I find it notable that the administration has dismissed the idea of supporting Maria Machado on hte grounds taht she 'has no support' when the extent of her support is why led the Maduro government to ban her from running for election in 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQzg2VfJME

On the other hand, especially if this was a White House directed operation, the planning could be so shortsighted that snatching Maduro amounts to the dog catching the car.

I can’t imagine that the Maduro regime is being organically supported when two elections have passed (Guaidó, Machado) without legitimate, election backed leadership.

Or why there’s a big swell to support Maduro even he and his predecessor Chavez have caused more harm than what the US could give.

*paraphrasing "something worse than what has happened to maduro"

I can guarantee that many countrys are rehearsing the "what we do if the US goes rouge" strategy and working on new contingency plans. going after maduro had a microscopic venier of legalism and precident, but to touch the current leader of Venezuela would be a declaration of war on the whole planet, which is in fact lining up behind Delcy Rodriguez in her role as Venezuelas sole legitimate leader.

If Maduro was not (a legitimate) head of state, neither is Rodriguez.

If Rodriguez does what Trump orders her to do, which he says is the arrangement to avoid American troops on the ground, how is this a sovereign country at all?

The U.S. has become a parody of its own science fiction movies.

"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." —General Tarkin, Star Wars (the original movie)

Every petty tyrant or so called leader in Africa, Middle east, Asia and who knows where else now know that going to another country, snatching the leader and kidnapping them can be done without much consequences at any time so long as they go in guns blazing.

The EU who usually likes to parade around by giving lessons of democracy to everyone is basically completely silent on the whole affair besides Spain who came out saying that they would not recognize whoever ends up taking Maduro's place as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

And to top it all off you have numerous people who believe that if you have a problem with what the US did then you must be some sort of closeted commie supporter.

I can't wait to see the mental gymnastics that these people will do if and when the PRC decides to do the same thing to the leaders of Taiwan in the future. Will they be so quick to agree that this isn't such a big deal? I think not.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/26/nicolas-maduro...

It's so hard to talk about this from the perspective of a venezuelan.

Venezuela is under a dictatorshipt that has violated human rights massively, in Caracas (the capital) there's a prison know as El Helicoide, that's the headquarterts of the SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia), they are the secret police and the have arrested opposition members, reporters, human rights activists, and even family members of any of the three. and El Helicoide is a prison that is the equivalent of Guantanamo, but in Venezuela; it's the largest torture center in Latin America.

On July 28, 2024, presidential elections were held, which were extremely difficult to reach. Negotiations with the government were necessary to allow the opposition to participate. The opposition held primary elections to determine its candidate, and María Corina Machado (MCM) (the previous year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate) won with approximately 90% of the vote. There was also a high voter turnout that the government had not anticipated, so they disqualified her, she then proposed another candidate, but this person was also disqualified, and ultimately, they had to put forward Edmundo González Urrutia (EGU) at the last minute, an stranger in Venezuelan politics, and she had to even convince him to participate in the elections because he was the last option they had.

During the campaign, the government placed every possible obstacle in their path to prevent them from campaigning, closing roads, arresting campaign workers, and issuing threats. On election day, there were several irregularities, and at midnight, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that Maduro had won. However, MCM claimed there had been fraud and, days later, presented evidence. She had conducted a large-scale operation to collect all the electoral records from every polling station in the country, managing to gather the vast majority, which showed that EGU had won with 67%. This sparked widespread protests and severe repression, including the arrest of many members of Vente Venezuela (MCM's party). She was forced into hiding, and EGU was forced to leave the country, but only after making a deal with the government while taking refuge in the Spanish embassy. His son-in-law was also arrested and remains missing to this day.

If you ask any Venezuelan, many agree with an US invasion. The vast majority are against the regime, just like me, although many aren't aware of how dangerous Trump is, or the things he's done in the US. To me, Trump isn't so different from Chávez: he insults those who disagree with him, he doesn't respect institutions, he installs his people in positions of power, and he only cares about loyalty. That's why I'm in a very complicated position, because on the one hand, I want this dictatorship to finally end; on the other hand, I don't like Trump. He's quite capable of trying to establish his own dictatorship in his country. He's not doing this just to liberate us; he's doing it because he has his own interests.

There are also many people who have spoken ill of MCM; many have said she didn't deserve the Nobel Prize and that she's just a puppet of Trump.

I couldn't disagree more with those statements..

Being in her position is very difficult, due to the alliances the government has made. A large part of the left worldwide has sided with the dictatorship or doesn't denounce its atrocities, and because of that, she has no choice but to ally herself with right-wing people, including Trump. I don't think she agrees with everything he does, and she's even asked him to treat Venezuelans better, but she can't anger him either, because he's the only ally who can help her with this. That's why she told him he should have received the Nobel Prize, to avoid further anger and to try to appease him.

I don't completely agree with her; I have a somewhat different ideology than hers, but even I can see how much effort she puts into everything she does and here in Venezuela she's greatly admired. I'm not one to admire people or have idols, I even criticize her a bit because she never makes it clear what the plan is for getting out of this situation and always says that freedom will come soon, something that gets very tiresome, but even so, I can understand her

It's also important to mention something else: the Venezuelan government has used various operations to manipulate public opinion, both inside and outside Venezuela, trying to portray itself as a legitimate government and claiming that everything the U.S. does is for the sake of oil. While this is partly true, it also attempts to tarnish the reputation of MCM and the opposition. It's possible that here, on Twitter, Bluesky, or many other sites, there are fake accounts trying to promote this narrative, so be careful what you read, because this government has committed atrocities; don't forget that.

Talking about all this is very difficult, because on the one hand this is a dictatorship that we want to free ourselves from, but on the other hand Trump is one of the worst things that has happened to the world and everything can go wrong.

Here's an addendum based on the information that I've since yesterday:

What Trump and Marco Rubio has said about the situation is worrying, because they make very obvious that their priority it's the oil and democracy seems more like an afterthought. There's a big possibility that they let Delcy Rodríguez (the vicepresident) to be in power and use if she's more obedient, that would mean that the chavismo would still rule the country, changing nothing in democracy regards.

They talk about that there's going to be a transition, so I don't want to think in the previous scenario, but the way they dismissed MCM enraged me, because Trump said that she doesn't have the support nor the respect, and perhaps he refers to within the FANB (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana), but what Rubio said today dismisses the idea of she or EGU getting in the presidency in the short term, something that I can understand because we have to make a transition, but at the same time is extremely worrying how they're sidelining the opposition.

I have the hope that things will improve, but at the same I don't like a lot of things that USA is doing right now, and that without mentioning what Trump has said about Colombia's president, Mexico or Greenland.

Excuse me if my text seems strange, I originally wrote it in Spanish and translated it in Google Translate, although I know English, it was easier for me to do it this way.