Union College Professor Robert Samet recently compared President Donald Trump to socialist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
Anthropology professor Robert Samet, who teaches at Union College in Schenectady, New York, argued in a recent interview highlighted this week by Campus Reform that President Trump has some similarities to socialist dictator Hugo Chavez.
Samet was being interviewed by the Union College website about his upcoming book on the media in Venezuela. The interviewer asked Samet to explain the parallels between the Venezuela media and President Trump’s contentious relationship with the American media.
So how are President Trump and an infamous socialist dictator similar? According to Samet, both leaders had a tendency to attack the credibility of their nation’s media outlets.
Samet stated that Venezuelan journalism is admittedly partisan. Samet then accused Fox News of prioritizing partisan politics over facts. In Samet’s opinion, Trump and Chavez “both drew on a similar repertoire of rhetorical tactics.”
Watching the 2016 election cycle was like watching Venezuelan politics in reverse. Chávez and Trump have nothing in common when it comes to the content of their political messages. However, both drew on a similar repertoire of rhetorical tactics, which includes targeting the media. It is important not to overplay this similarity. Chávez’s accusations against the Venezuelan press were credible because Venezuela’s journalistic tradition is explicitly partisan. While Chávez was in office, the Venezuelan press functioned like Fox News—it prioritized a political agenda over facts-based reporting. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that “press freedom” only works if there is a baseline of trust between citizens. In the United States, that trust is rapidly dwindling. This will not end well.
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