In some places, monitors were barred from entering polling places or they never appeared in the first place. Often, election officials simply refused to hand over the tallies.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software.

Some of the problems go back a long time. However, it is President Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez who are the target of much of the current anger.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

Also in August 2016, the National Election Council ruled that the opposition had collected almost twice as many signatures as were necessary for the first petition for a referendum on Maduro’s recall to be valid. However, it did not set a date for the next step in the process, which required some four million signatures to be collected in three days.

The opposition boycotted the July 30 election for Maduro’s constituent assembly, and thousands took to the streets as violent protests rocked the country. At least 10 people were killed, and an opposition politician was shot dead in his home just hours before polls opened. Maduro characterized the result, which placed his allies in a position to dramatically strengthen his power, as a “vote for the revolution.” The opposition claimed that nearly 90 percent of voters had abstained, however, and the absence of anti-fraud measures and independent observers led many in Venezuela and abroad to dismiss the legitimacy of the election.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet.

Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

Maduro a todos os momentos se orgulhou por nãeste ter precisado dos bancos das faculdades para adquirir o conhecimento qual o levou a ser idolatrado por milhões, contudo igualmente odiado por tantos outros, numa atitude política a todos os momentos desafiante.

Largely in response to declining world oil prices, Venezuela’s economy continued to struggle in 2015, with GDP tumbling and inflation further ballooning. Seemingly anxious to shift attention away from the country’s domestic woes, Maduro’s government was quick to focus on border-related disputes with neighbours Guyana and Colombia.

The coastal plains extend from the Colombian border and the Gulf of Venezuela eastward to the foothills of the coastal mountains, which are broken in the east by the Unare River basin. Farther east is the Orinoco delta, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean through a number of distributaries (

“I don’t want to set things on fire,” he said. “I don't want to be a flame. But we all know, in the best of options, it was a rigged election.”

[189] The ruling does not reproduce Maduro's copyright but it quotes a communication signed on 8 June by the Colombian Vice minister of foreign affairs, Patti Londoño Jaramillo, where it states that "pelo related information was found, nor civil registry of vlogdolisboa birth, nor citizenship card that allows to infer that president Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Colombian national". The Supreme Court warned the deputies and the Venezuelans that "sowing doubts about the origins of the president" may "lead to the corresponding criminal, civil, administrative and, if applicable, disciplinary consequences" for "attack against the State".[196]