I don’t think Machado got the support of the people that she has to have. That’s all.

She could only win an election if I did support her. But I like her very much.

Maybe [Machado] should run. Maybe somebody else should run. But first, we have to run the country right.

We should run Venezuela with law and order.

We should run the country where we can take advantage of the economics of what they have — which is valuable oil and valuable other things.

The country is ready to be — it’s literally become a third-world country ready to fail.

It was a great victory. We took care of business.

We had nobody killed, a couple of guys wounded. We lost no helicopters or jets or planes.

We had a complete and total victory — that’s the way it should be.

You know, you go into these things, you don’t know if 50 people are going to die or not. And we lost nobody.

Some people were wounded — helicopter pilots got wounded, a couple of them were hit.

They kept that chopper flying. I mean, they were bleeding badly. They were very brave.

Without a legal basis to carry out an action against the sovereignty of Venezuela, the detention becomes a kidnapping.

I condemned the political detentions of opponents in Venezuela and called for a general amnesty for all, but exactly the same thing that the Maduro government was doing is now being done by the government of Donald Trump, with hundreds of dead Venezuelans.

I never recognized the last government of Nicolás Maduro, because the April elections were not free due to the exclusion of candidates, the detentions, and the blockade and allocation of money to assassinate one of the candidates by the judicial power of the USA. That's why I did not recognize the government that declared itself elected.

But I know perfectly well that what Donald Trump has done is aberrant. They have destroyed the rule of law worldwide.

They have bloodily urinated on the sacred sovereignty of all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

I deeply reject such an imperial attitude that wants to return to Venezuela, after the struggle of Bolívar, to turn it into a colony.

The people of Venezuela, regardless of their political composition, must unite to take to the streets. Finally, demonstrations throughout Venezuela united for Sovereignty and Independence and Peace.

Fatigue and disillusionment are not worth it; the dollars they promise to Venezuela they will take away with interest with the oil they intend to steal.

The USA must participate on equal terms with all oil-consuming countries in Venezuela's bidding processes.

Moreover, oil has very little time left due to the need to preserve Life on the planet.

If one wants to know about the mafia and the business of cocaine commercialization, one only has to look at Colombia's judicial files.

That's why I deeply reject Trump speaking without knowing; my name does not appear in the judicial files on drug trafficking over 50 years, neither from before nor from the present.

Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump. That's not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle and then from the struggle for the Peace of the people of Colombia.