The confidence with which Donald Trump can state the most outlandish inaccuracies as facts is honestly kind of impressive. Unfortunately, it may also be why so many are still eager to take his words at face value instead of with a few large spoonfuls of salt. No one would be that confident in making a factual mistake before the whole nation, right? Right? Well, wrong. Again.
Two months ago, Trump said “Venezuela is in a very terrible situation. They were in very bad shape. We would have done something very easily with them. Just like we had many countries in very bad shape as we know.” Of course, everyone knows that every single country America has stepped foot in to “help” has come out so much better on the other side.
It would have been interesting to hear from the former president’s mouth how exactly he would have “done something very easily with them.” Well, at the very least, Trump referred to these countries as being in “very bad shape” instead of dubbing them “s**tholes”. That’s progress if you squint in an attempt to see a silver lining.
So, what has Trump now said about Venezuela? Just two months after stating how unfathomably terrible the situation was there?
It’s only a mere 40% off mark
Donald Trump, with the full confidence of a man who has, somehow, not yet gone to jail and believes he won’t ever, said Venezuela had a 72% decrease in crime. In two months, bear in mind. Perhaps, like Tom Cruise, the Venezuelan law enforcement got their hands on some kind of minority report that endows them with the power of foreknowledge. Or, 72% was something Donald Trump pulled out of the same place where he usually retrieves all of his inaccurate and illogical statements. Predictably, the chances fell on the latter option.
His argument, likely from his second favorite book – the Bible/Constitution mashup being the first – ‘Fearmongering 101’, was that the 72% decline was because Venezuela was dropping their criminals inside US prisons. And, of course, President Joe Biden is to blame for it. How? Trump did not specify, but at this point, we should know specificity is not his forte, nor are facts.
However, Trump’s statement was immediately met with his nemesis: the high-stakes question of where these numbers were actually coming from. “I guess I get them from the papers.” Said the president, before adding “They’re coming from Venezuela.”
Trump had already made such statements before, and they had already been debunked by a few outlets. WUFT.org reported in April, citing Venezuelan security official Remigio Ceballos Ichaso, that the decrease was 32% from 2023 to 2024 – less than half of what the former president claimed.
Moreover, the outlet also specified the reasons why the crime rate dropped, and it was because the conditions that act as motivators for crime have changed to dissuade it. And while many people have left the country – understandably, if you’ve seen how bad it has been over the last years – there is no evidence whatsoever that they are choosing to relocate to US prisons. “Small neighborhood gangs have vanished as young people have left and large criminal organizations have consolidated power.” (per WUFT)
But what do facts matter when you have undying, baseless confidence in the hogwash you spill?
As George Orwell once wrote: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Or, that your country’s prisons are being overwhelmed by Venezuelans when they really are not.
