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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

Today we are going to be talking about Latin America and in particular Venezuela because there are

big things happening in Caracas. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest

against Nicholas Maduro, the country's effectively dictator, who appears to most observers

to have blatantly stolen the election last weekend. The opposition leader

Marina Corina Machado is demanding that the full tallies of the count are released and the regime

appear to be slow to do that. There is a lot of pressure on the Biden administration. This is where

the American angle comes in, to up its pressure

on Maduro and to try and effectively force him to accept the result and stand down for the

standing candidate who's called Edmondo Gonzalez Uriqia. He's agreed to stand in for

Machado, who is the Iron Lady, but she was forbidden from running.

I'm delighted to be joined by Eli Lake of the Free Press, and he's written a piece for the

free press in which he says that this is an extraordinary opportunity.

Eli, why is this such a big opportunity for the Biden administration?

Well, Nicholas Maduro has been an illegitimate

...