Dreier: Well, so, now that Im not working for the Associated Press, its kind of fun to be able to point out these things that everybody covering Venezuela knows, but you cant usually just say outright.
But, basically, the U.S., with those sanctions, which are very important symbolicallybut, they said that they were going to freeze all of Maduros assets, and all the headlines were: Maduros Assets Frozen. Theres no reason to think Maduro has any U.S. assets. This is a man who railed every day against the U.S. empire. Why would he put his money in Miami property, or anything here?
So, the sanctions will prevent him from buying things in the U.S. and from doing business with Americans, which he wasnt trying to do anyway, and Trump gets to say that this is a big, strong step. And Maduro, in Caracas, is also making hay with these sanctions and spending lots of time talking about them, and saying that they prove that the U.S. is a bully and that the U.S. is trying to ruin the Venezuelan economyso, kind of a gift.
Glasser: And that was the response, as well, when Barack Obama imposed an earlier round of sanctions on certain regime leaders in 2015, right?
Dreier: Right. So, the time that I was in Venezuela, I just saw Maduros approval ratings go lower and lower and lower, it was a steady downward decline, except for this one month in 2015, right after Obama imposed sanctions, and Maduro loved those. He talked about them every single day for a month, and put posters up all around the capital talking about how bad those sanctions were. And people really responded. People said, Thats right. The U.S. is trying to interfere in our politics, just like they always do. And he got this total approval ratings bump. After that, I think the Obama administration backed off, because a lot of people seemed to realize that those sanctions were giving him a tool, not really hurting his administration.
