Elliot Abrams Hired As “Special Envoy” To Venezuela

.@SecPompeo announced today that Elliott Abrams will lead @StateDept efforts on #Venezuela to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country. #EstamosUnidosVE pic.twitter.com/iUFHnRhi8x

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 25, 2019

.@SecPompeo: Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem. #EstamosUnidosVE pic.twitter.com/QRpXqdN07V

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 26, 2019

We last saw Elliot Abrams, one of the leading neocons behind the Iraq War, when he was angling for a State Department job in the earliest months of the Trump administration. At the time, he predicted that he would be hired in 2018 or 2019 after Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House. Now, he has been hired to bring regime change and democracy to Venezuela:

“Elliott Abrams, a controversial neoconservative figure who was entangled in the Iran-Contra affair, has been named as a Trump administration special envoy overseeing policy toward Venezuela, which has been rocked by a leadership crisis.

Abrams’ appointment, announced Friday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is something of a surprise — President Donald Trump nixed his 2017 bid to be deputy secretary of State after learning that Abrams had criticized him.

Abrams will now be one of several special envoys Pompeo has brought on board to tackle thorny issues. He takes on his role at an unusually volatile time in U.S.-Venezuelan relations. …”

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that one of the top reasons (the other main reason being the wall) that Trump was elected president was to get rid of these people. Here we are two years later and John Bolton is National Security Adviser and Elliot Abrams is back at the State Department.

Virtually nothing has changed under Donald Trump. Not our foreign policy. Not our immigration policy. Not the GOP’s obsession with tax cuts and deregulation. Not even our trade policy.