Venezuela: Stolen Election And The Struggle For Liberty

>> H.R. McMaster: America and other free and open societies face crucial challenges and opportunities abroad that affect security and prosperity at home. This is a series of conversations with guests who bring a deep understanding of today's battlegrounds and creative ideas about how to compete, overcome challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and secure a better future.

I am H.R. McMaster, this is Battlegrounds.

>> Presenter: In this episode of Battlegrounds, our focus is on Venezuela's authoritarian socialist regime and the July 2024 stolen election. Our guest, Leopoldo Lopez, is a former mayor of Caracas, opposition leader and former political prisoner known for his pro democracy activism. Mr. Lopez received his bachelor's degree from Kenyon College and master's in public policy from Harvard University in the 1990s.

Upon returning to Venezuela, he worked as an economic advisor for the state owned oil and gas company PDVSA and later taught at Universidad Catalika Andres as a professor of institutional economics. Elected mayor of Caracas Chacao district in 2000, he won re election in 2004 with 81% of the vote.

Four years later, the Chavez regime banned Lopez from running for public office. He founded the Voluntad Popular, a popular will party in 2009 in response to mounting human rights abuses under the Chavez and Maduro regimes. In 2014, after advocating for peaceful demonstrations, Lopez was unjustly detained and sentenced to nearly 14 years behind bars accused of inciting violence.

The UN declared his detention illegal and called for his release. He endured over 500 days of solitary confinement while wrongfully imprisoned. In 2020, Lopez staged a harrowing escape from Venezuela to reunite with his family in Spain. He co-founded and now leads the World Liberty Congress, an organization championing political dissidents and pro-democracy activists around the world.

Venezuela fell under socialist rule in 2002 when Hugo Chavez rose to power on promises of wealth redistribution and grand government spending programs. Chavez presided over a kleptocratic regime that made Venezuela a hub for criminal networks, money laundering, and large scale corruption schemes. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, oversaw the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the exodus of 20% of Venezuela's population while accelerating the country's descent into autocracy.

United Nations investigators have cited systematic torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings as evidence of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Maduro regime. For a more comprehensive background on Venezuelan history, we encourage you to watch the March 2022 Battlegrounds episode with Leopoldo Lopez. In October 2023, the Biden administration agreed to ease sanctions on Venezuelan oil, gas, and gold in exchange for Maduro's promise of free and fair presidential elections.

Three months later, the regime undermined the agreement when Venezuelan courts barred Maria Cortina Machado, the leading opposition candidate from running against Maduro. Little known diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez ran in her place. Despite widespread voter intimidation and suppression efforts by the regime, voting machine records indicate that Gonzalez defeated Maduro by an overwhelming two to one margin.

The regime controlled national electoral council nevertheless declared Maduro the winner of the election. This brazen attempt to steal the election sparked mass protests across Venezuela. Maduro's security forces have already killed around two dozen people and detained more than 2,000 while launching a terror campaign called Operation Toontun to target protesters and election monitors.

In early September, opposition leader Gonzalez fled to Spain seeking political asylum. We welcome Mr. Leopoldo Lopez to discuss ongoing protests in Venezuela, the Maduro regime's tactics of repression and prospects for the restoration of the Venezuelan constitution and the end of Maduro's despotic rule.

>> H.R. McMaster: Leopoldo Lopez, hey, welcome back to Battlegrounds.

And I can't believe it's been since February of 2022 once we last talked, there's a lot to talk about. Thanks for joining us, great to see you.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: No, thank you, H.R., thank you. And it's always great talking to you.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, I admire your courage, your tenacity, tremendously yours and other members of the Venezuelan opposition, we have a lot to talk about, right?

Because of the election in July and the theft of the election afterwards by Maduro. I wonder though if you might catch us up. Take us back since we last talked and talk about how the opposition movement, those who were advocating for freedom and restoration of the constitution, how did it evolve between 2022 and an election in which Maduro was soundly defeated?

And could you kind of catch us up on that and the role that some of your colleagues, Maria Corino Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez and the leaders of the opposition, how they put it together, such a successful movement in those last couple of years.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Yeah, so it's a great question and to make a long story short, I would start by 2022, as you say, as a milestone.

2022, we were still in COVID living out of that very dramatic moment that we all lived and actually for autocrats. And I didn't think this at the beginning, but it came up being that way, COVID was a great opportunity to impose social control mechanisms. Even in democracies this happened, but in autocracies, I mean, think of what happened in China.

And in the case of Venezuela, Maduro has shut down the country completely. It was the first country was shut down, not for COVID and health reasons, but for political reasons to kind of kill the movement that was going on at the time. So 2022, there was a path going forward that was under the agreement amongst all of the democratic platform, the different democratic movements, to legitimize the leadership through a primary process.

And that took some time, but the primary took place finally in October of 2023. In that primary, Maria Corino Machado was elected. She was elected by a very high support, and she became the candidate of all of the democratic sector, of all of the democratic opposition, and the dictatorship decided to disqualify her.

