Andrew Sage

He is pretty widely seen as both a tyrant and also quite incompetent at managing basic state services.

So he was going to lose unless he stole the election, which he did.

The CNE, the Venezuelan election board, announced that he had won with just 51% of the vote, which is, I have to say, I give him credit for being subtle.

I expected them to announce that he had won with like 99% of the vote.

Yeah.

And a sad margin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No one believed it.

And I have to say, one of my critiques of the Biden administration is that I think the whole thing was rather naive.

I think they calculated that somehow Maduro would let himself be voted out of office.

Maduro is, we talked about under a bounty, has a bounty on his head.

Many people in the US, politicians in the US, Republicans in particular, have promised that they're going to send him to jail.

So why would someone in that position, you know, give up power?

I think, you know, he saw what happened to Gaddafi and he's, you know, he doesn't want,

to be jailed or killed.

And these are sanctions that the Venezuelan government has weathered for many, many years.

So it's not really that much of a disincentive.

So anyway, everyone basically admits at this point that he stole the election, but what are you going to do about it?

The opposition, for its part, has taken different approaches to how to confront him and is famously very divided.