Ron Paul is not impressed by the convoluted reasoning presented by the United States government in support of its effort to impose a new president on the people of Venezuela. In his first answer in a Friday interview at RT focused on this ongoing “regime change” effort, the peace advocate and former presidential candidate predicted this effort would be difficult and would lead to violence and, possibly, a civil war. Paul then proceeds to criticize as “ironic” the US trying to justify its seeking to impose its choice of a president on Venezuelans as promoting democracy.

Paul states:

I think it’s going to be very difficult [to oust Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro]. I don’t think he’s going to walk away easily, and I think it’s going to end up in violence and could have a civil war. Some countries are lining up with him, but we’ve been antagonizing and threatening him and decide that we are going to install a president for them. And I would think even the people that might not like Maduro shouldn’t like us settling the dispute. It’s internal; they should settle it. And I think it’s rather ironic for our government to say that they want to take care of Venezuela because they’re not democratic, and we have to take care of it by, you know, the authoritarian approach of us installing a president and having a coup and threatening them with military violence because they’re not democratic enough. I would hardly say that our position is very democratic.

Watch Paul’s complete interview here:

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.