposing her image with footage of the 9/11 attacks. Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, civil rights icon Angela Davis and others addressed the crowd Tuesday to urge Congress to censure President Trump—to whom they referred simply as the "occupant of the White House"—for his attacks on Omar and to send a message to both political parties: "Hands off Ilhan Omar!"

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman. African-American women leaders gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday in defense of Congressmember Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim congresswomen in history, the first member of Congress to wear a hijab. Omar has been the target of numerous right-wing attacks since taking office, including by President Donald Trump himself. Omar says death threats against her have spiked in number since President Trump tweeted a video juxtaposing her image with footage of the 9/11 attacks. Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, civil rights icon Angela Davis and others addressed the crowd Tuesday to urge Congress to censure President Trump—who they referred to simply as "the occupant of the White House"—for his attacks on Omar and to send a message to both political parties: "Hands off Ilhan Omar!" This is Congressmember Ayanna Pressley.

REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY: I had to come here to lend my voice and solidarity. Yeah, I happen to be a congresswoman, but before all the commas and titles, I'm a black woman. And Ilhan is my sister. … I am changing the things I can no longer accept. And from R. Kelly to Donald Trump, what we can no longer accept is the silencing of black women! This is a reckoning. This is us assuming our rightful place as the table shakers, as the truth tellers, as the justice seekers, as the preservers of democracy. We are demanding that you trust black women, that you see black women, that you believe black women and honor us for the role that we have played as healers and preservers of this democracy and this nation!

THENJIWE McHARRIS: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: You know, I grew up in the most beautiful, blackest city in the country, in the city of Detroit. And many—and many of my teachers, my mothers on the block, all of them accepted me as a Palestinian woman, as a woman that understands through the lens of my ancestors, through the lens of my living grandmother in the West Bank, in the Occupied Territories of Philistine. They knew what I meant when I talked about the pain of oppression or the pain of feeling less than.

And I remember Ilhan saying that to me once, like, "You know, Rashida, I was born in a community where I was the majority, but you were born in a country where you felt like you were second-class immediately when you were born, right?" And this is a woman that speaks that way, that is raw, that is real. And I cannot stand that they continue to police her, they continue to police our words, they continue to police our positions. But I say hands off. Hands off of the women of color that serve in the United States Congress. Not only—not only do we look differently, but we serve and we fight differently. And it also means that we talk differently. It's also that we are allowed to be angry in this country.

THENJIWE McHARRIS: Angela Davis.

ANGELA DAVIS: It is about time that we stepped up to defend those who represent our political vision on the front lines of struggle. I feel particularly motivated to join this amazing group, because the attack against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, while it is clearly directed at her as an individual, is also designed to dissuade all of us from speaking out on issues that are considered controversial. The attacks on her emanating from the occupant's Twitter feed—that's right, the occupant's Twitter feed—and the numerous threats of assassination from white nationalists and their supporters are a way of sending messages to other black women, to all who hold radical and progressive political views, that they, too, can be made into targets of vitriolic, violent racism: "Be quiet, or you will suffer the fate of Ilhan Omar." That is the message. But we do not heed that message. We refuse to be quiet.

AMY GOODMAN: Human rights leader, scholar, professor Angela Davis, speaking in defense of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has repeatedly been accused of being anti-Semitic for criticizing the power of AIPACand the Israeli lobby in Washington and questioning U.S.-Israeli relations. Despite the threats, she has refused to be silent and has continued to speak out against racism, against Islamophobia, against anti-Semitism and right-wing violence.

Ilhan Omar, I wanted to ask you about, well, one of the many comments was Traci Backmon, Reverend Blackmon, saying that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism grow from the same tree, that they are different branches of the same hate. Can you talk about this?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah. I mean, I referenced it as being of this—you know, the two sides of the same bigoted coin. We know that many of the people who are targeting the Jewish community for anti-Semitism are also targeting the Muslim community in Islamophobia. And so, we have to collectively work together to uplift our voices and say no to hate. We know that both of our communities here in the United States are targeted by white supremacists, and we know that the conservatives sort of are doing everything that they can to distance themselves, to disinform the public about the monsters that they helped feed, that are now causing devastation in mosques and in synagogues. And if we are not collectively wising up to that reality, then we will suffer the pain of it.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump recently said, in speaking to local media, talking about you, "She is somebody that doesn't really understand life, real life. … She's got a way about her that's very, very bad for our country." If you can respond to this and tell us about your real life, where you were born—

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —what you've survived?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah. I mean, unlike the president, I don't adhere to the belief that we should be furthering xenophobia in this country. This is my country. There is no his America. This is our America. We collectively live in this country. And I have as much of a right to it as he does and anyone else. So, that's one.

Second, let me just say this: For this president, who really was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who rode the backs of marginalized people to make his money, to talk to me, as someone who survived war, lived in a refugee camp, learned English in six months, worked almost every single job that you can imagine, from cleaning offices to being a cashier to working my way up to now being a member of Congress, with only two decades of being in this country, to talk to me about real life, it really tells you how demented he sounds and how much he's really willing to go in furthering the demonization and the silencing of minority communities, who understand that we have the power as people to stand up to him, to fight for the America we know we deserve, and to practice the kind of political joy that allows for all of us to participate and fight for prosperity, not for the few, but for the many.

