A Venezuelan opposition leader told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that the country could reach one million percent inflation by the end of 2016.
Earlier in the day, President Trump told the United Nations, “Not long ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries on Earth. Today socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty.”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson added that Venezuela has no toilet paper and said starving people have resorted to eating zoo animals. “Not going well,” he said. He asked Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges, who had to flee his home country to avoid being killed by socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, how he felt about young Democrats in the U.S. identifying as socialists.
Borges, former president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, declared, “Well, I’m shocked. You know? Socialism in Venezuela has meant expropriating thousands of companies and losing millions of jobs in the name of the poor people.” But at the end, he added, “it has meant to abolish freedom, to abolish progress, to violate human rights all in the name of socialism.”
“So for me, there is no reason why some people can back up and support these ideas right now when the world needs free trade, democracy, progress, and human rights,” said Borges.
“Venezuela was one of the most richest countries in the world,” he explained. “It was a land where the people went into the 20th century looking for progress, and now, we are in a real misery.”
“Five million people has [sic] left Venezuela. In the name of socialism [the] economy has been destroyed,” he said. “And there is no freedom in order to do whatever you want to do.” Borges pointed out that Venezuela likely has “the highest hyperinflation in the history of the world.”
He then made a shocking prediction: “We could end this year with one million percent of hyperinflation.” He added that this is a direct consequence of the government trying to control everything in the economic sector. “It has been a real failure, producing more and more poverty in Venezuela,” he concluded.
Carlson observed that “This has happened… in every place that comprehensive socialism has been tried.”
“Socialism has been a failure, not only in Venezuela… also in Nicaragua and Cuba and Latin America — in Eastern Europe in the former Soviet Union,” said Borges. “So there is no one single example of a good success of socialism because socialism at the end always ended with totalitarianism and a dictatorship. In the case of Venezuela, we are beyond a dictatorship. Right now we are like a failed state, like a narco-state.”
Borges said that all over Venezuela there is corruption and wrangling by various groups to get control of the country’s oil. “Always that is the end of any socialistic scheme,” he warned.
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