The 2009 US-backed coup in Honduras caused the migration crisis US President Donald Trump has weaponized, creating a situation where “everybody’s making money except the Honduran people,” writer Max Blumenthal tells RT America.

Honduran President Orlando Hernandez is “hated by every sector of society,” Blumenthal told RT America’s Rick Sanchez, explaining that the leader – who stands accused by a US court of using $1.5 million in narco-trafficking profits to fund his election, even as Washington allows him to travel freely and funds his regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters – has allowed foreign corporations to pillage Honduras while plunging his own people into poverty.

Since the coup that removed Manuel Zelaya from power in 2009, Honduras has become one of the most violent countries on the planet. Poverty has doubled, electricity prices have doubled following the industry’s privatization, and the medical industry is currently being privatized – triggering the massive anti-government protests that the Western media is ignoring completely.

“The root cause of the migration crisis… is what the US did to that country in imposing this coup,” Blumenthal said. “This coup, the migration crisis it caused, and our neoliberal policies in Honduras played a giant role in electing Trump, who weaponized anti-immigrant sentiment and weaponized the migration wave to stir up” his base.

Also on rt.com Migrants, protests & aid cuts: Legacy of US-backed 2009 coup in Honduras

Instead of just placing blame on the weakest people and scapegoating migrants, we look at the national security state that is doing these coups and destabilizing these societies and we listen to the people in the streets in Honduras who are… calling for us to let them elect their own government.

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