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Marco Rubio: The narrative that Nicolás Maduro is winning in Venezuela is ‘ridiculous’
David Smiley
May 3, 2019
Miami Herald
Venezuela’s self-declared president may have tried and failed this week to overthrow and expel the country’s embattled ruler, but U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said Friday that Juan Guaidó is winning a power struggle with Nicolás Maduro.
Appearing in the heart of South Florida’s Venezuelan exile community with U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Rubio argued that Maduro maintains control over the military but can’t move around his own country amid a popular uprising. He described Maduro as a man with reason to be paranoid, and limited time left on the life of an administration propped up by the Cuban and Russian governments.
“There is a huge misunderstanding in the narrative about this. Juan Guaidó controls no security forces, has no money, controls no television stations, has no way to threaten or jail anyone, and yet he can freely walk the streets and convene thousands of Venezuelans at a moment’s notice,” Rubio said following a gathering of advocates and activists in a conference room at the Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine in Doral. “Nicolás Maduro can not even leave a military base. In fact, he is housed within a base within a base. He’s afraid to even move within the base itself.”
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Rubio also pushed back on reports that the U.S. had possibly overestimated the strength of Guaido’s backing Tuesday or been led astray by members of Maduro’s inner circle.
“Nicolás Maduro is surrounded by conspirators. I watched this picture the other day where it’s like 12 people around him. I know for a fact, a documented fact, that four of those 12 people actively conspired against him. He knows it, too, by the way,” said Rubio, who declined to explain the source of his information. “So this notion that Maduro is winning is ridiculous.”
Diaz-Balart, Rubio and Scott spoke to the press following a meeting with activists, including the wife and sister of Guaido’s chief of staff, Roberto Marrero, who was arrested in March by Venezuelan security forces.
Read the rest here.
Today, Rubio joined Senator Scott (R-FL), Congressman Díaz-Balart (R-FL) and members of the Venezuelan, Colombian, Cuban and Nicaraguan community leaders in Doral, FL in support of freedom and human rights in Venezuela.