Congress held a historic hearing on Medicare for all on Tuesday, opening with an emotional testimony from activist and lawyer Ady Barkan, who is dying of terminal ALS. We speak to Representative Ilhan Omar about yesterday's hearing and her support for overhauling the country's healthcare system in favor of Medicare for all. We also talk to her about ongoing efforts to impeach President Donald Trump, which she says she supports.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ilhan Omar, I know your time is very short, and I wanted to ask, with the media painting you as a one-issue congressmember, what you think is being missed. For example, yesterday, the first-ever hearing on Medicare for all, the emotional testimony of Ady Barkan, who is dying of ALS, and others. If you can talk about Medicare for all, why you've come out in support of it, and also whether you feel that President Trump should be impeached?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah. So, Medicare for all and the testimony of Ady, the very impassioned testimony of someone we all love and are, you know, really excited that he gets the opportunity—he got the opportunity to speak at the first hearing of a policy that he's been so passionate about, is one that I am really privileged enough to be the vice chair of, the Medicare for All Caucus. It's important that we recognize healthcare as a human right and that we make sure that everyone, regardless of their economic status here in this country or their employment status, should have access to healthcare. It's one that I'm very passionate about.

I talked about how my aunt, at a young age, in Somalia, died because she didn't have access to insulin to take care of her diabetes. And in Minnesota, we had a very young man, around the same age as my aunt, in his early twenties, who died because he could not afford insulin. And so, to have something like that happen, not in a country like Somalia, but here in the United States, as well, is one that we should be ashamed of and one that we should work really hard to make sure it doesn't happen again. And in—

AMY GOODMAN: Impeachment?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah, and in the question of impeachment, it's about time. We've had the investigations. Mueller has clearly stated that if he was giving a different opinion by the general attorney, that he would indict. And now he's kicked the ball to Congress. And we have an opportunity now to start impeachment proceedings for events that happened pre-election. And Rashida, myself, Alex and others are pushing to make sure that we can investigate post-election Trump and many of the obstructions and criminal activities that might have taken place in his White House.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Congressmember Ilhan Omar, Minnesota congressmember representing the 5th Congressional District, first Somali American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, one of the first Muslim women in Congress. I know you have to leave us, but we're going to turn now, with your words, the words you shared yesterday at the Reflecting Pool outside the Capitol, speaking at the rally in your support.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Here's the thing that really offends a lot of people and the reason that we are here. I was born—I was born as a very liberated human being, to a country that was colonized, that recognized that they can colonize the land but they can't colonize your mind, to people who recognized that all of us deserve dignity and that no human being was ever, ever going to tell you that you are less than them. Thirteen people organized for our independence in Somalia. So I was born in that breath of recognizing that they might be more powerful than you are, that they might have more technology than you have, they might think that they are wiser than you, they might control all of the institutions, but you control your mind, and that is what sets you free.

So, a sister of mine on TV said the thing that upsets—the thing that upsets the occupant of the White House, his goons in the Republican Party, many of our colleagues in the Democratic Party, is that—is that they can't stand—they cannot stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she's equal to them. But I say to them, "How else did you expect me to show up?"

So here is the reality. I tell people every single day, I have a certificate that everyone else has hanged in their offices in Congress, the same exact certificate of election. But I got more people who voted for me and sent me here than 428 of them. So, when they say, "Who does she think she is?"—when they say, "Who does she think she is?" I am the one that the people sent to be a voice for them. So we have to always recognize that one marginalized voice represents many marginalized voices.

But I don't only represent one marginalized voice, because in this country being black is enough of being marginalized. But I also happen to be a woman. That's a second marginalization. I happen to be a Muslim. And I also, also happen to be a refugee and an immigrant, from what they call one of the "shithole countries." The reality is, that "shithole country" raised a very proud, dignified person. Our circumstances might not always be perfect, but that doesn't lessen our humanity. And I am not in the business of defending mine.

So, when this—when this occupant of the White House chooses to attack me, we know—we know that that attack isn't for Ilhan. That attack is the continuation of the attacks that he's leveled against women, against people of color, against immigrants, against refugees, and certainly against Muslims. And we are collectively saying—we are collectively saying, "Your vile attacks, your demented views are not welcome here. This is not—this is not going to be the country of the xenophobics. This is not going to be the country of white people. This is not going to be the country of the few. This is the country of the many. This is a country that was founded—this is the country that was founded on the history of Native American genocide, on the backs of black slaves, but also by immigrants." And so, as much as we need to remedy the history that we continue to neglect, we also must recognize that every, every liberty that we enjoy here, every single progress we get to celebrate, came about because immigrants participated in it.

So, I know my place in this society. All of you know your place in this society. And it's one that is equal to every single person that walks in it.

AMY GOODMAN: Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar, speaking in front of the Capitol at a protest in her defense, organized by black women leaders. Sitting behind her, Angela Davis, Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, urging Congress to censure President Trump, who they referred to simply as the occupant of the White House, for his attacks on Omar and to send a message to both political parties: "Hands off Ilhan Omar!" She says she has suffered a spike in death threats against her since President Trump pinned a tweet of a video that juxtaposed Ilhan Omar against the 9/11 attacks.

The Absurd Times

Thursday, May 02, 2019