In January 2019, Donald Trump appointed Elliot Abrams as “Special Envoy to Venezuela” to help facilitate a regime change in that country by the United States. Mr. Biden now in 2023 has nominated Abrams to the “US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy”, a US Cold War propaganda relic created in 1948 to sway foreign populations to support U.S. policies in their countries. If approved by the Senate during this Biden Administration (which is likely), his appointment will mark the 4^th U.S. administration in which Mr. Abrams has worked, and the 1st under a Democratic president. To say this is a tone-deaf appointment would assume that anyone in the Democratic leadership is actually listening. Alas.

The following is a brief background of Mr. Abrams’ career in U.S. government. It is summarized from the article by Jon Schwarz “Elliott Abrams, Trump’s Pick to Bring “Democracy” To Venezuela, Has Spent His Life Crushing Democracy” (Jan 30 2019, The Intercept) Adapted into 12 Points by Rachel Bruhnke, Cold War Truth Commission.

1. Elliot Abrams, as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs (1981-1985) in the Reagan administration:

-Supported “Mafia-like oligarchies” in El Salvador and elsewhere and was directly complicit in “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads”, as stated in the Los Angeles Times.

-Covered up the massacre of 800 Salvadorans in the village of El Mozote. The Salvadoran military unit was created and trained by the U.S. Army.

-Elliot Abrams called what he and the others in the Reagan administration had done as “a fabulous achievement”.

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