In the meantime, and I think this is important for context, March 22, after the Russian invasion to Ukraine, the US engaged a bilateral conversation with Venezuela. This took place with a trip from the representative of the National Security Council for the Americas, Juan Gonzalez, to Caracas. And that led to a bilateral negotiation between the Biden administration and the Maduro regime.

There were different issues being discussed, as we learned later. Migration, oil licenses, and democracy. And at the end of the agreements, they brought the Venezuelan democratic opposition to put the democratic content to this agreement, and that was called the Barbaros agreement. In this context, many things happened, there were prisoners exchanges, the US gave back to Maduro, Alex Saab, who is the main handyman for all of the kleptocracy of Maduro, money laundering, sanctions, evasion.

He was captured on his way to Tehran, he was facing a money laundering trial in the US, he was sent back to Venezuela. And the commitment of Maduro was that he was going to lead a democratic election. Well, that didn't happen, Maria Corina Machado was disqualified to run for office.

And then all of the leadership put in a very difficult spot to participate or not, not having a candidate. So at the time, Edmundo Gonzalez, who is a Venezuelan diplomat, who was also one of the two people that formally registered the political party, that is the Coalition party, he was the only person that was able to be registered.

He never wanted this, he never thought that this was going to be his thing. This is a person that has always been a very committed diplomat to democracy, to unity, and he was seen in this position. So Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez led an incredible campaign all throughout Venezuela.

A campaign that had two levels, one level, mobilizing the people, and the other level the battleground, to put it in context of this program. The battleground of the day of the election is 16,000 voting centers with more than 60,000 voting machines. That required more than 200,000 people involved in the process to organize them under strict dictatorship with censorship in order to do two things.

To guarantee that the people actually voted and to get the receipt, the voting tally, from each one of the voting machines. And we have been, in a way, practicing for this for years because we have been going to elections for years. The autocracy in Venezuela-

>> H.R. McMaster: Since Chavez took over in 99, right?

Since he took over in 99, yeah.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: So there's been many elections. And so came July of 28, and as the polls predicted, as the streets predicted, Edmundo Gonzalez won by a landslide. He won by 70% of the vote, and without surprise, Maduro decided to steal the election.

And then he announced a fraudulent result, he took that to his crony Supreme Court, validated that. And that's what's happened two months ago. And of course, there's been different reactions at the international level. And of course, there are great challenges internally, but we are still very optimistic, that we are fighting for this transition to democracy.

>> H.R. McMaster: Could you say a little bit more about how the opposition organized such a massive effort? And I was really impressed by the big role that women played and mothers played in the movement. And then maybe just share with our viewers a little bit about, it's not comical because it's very serious.

But just how bad the COVID up was from Maduro, how well the evidence was presented, and then the changing stories of the Maduro. It was obvious to anybody that he was just brazenly stealing the election. But stealing an election, as you mentioned, that was a landslide in favor of the opposition and Edmundo Gonzalez.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Yes, so as I said, there were 16,000 voting centers. And in a way, this is a war to be won in one day with 16,000 battles, that's the way we have been preparing for this. And this is something that needs to be seen in that way, in the sense that you have voting centers with different characteristics.

Some are urban, other are rural, some are small, other are big, or some are the stronghold of the dictatorships, other of the democratic sector. So you need to take into consideration all of that and get the representation in each one of those voting centers. And to have those people trained in very specific tasks that they need to complete that day, primarily to get the voting tally, to get it out of the center.

And to take it to a place that was the centralizing point, to scan each one of the voting tallies and upload them immediately in a website. So that in real-time we were able to have not just the real results, but the element of proof with QR codes and the signature of the witness of the dictatorship, the witness of the democratic sector, of the military.

So it was all there, this is something that we have done before. But for this time, we had been preparing with all of the experience of all of the elections that we participated before. It was an effort that was unified effort, all of the political parties, all civil society, just people engaged in a very passionate way to make this their own victory.

And then, as you say, Maduro stole the election in a way that it's clear. First and most is very clear to the military, why? Because in Venezuela, every election, and this is historical, there is a deployment of the army during the day of the election. They are in charge of safeguarding all of the electoral material.

This plan is called the Republic plan, and it deploys, I think, around 300,000 soldiers around the 16,000 voting centers. And they were there when every voting center read the results in public, they were there, they signed it. So this is something that cannot be hidden. I mean, Maduro can say he won, he can push with repression, but the world and primarily the Venezuelan people, the military, everybody knows that he stole the election.

>> H.R. McMaster: Leopoldo, could you talk a little bit about, so what has Maduro done since then, right, to repress the people? What are the mechanisms of state control that he's used? We've heard about this knock, knock campaign where he's rounded up thousands of political opponents, and we've heard reports of over 20 people killed.

How is the regime staying in power, and what are the mechanisms of internal control that Maduro is using?

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Well, Maduro, immediately after he announced the fraud, he deployed a massive repression campaign. Primarily, directed to all of the political leadership at all levels, starting with Edmundo Gonzalez, who was the president elect.

