Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to speak about an emerging crisis in our hemisphere in the nation of Venezuela. It has been covered extensively in the press. I wanted to come today with an update and a suggestion, a request of the administration about a step we can take. First of all, I am very pleased that today our Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, scheduled a discussion at the U.N. Security Council with regard to Venezuela. It was not an open press discussion. Again, it showed extraordinary leadership, and I thank her for her work and for doing so. This deserves attention. By the way, Venezuela is a country that is blessed with natural resources. It was once Latin America's richest country, but today the people of Venezuela are literally starving, its financial system has collapsed, and there are, as you have seen from the press reports, massive protests in the streets. Its once proud democracy is now in the hands of a dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and his cronies and thugs, who have plunged that nation into a constitutional crisis. They are using violence and bloodshed to suppress and silence citizens speaking out against the regime's corruption and its abuse of political prisoners. What the people of Venezuela are calling for is pretty straightforward: free and fair elections as called for under the Constitution of that country, a return to representative democracy--the democracy they once had.…”