8 Parallels between Trump & Chávez
Autocrat’s Playbook: The US capitalist and Venezuelan socialist
On the surface, U.S. President Donald Trump and deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez are polar opposites.
Trump is the right-wing multimillionaire scion of a real estate developer who dodged the draft before turning to politics while Chávez, an avowed socialist and the son of poor schoolteachers, was a career Army officer before leading a failed coup in 1992 and then taking up politics after his release from prison. No doubt they would’ve hated each other, but as leaders they’re surprisingly alike, starting with the fact that neither had held political office before being elected president.
Similarities between the two men have struck me every so often since Trump’s election in 2016. (Chávez was elected in 1998 and died in office in 2013.) But this year, with a pandemic, economic meltdown and sweeping protests over racial injustice in the United States, Trump is increasingly reminding me of Chávez, who I covered extensively and interviewed twice when I worked in Venezuela as a journalist from 1995 to 2002.
Keeping in mind that unlike Chávez, Trump is not a true autocrat and that the countries are very different politically, economically and demographically, here’s my take on how the two presidents…
