Trump announces Venezuela’s socialist thugs have released American Josh Holt after two years in captivity

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives May 26, 2018

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I hope we didn’t have to back off on the sanctions these lowlifes richly deserve, but we can deal with whatever price we paid when we learn what it is. For now, it’s unquestionably good news that Josh Holt has been released and is coming home from Venezuela. He’d been imprisoned there for two years, having never even received a trial, because when he arrived there to marry his Venezuelan girlfriend, the socialist thug government of Nicolas Maduro accused the two of them of stockpiling weapons.

Below is the video he posted just about a week ago pleading for American help to get him out of there. I don’t know for sure – I only have my suspicions – but my sense of this is that the Venezuelan regime grabbed Holt just in case it would need leverage against potential economic sanctions as its own economic and political situation deteriorated, which it clearly has. The posting of this video just a week before Holt’s release – all with the permission of Venezuelan officials – seems a little too perfect for me. It’s almost as if the Venezuelans let him do it because they were ready to offer Holt’s release as a bargaining chip so the U.S. would back off the sanctions and public scrutiny it’s been threatening in light of the intensifying oppression going on there. Holt makes the video. Venezuela allows it to be released. U.S. officials spring into action. Venezuela says not so fast, here’s the price. We pay it, Holt comes home and everybody’s gotten something out of the deal. But what was the price? In the meantime, Americans, stay out of Venezuela. You’re going to be kidnapped and turned into the next bargaining chip for God-knows-what. The only difference between it and North Korea is the quality of the baseball there, and I’m not even sure how long that can be sustained at the rate things are going.