Some major news broke today with regard to U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and with potentially huge implications on the border crisis. But you wouldn’t know it from watching any of the network evening newscasts.
Venezuela has threatened to ban deportation flights from the US in response to the White House's decision to reimpose oil and gas sanctions on the bankrupt socialist nation.
The Biden administration began deporting Venezuelans on October 18 for the first time in years after the Nicolas Maduro regime made a secret deal with the US that saw the dictator pledge to allow free elections next year in exchange for sanctions relief.
The restarting of deportations saw illegal border crossings by Venezuelans drop as much as 74 percent in October. It came at a crucial time, as the number of Venezuelans crossing the US-Mexico border had reached a record high and replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality appearing at the border in September, 2023.
The reason that these sanctions against Venezuela were snapped back in the first place is because of the regime’s refusal (via the court system) to reinstate leading opposition presidential candidate María Corina Machado to the ballot. So the Maduro dictatorship issued an ultimatum to the Biden administration. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez posted the following on X:
The whole of Venezuela rejects the rude and improper blackmail and ultimatum expressed by the US government. If they take the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela, at the request of the extremist lackeys in the country; repatriation flights for Venezuelan migrants would be immediately revoked as of February 13th, and any existing cooperation mechanism would be placed under review as a countermeasure against the deliberate attempt to strike the Venezuelan oil and gas industry. Venezuela, inspired by its glory and historical dignity, will continue in its recovery of the Venezuelan economy with its own efforts in national unity!
February 13th- that’s two weeks. The fact is that there weren’t that many repatriation flights happening in the first place, but they nonetheless served a deterrent purpose. Refusal of deportation flights would constitute an opening of the floodgates in the midst of an ongoing border disaster.
Recall that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) expressly cited the removal of all sanctions against Venezuela as one of several preconditions to future immigration assistance from Mexico. That makes TWO Latin American socialist rulers that have President Joe Biden over a barrel when it comes to the border. Not optimal.
But you heard about none of this on the ABC, NBC, or CBS evening newscasts. Instead, viewers got process coverage of the Mayorkas impeachment hearings, and more shilling for the dying Senate-White House border deal. Univision and Telemundo provided brief summaries for their evening newscasts, of 24 and 36 seconds, respectively. Not impressive, but still more than what everybody else did.
Serious coverage of what is happening at the border would include fulsome coverage of these critical developments, which might lead to greater chaos along the southern border. For now, though, the major networks choose to keep their viewers in the dark.
