Venezuelan activist: Socialist Hugo Chavez implemented what Bernie Sanders talks about
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Daniel Di Martino, a native-born Venezuelan freedom activist, had a strong warning for Americans ahead of the 2020 presidential election -- don't allow what happened to my country happen to yours.
"I was really shocked, when I came to the United State, less than 4 years ago, how the Democratic party went from a party that was supposed to be moderate to a party that embraced the ideas that I fled from," said Di Martino on "Fox and Friends" on Monday.
Di Martino was born in Venezuela in 1999 and left the country in 2016 to attend Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Quantitative Economics, according to his website.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He recently wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Wire, telling the story of his grandfather, who immigrated to Venezuela in 1956 from Spain and thrived in the bustling free-market, Venezuelan economy.
"Venezuela in the 1950s was a country that received millions of immigrants from all over the world, such as my grandfather," he said on "Fox and Friends."
"[Venezuela] was prosperous, where even people without education could get a job and prosper," Di Martino explained, "Slowly but surely, socialism destroyed it and turned it into what it is today."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOCIALISM FAILS: VENEZUELA
In Fox Nation's "The Unauthorized History of Socialism," Fox News anchor Bret Baier walks viewers through the sad history of Venezuela, and how the country, which used to be the wealthiest in Latin America, has become a failed state.
"The economy imploded and the country has collapsed to the point that it is generating more refugees now than the Middle East, than Syria," said Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in the Fox Nation show.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Venezuelans elected people... that started implementing over-burdening business regulation, that imposed price controls, that nationalized businesses," Di Martino told "Fox and Friends."
"By the time that Venezuelans elected [Hugo] Chavez in 1998, that's when Chavez started implementing what Bernie Sanders talks about -- government-provided housing, government-provided free college, free health care, free everything, food, electricity and that bankrupt our nation," he said.
MILLENNIAL ACTIVIST: SANDERS TARGETING 'VERY RADICAL IDEAS' TO YOUNG PEOPLE ON TWITTER
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Di Martino is also featured in an episode of Fox Nation's "No Interruption with Tomi Lahren."
Lahren interviewed Morgan Zegers, founder of Young Americans Against Socialism, who works with immigrants like Di Martino, who fled socialism and want to tell their stories to young potential voters who may be susceptible to the ideology's allure.
"Fox and Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Di Martino if he believes America is going down the path of his native Venezuela.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I think that many Americans are being deceived in that direction," he said. "Unlike Venezuela, the United States has something that we didn't have -- that is a huge movement that wants to protect the Constitution and defend the history that his country was built upon, which is a history of freedom, it's a history of emancipation, of independence."
To watch the entire six-part series, "The Unauthorized History of Socialism" and "No Interruption with Tomi Lahren" go to Fox Nation and sign up today.
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