As a Venezuelan, I don't care, I was actually not a big fan of her before this. There is a matter of integrity, and I feel that she has zero. Yes, I know the reality of dealing with Trump, but her pandering still comes with a massive price tag and it makes me sick. The whole situation does. I haven't commented on it for various reasons. He is never going to support a woman, and has already insulted her. She looks weak sucking up to him like a sycophant.
We in the European NATO countries are seeing this play out as our heads of government, in an attempt to retain US support for Ukraine, shamelessly flatter and suck up to Trump, even while he and Vance attack liberal European social democracy and openly support far right European parties. It's extremely annoying and humiliating, and I often wish they'd tell him where to get off, but then I think, "what would a citizen of Kiev want to happen," and start to have second thoughts.
Rightly or wrongly, European members of NATO have to depend on the threat of US military support against Russian aggression, at least until we've been able to build up our own forces and reorganise them on the basis that we can no longer rely on the US as an ally that will honour its treaty commitments. I wish we weren't in the position but it's where we are. This is one reason why everyone's so worried about Greenland -- there's every possibility that Trump will blow up NATO completely.
Unfortunately, no one can deal with Trump and retain their integrity. But since he's POTUS, many governments and serious politicians don't get the choice. As I see it -- and obviously I don't know much about Venezuela -- Trump clearly doesn't care who runs Venezuela so long as they do what he tells them, and is quite content to leave the previous cartel in place so long as they let him control the oil exports. My friend in Venezuela doesn't much care for her either, but he seems to think that, for all her faults, a completely new government with her in charge would be an improvement on Maduro's people, which is why he and so many others voted for her Plataforma Unitaria Democrática in 2024. It could, from what he says, hardly be worse.
I really don't know, Cris. It seems to me she's doing no more than political leaders in NATO countries are having to do, and she probably hates it as much as they do.
