The effort to canonize former President Jimmy Carter as a secular saint involves a heavy dose of whitewashing, as we’ve seen across the Regime Media spectrum. Spanish language media is no exception, as NBC affiliate network Telemundo demonstrates.
Watch as correspondent Lourdes Hurtado closes out her package by talking about Carter’s record in Venezuela and making an egregious omission:
LOURDES HURTADO: This year's elections in Venezuela are a recent example of how the Carter Center defends democracy. Its observers denounced a colossal fraud and published the vote tally sheets as evidence for the international community.
VANESSA HAUC: Legacy is so important, Lourdes! He never compromised his values, and he also left (us) the Carter Center. That’s great!
Climate activist Vanessa Hauc, filling in for anchor Julio Vaquiero, does have a point. Legacy is indeed important. Unfortunately, they left a big chunk out of Carter’s “defense of democracy” in Venezuela.
No accounting of Jimmy Carter’s legacy in Latin America is complete without mentioning his defense of the rigged 2004 recall referendum that left Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chávez in power and emboldened him to entrench a dictatorship that outlived him and endures today.
Per our friends at The Heritage Foundation:
Due to lengthy lines and equipment malfunctions, many polling stations closed around midnight and only a few electronic counts were compared with the voter-verifiable paper receipts placed in the ballot boxes. Quick counts were based solely on the electronic tallies the machines spat out.
Early on the morning of Aug. 16, the CNE shut out the Carter Center, the OAS and even council members who represented the opposition from a meeting in which it declared the recall had been defeated. Chávez opponents charged fraud.
…
Now, experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have identified signs of fraud based on statistical analysis. Instead of healing divisions between Chávez and opponents, Carter's hasty blessing is promoting doubts and giving Venezuela's budding dictator license to constrain adversaries.
Following the referendum, Chávez announced he would no longer recognize his opponents. On Aug. 26, his ambassador proposed amending the OAS Democratic Charter to punish civil society groups that dare to challenge regimes like his.
Without Carter’s acceptance of the rigged 2004 recall, there is no rigged 2024 election and concomitant opportunity to do the right thing. Chavez’ win and retrenchment led to the conditions that prompted millions of Venezuelans to leave their country rather than face starvation, and directly feed into the current migrant crisis.
In essence, Carter’s meddling shattered a continent. But such facts are inconvenient to a media intent on depicting him as a saint to an audience that, for the most part, enjoys the privilege of being born after his calamitous presidency.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on Noticias Telemundo on Monday, December 30th, 2024:
VANESSA HAUC: Jimmy Carter's legacy is especially notable in Latin America, where throughout his presidency and later as former president, he played a key role in promoting democracy and respect for human rights in the region. Lourdes Hurtado tells us more.
JIMMY CARTER (SPEAKING SPANISH): When I became president in South America there were only two democracies in America - and in Central America, only one.
LOURDES HURTADO: At the end of the 70s, authoritarianism reigned in Latin America. The turning point for democracy in the region was the presidency of Jimmy Carter. His foreign policy emphasized human rights, cutting US military assistance to the dictatorships of Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
EDUARDO GAMARRA: The application of the human rights policy was also made above all to the Nicaraguan case, to the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, and it was that policy that precipitated the fall of Anastasio Somoza.
HURTADO: His respect for the sovereignty of other nations was reflected with the signing of the Torrijos treaties, with which the administration of the Canal was transferred to Panama after almost 75 years of US control.
CARTER: We now have a partnership with Panamá to maintain and to operate and to defend the Canal.
HURTADO: Carter also tried to normalize relations with Cuba by easing sanctions and allowing Cuban exiles to return to the island to visit their relatives, which sparked the massive Mariel wave of migration in the 1980s. The then-president welcomed thousands of refugees.
GAMARRA: I had the- the great satisfaction of- being able to talk with him about how the political cost that he had to suffer was, well, something that he anticipated, he expected, but his commitment to his values was- it was so- It was such that, well, the political cost in the end, no, it was not something that worried him so much.
HURTADO: After losing reelection, he maintained that same commitment by founding the Carter Center with his wife Rosalynn, an organization that offers humanitarian aid and sends election observers around the world.
JENNIE LINCOLN: I accompanied them to Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua. Never had a former president of the United States visited a corner so far away from the capital.
HURTADO: This year's elections in Venezuela are a recent example of how the Carter Center defends democracy. Its observers denounced a colossal fraud and published the vote tally sheets as evidence for the international community.
HAUC: Legacy is so important, Lourdes! He never compromised his values, and he also left (us) the Carter Center. That’s great!
