Anatoly Kurmanaev

Trump sent hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador in prison without any due process.

And she has unequivocally supported Trump's campaign against drug smuggling in Venezuela, without mentioning the fact that some of her countrymen are being killed at high seas without any evidence of due process.

This is a crucial question, Natalie.

Machado has presented her overwhelming victory in last year's election as a mandate for change at any cost.

Whether Venezuelans agree has been difficult to gauge because of the scale of repression in the country.

But the polling that I have seen shows that only a minority of Venezuelans support military intervention in Venezuela.

Overwhelmingly, Venezuelans support political change.

They want Maduro gone and they want international community to help them achieve that change.

But a minority believe that a military intervention would be a justified cause to achieve that goal.

So diplomacy is off the table for now.

Trump has told his envoy to basically cut off contacts with Maduro for the time being and appears to have given Rubio green light to achieve results through military pressure.

And supporters of negotiation approach, they acknowledge that they lost this battle.

They acknowledge that they have been

outplayed, outmaneuvered by Rubio at this stage.

But they don't believe that this is the end.

They point to Trump's behavior towards Ukraine, where he has repeatedly changed his positions since returning to power.

So just because negotiations are off the table now, that does not mean that we'll be off the table forever.

And Rubio's opponents, they are biding their time for Rubio to make a mistake, for him to fail to produce clear results in the span of next several months in order for them to then redouble their pitch of economic bounties that could be had in the short term straight away under the current government in Venezuela.

I mean, history shows that only rarely do military interventions produce the kind of sustained democracy that Machado is advocating for.

There's not much track record for this sort of outcome.