Report: Venezuelan American voters say many backed Trump in effort to avoid ‘socialism’ from Biden, Harris

President Donald Trump made significant gains among Hispanic voters in this year’s general election over his performance in 2016, a fact that contributed to his victory in the state of Florida.

Although much attention has been paid to South Florida’s Cuban community, the president also performed well among Venezuelan Americans on Nov. 3. And according to a recent report from the Washington Examiner, it was partly due to fears that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have “‘socialist’ tendencies.”

Writing Sunday, the Washington Examiner‘s Abraham Mahshie cited Florida voters including 58-year-old Jorge Luis Gonzalez, a Venezuelan American who said he cast his ballot for Trump this year.

“Trump used the idea that the United States would turn into a Venezuela,” Gonzalez explained, speaking with the Examiner in Spanish at a South Florida restaurant.

“A vote for socialism”

It’s a sentiment that was echoed by a 19-year-old restaurant server who fled Venezuela several years ago and asked to remain anonymous in her talk with the Examiner out of concern for her relatives. “Many people had the idea that a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for socialism,” she said, according to Mahshie.

But that’s not the only reason Gonzalez says those in his community turned out for the president on Election Day. Foreign policy was also an important consideration, he said.

“Many of us voted for Trump for all the effort he made to change things in Venezuela,” Gonzalez said, according to Mahshie, who pointed in his Sunday report to the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Venezuela’s National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader.

Others were more concerned with the way Trump had performed domestically, Gonzalez told the Examiner. “The economy was good,” he recalled, as Mahshie reported. “We were paying less taxes. The only big problem that Trump had was his language, the way he spoke.”

Gonzalez added: “If he was mute, [Trump] would have won the election.”

A Biden–Harris White House

Trump, for his part, has maintained that the election isn’t over yet as he continues his legal challenges in a number of states, including Wisconsin, according to USA Today. But Biden and Harris have been proceeding as if the Electoral College has already voted — and for those who aren’t fans of progressive policies, it seems there’s little to look forward to in the coming months.

The presumptive vice president to-be, Harris laughed off a question during an October interview about whether she’d bring a “socialist” perspective to the White House, an inquiry that alluded to her record as one of the most liberal members of Congress, the New York Post reported.

According to the Post, while Harris promised during the interview to follow Biden’s lead as his VP, she has expressed support in the past for measures including “Medicare for All” and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Green New Deal. To have someone like that in the White House is a frightening thought indeed.

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