CARACAS, Venezuela — During his most recent blanket television broadcast, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez took the opportunity to embrace President Obama, inviting him to join him in the construction of a new world order.
Chávez was responding to President Obama’s recent quip about diverting Air Force One in order to pay Caracas a visit. Leaving a NATO summit in Portugal, the president joked, according to a tweet by CBS reporter Mark Knoller, about having “AF-1 fly home via South America so he could visit Hugo Chavez.”
“Well, Obama, if you said that,” Chávez remarked, “we’ll receive you here. I’d shake your hand again.”
The Venezuelan leader, who has abolished term limits and shut down independent media outlets, praised Obama for his charisma and invited the president to come to Venezuela.
“I hope you’d land in Maiquetía [Venezuela’s main airport] one day,” Chávez remarked on live television. “We would embrace you, you know.”
Chávez went on, jovially stating that, were Obama to pay him a visit, both leaders would “sit down to talk, to eat socialist arepas,” a corn-based pancake popular in the country.
Chávez also insisted that his regime did not represent a threat to the United States.
“Break the stereotype,” Chávez said. “Don’t listen to those reports, which are filled with lies, saying we are a threat. No, Obama, let’s build a new world where we can all live in peace.”
WATCH: Chavez’s response in Spanish