I don’t know if it’s true that great minds think alike. But Donald Trump and I certainly do. When I wrote about Trump’s connection to Venezuela for Sunday, several people asked why I was interested in that country on the Caribbean Sea.
But the question is not why I’m interested in Venezuela. The question is why Donald Trump is interested in Venezuela. During his extended conversation with Elon Musk on Monday, Trump was asked what he might do if he loses the election.
“If something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela,” the former president told Musk. Why Venezuela? It is, after all, a socialist state. And Trump is a committed capitalist.
But it has some of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean. It also has some of the most beautiful women. In 1995, that led the Donald to buy the rights to the Miss Universe pageant, which is often won by Miss Venezuela.
So don’t assume Trump is joking about moving there. If he wakes up on Nov. 6 as a loser, he will face a seemingly endless string of prosecutions here in the U.
S.A. Or he could head to a tropical paradise.
So why stick around? If Trump fires up Trump Force One and heads south, he could land in a country that has a history of granting asylum to those who are wanted in the U.S. Don’t assume he’s not serious about moving there, says Jose Gomez-Rivera.
Gomez-Rivera is a former college professor from New Jersey who spent two years in Caracas working for the State Department in the 1990s. He was there when a renegade military officer named Hugo Chavez seized power and set up a Marxist state that handed power down to current President Nicolas Máduro. The idea of a Republican right-winger like Trump seeking asylum from an avowed Marxist like Máduro may sound bizarre, Gomez-Rivera said “Venezuela is a Marxist state and Trump’s whole argument against Kamala Harris is that she’s a socialist,” he said.
But Trump has historically been soft on dictators, Gomez-Rivera said “He likes strong-men even though their policies are screwed up,” he said. In that regard, Trump and Venezuelan President Máduro have quite a bit in common. In 2020, Trump lost an election by millions of votes but claimed victory.
In 2024, Máduro lost an election by millions of votes but still insists that he won. Máduro’s term runs till January, and many Venezuelans are calling for him to step down at the end of it. But there are a lot of reasons he might not want to.
The U.S. has arrest warrants out for Máduro on drug charges and the U.
S. State Department is trying to negotiate a graceful exit that has him seeking asylum in a nearby country such as Panama. How that will work out remains to be seen, but at the moment the U.
S. can’t touch him. Venezuela refuses to recognize American law.
That’s one reason the Donald might like it there. It’s also got beautiful golf courses - “or at least it did when I was there,” said Gomez-Rivera . However , the big question is not whether Trump would flee to Venezuela, but why he’s talking about it.
After the interview aired, a number of Trump’s critics called for his passport to be seized. This isn’t the first time there have been calls for that. I was in Ireland for my daughter’s wedding a couple years ago.
The local news was full of stories about the various efforts by prosecutors to put the Donald in the slammer. The locals were worried that Trump might seek asylum in Doonbeg, a lovely little town in the West where he has a golf course. Because of its loose extradition laws, Ireland is a good place to be when you’re wanted elsewhere.
Here was my advice for the Donald back then: “ Trump isn’t wanted yet, but he would be wise to keep an ocean between himself and the federal and local prosecutors probing his actions since losing. I advised him to take the loss gracefully. So I guess we didn’t think alike on that issue.
But if he’d listened to me, the Republican Party could have nominated a candidate who didn’t have all that baggage. Instead the party is facing what in the Donald’s own words could be a horror show. Perhaps it’s time to fire up that 757 and head south.
Or east. But whatever you plan to do, for God’s sake shut up about it. More: Recent Paul Mulshine columns Paul Mulshine may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.
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