Venezuela quake rescue: Maduro needs a bunkmate

As ordinary Venezuelans dig their neighbors out of their monster two-earthquake rubble with their hands, the Venezuelan government is doing all it can to sit on its hands, loot the victims, obstruct the rescue teams, harass the aid givers, block the reporters, and hide the body count. 

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It’s a foul picture, but one incident stands out:

Who was the angry little man in the red hat insolently poking at the brave American rescuer, telling him he couldn’t save the people crying out from under the rubble?

This guy:

Which seems odd, given that President Trump and other U.S. officials have said cooperation in the rescue effort has been going well.

The angry red-hatted man poking the American rescuer and inexplicably stopping him from rescuing trapped people crying out in the rubble, was no ordinary commissar or bureaucrat, taking orders from someone above him. He was Diodado himself, the second-most powerful person in the rump Chavista government which put itself into place after the U.S. extrication of Nicolás Maduro and his wife to a prison awaiting trial on drug-traffcking and money-laundering charges in New York.

The orders he was ‘enforcing’ were his own orders, invented by himself. He really didn’t want the Americans there rescuing Venezuelans, even if those Venezuelans would die if they didn’t. He certainly wasn’t going to rescue them. But neither were the Americans.

There are theories as to why:

But the more likely reason was to challenge the U.S., not just to prevent it from getting too popular with Venezuelans for its rescues as the Venezuelan army stood around and did nothing, but to show President Trump who was boss.

By reputation, Diosdado, who runs the shantytown enforcers and other repressive organs, is the biggest Chavista thug left in Venezuela. He’s not only is under sanctions for major drug-trafficking offenses, apparently suspended now in the ‘Delcy-our-friend’ era, he’s also the one who is accused of trying to kill then-Sen. Marco Rubio by sending a hit team targeting him in 2017.

Now he’s bullying the American rescuers, poking one of them in the face and telling him he’s not allowed to save anyone.

Which clearly calls for a response. Trump sent those people there to accomplish a mission and it’s Diosdado’s job to respect that mission and stay out of the way. He’s not. Clearly, he doesn’t think he has anything to fear from President Trump, so he’s going to need to be educated, same as the Iranians were over the weekend.

President Trump, however, seems to have some really bad advisors who aren’t informing him about this crude and abusive challenge to his authority from a too-big-for-his-britches criminal kingpin who is otherwise wanted by U.S. authorities.

And his ambassador is hard to believe: