Noel King

He couldn't be banned because he had done nothing, Edmundo Gonzalez.

And he ran in the elections last summer against Maduro.

But everybody knew if they voted for him, they were really voting for her and that somehow

she would emerge from behind him.

And the evidence suggests that Edmundo Gonzalez, fronting for her, won the election.

But of course, Maduro is still the president.

I want to bring Trump into this.

So Donald Trump takes office in 2016, and he and Maduro seem to genuinely dislike each other.

But I wonder, is this just a case of an American president and a Venezuelan president really disliking each other because they have very different goals and ambitions?

Or is there something unique about the Trump-Maduro relationship?

One of the very first meetings, in fact, the very first meeting that Donald Trump in his first term had with Latin American, his colleagues in Latin America, it wasn't with all of them, and I've talked to a couple of them, former heads of state, the first words out of Donald Trump's mouth was,

I wanna invade Venezuela or let's invade Venezuela, something like that.

Like, why can't I invade Venezuela?

I wanna get rid of that guy Maduro.

And they were shocked and they said, well, Mr. President, that's probably not a good idea.

I think we can work together to see if we can pressure him to do this or that.

And it kind of went on from there.

So he came into office

back in 2017, wanting to overthrow Maduro.

You know, Maduro had been vilified by