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DONALD Trump’s April 8 decision to squash the Dragon gas deal hinted that this country is within his line of sight in his feud with Venezuela. But JD Vance’s undiplomatic swipe at our crime situation on August 20 confirms that TT lies within the orbit of the Oval Office and its plans. Where this ends is hard to say, but it’s an ominous turn.
Visiting Washington, DC’s Union Station in a PR stunt designed to make more palatable the US president’s deployment of military personnel in America’s capital city, Mr Vance, with feigned indignation, dismissed protesters who had lambasted him.
“You hear these guys outside? They appear to hate the idea that Americans can enjoy their communities,” the US vice president said. “DC, a week ago, had a higher murder rate than TT, which the US State Department has said you shouldn’t visit because it’s unsafe.” Pete Hegseth, Mr Trump’s defence secretary, was present and nodded in agreement.
This was a classic instance of wrapping lies with truth, reminiscent of the maskirovka of the Soviet Union. It is true that TT has a high murder rate. It is true that the department has issued advisories. Yet, homicides here are down by almost 36 per cent, according to the police. Washington’s murders are also at a 30-year low. TT’s 2024 rate of 46.7 per 100,000 is higher than Washington’s 27.3 per 100,000.
But the issue is not crime rates but the misleading purpose for which Mr Vance seeks to deploy them. He was the source of the infamous 2024 lie that Haitian immigrants were eating pets, telling US broadcasters, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Distractions are useful. On the ropes for a scandal involving deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Mr Trump has recently been busy with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Europe. He has no intention of leaving out Nicolás Maduro. Destroyers have been despatched. A bounty has been doubled. The man who pardons insurrectionists and rolls out a red carpet for Mr Putin, a dictator, agonises, we are to believe, over Venezuelan democracy.
But if the White House has this country in its peripheral vision, so too does Caracas, with its propaganda ploy of Trinidadian involvement in disruption plots. None of this is normal. Revealed by Mr Vance this week is that both openly see TT as collateral. That is the abnormal reality behind common bonds and diplomatic relationships. It is why local leaders must put aside differences and boldly unite with Caricom in calling for diplomacy and for the preservation of the region as a zone of peace.

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