Of "Dictators" and "Rogues": Media Give Clinton a Free Pass on Anti-Venezuela Rhetoric
None of the news organizations commented on, nor appear to have inquired with Clinton or her staff, whether she is aware that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won presidential elections in 1998, 2000, and 2006, survived a recall referendum in 2004, and accepted defeat in a constitutional reform referendum last year. Neither do the news organizations appear to have asked for Clinton's definition of "dictator" or "rogue regime," or by what definition Chávez or Venezuela would qualify.
On February 25, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) made a major foreign-policy speech at George Washington University, in which she vowed that, as president of the United States, she would not meet with the "dictators" of various countries without "preconditions."1 "I will not be penciling in the leaders of Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or Cuba on the presidential calendar without preconditions," Clinton said, "until we have assessed through lower level diplomacy, the motivations and intentions of these dictators." She also stated that she would not "legitimize rogue regimes
