CNN Falsely Claims Venezuela’s Guaido Was Elected President in January

by | May 7, 2019

CNN Falsely Claims Venezuela’s Guaido Was Elected President in January

by | May 7, 2019

Continuing to try to advance the US narrative that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido is the “duly elected” president, CNN went to the trouble on Sunday afternoon of inventing an entire election to base this around.

In the CNN report, they declared “pressure is mounting on Maduro to step down, following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaido over him for president.” There was no election in January.

In reality, Venezuela’s presidential election was held on May 20, 2018. The opposition boycotted the vote, Maduro won with 67.8% of the vote, while Guaido did not participate at all.

Indeed, the only time Juan Guaido participated in a presidential vote of any kind was the 2012 Democratic Unity Roundtable’s presidential primary, which he lost. Guaido’s first claim to the presidency came in January of 2019, when he unilaterally declared himself “acting president.”

Yet the Trump Administration not only endorsed Guaido as president at this time, they’ve begun referring to him as the “duly elected” president despite such an election never taking place. US media outlets have parroted that claim, but CNN took it a step farther to invent the election too.

The CNN article was written by two senior writers, and had four others contribute to it. It is hard to imagine that none of them caught this false claim of a January vote. Yet the article remained unchanged throughout Sunday and overnight, and it was only some time on Monday that it was finally revised to say that Guaido had “declared himself interim president.”

Republished from antiwar.com.

About Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is the News Editor for Antiwar.com, your best source for antiwar news, viewpoints and activities. He has 10 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times and the Detroit Free Press.

Our Books

latest book lineup.

Related Articles

Related

TGIF: Israel Humiliated

TGIF: Israel Humiliated

To more fully understand the ferocity of Israel's massacre of the people of the Gaza Strip, it's perhaps worth considering that on October 7, 2023, the reputedly invincible Israeli Defence Forces and intelligence services were made to look like fools caught sleeping...

read more
In Defense of Inaction

In Defense of Inaction

On March 17, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by a woman named Mary Anastasia O’Grady titled, “Giving up on Haiti Isn’t a U.S. Option.” She argues, in short, that Americans don’t have a choice but to continue doing all the things that have failed in the past...

read more
Is America a Rogue Superpower?

Is America a Rogue Superpower?

“Unipolar” used to mean that the United States was, at least in theory, alone in leading the world. Now “unipolar” means that the United States is alone and isolated in opposition to the world. In global affairs, a hegemon is a nation that leads because it has the...

read more
Collateral Murder 2.0

Collateral Murder 2.0

When the footage of Reuters journalists and civilians were Wikileaked to the world, there was outrage. A shame exhibited by some in the American government caused them to reel from the crime that had been exposed, to downplay the prevalence of such murders, and...

read more
The Fed and the Fight for 2%

The Fed and the Fight for 2%

Last week, Jerome Powell & Co. met to issue an immediate decision regarding the status of the federal funds rate for March, and to provide some insight into the trajectory of monetary policy for the rest of 2024 and into 2025. As with the past few inflation...

read more