There was a warrant for his arrest, he had to go to the embassy of the Dutch Republic for more than a month. But the leaders of my movement, Volunta Popular, Frey Superlano, Roland Carregno, and more than 50 others have been detained, ever since. More than 3,000 people have been detained.

Going into the election we had 300 political prisoners, now, we have anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500. We don't even know many of them young underage kids that had been protesting, or simply caught for random reasons. And it's very difficult for some Someone who has never experienced living in a dictatorship what it means to have the control of the state.

And I think the key to understand this is the strategic use of fear. So that's what's deployed. It's not only the numbers, it's also the projection of fear. So what they do is they go after all of the political sectors. So everybody now is in clandestine mode. Then they go after just regular citizens, take their phones and if they have a WhatsApp message that is in support of the democratic opposition.

And Edmundo, they are detained and they are blackmailed. So this spreads out and everybody gets to know about this. Maduro goes against WhatsApp, he goes against X, he goes against social media. So if they catch your phone and you have social media, you can be detained. And this is happening every day and it's massively.

And that's what Maduro has. Maduro has the support of the armed forces, of the police, of the prosecutors, of the judges. That is not legitimate, but he's using it to repress, to impose fear on the venezuelan population.

>> H.R. McMaster: So we know that there's been a multinational effort to try to get the election recognized and to get Maduro out of power.

Various types of pressure has been put on him. The US government, to get to this kind of an election thought that it would be smart to alleviate sanctions on the Maduro regime. I was opposed to that myself. I thought that was a bad idea. And I think it turns out to have been a bad idea.

But what can be done now internally? What is the state of the opposition? What is the plan going forward to. To try to see the election results recognized and then, hey, what can be done from outside to support the Venezuelan people?

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Yeah, so let me start where we ended.

What does Maduro have? The military, the armed forces, the prosecutor, the judges? And why does he have that support? It's a complex issue. But if we can summarize it in a very concrete way, we can say that he has the support for two reasons. One, because Maduro offers them a mantle of impeachment, unity of protection, and two, because Maduro offers streams of cash flow.

And I remember last time we were talking about this issue that one of the things we spoke about was that autocrats don't care about GDP, they care about cash flow. So the country has contracted 80% in GDP, Maduro doesn't care. People are poor like ID. It's the poorest country today in Latin America but Maduro has cash flow.

So those are the two things that Maduro has to offer to the structure that is supporting him. So what can be done? I think that from now until the 10 January, which is a milestone, that we need to work internally and externally towards that. That is the date of the inauguration by constitution.

So that's a date coming up in 2.5 months. That needs to be front and center of everyone who cares about Venezuela and of the strategy going forward internally and externally. And in that sense, we need the recognition that Edmundo Gonzalez won the election. This is something obvious, this is something simple, but it's not happening.

Europe has recognized through the parliaments but not the government. They have not recognized Maduro, but they have not recognized yet the fact that Mundo Gonzalez won. So that's a very basic thing that we need. Second, I believe that if the mantle of impunity is what Maduro has to offer, well, there needs to be sanctions against those people who committed the fraud.

Who are massively plundering the resources of Venezuela through corruption and have been executing a campaign of repression that includes persecution and carceralization, torture and death. And I think that's something very concrete that needs to be done. Ideally it should be done led by the United States in coordination with other democratic countries.

In the understanding that this is a legitimate ask of the Venezuelan people to face not just Maduro, but the supporters of Maduro. Because Maduro, 48 hours after the fraud, he got the support of China, of Russia, of Iran, of Belarus, of Cuba, of Uganda, of Eritrea, of Nicaragua.

Though the autocratic camp has already spoken, and not just with words, but with action. There was a deployment of Russian forces going into Venezuela. There has been massive diplomatic support. We saw that at the UN this week and on the democratic side. And the democratic governments will still need commitment, timely commitment.

This is a timely, sensitive issue. The inauguration is January 10. It's a legitimate day, constitutional, and the Venezuelan people deserve that. We get all of the support because a win for Venezuela's democracy, it's a win for the region, it's a win for democracy in the continent, it's a win for democracy globally.

And it's a win for the United States because the United States should have as a primary strategic goal to expand and promote democracy, human rights and freedom.

>> H.R. McMaster: You made a couple of really important points and I'd like to just ask you to talk a little bit more about how the axis of authoritarians are supporting Venezuela.

And using Venezuela against the United States and the rest of the free world in this really effort to kind of tear down the rules and norms of international discourse. And replace them with a new set of rules that is sympathetic to their authoritarian forms of governance and their statist economic models.

I think some people think that, hey, to compete with China, everybody has to just focus on the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea. But the competition with China, the competition with Russia or Iran, it's playing out in the western hemisphere.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: I think this is a very important issue.

And to my surprise, it's not an obvious one for many people and even many informed people that there is. We can call an axis, an alliance of autocrats, Autocracy, Inc. As Anna Bob calls it, but there is an alliance of autocratic regimes. We need to understand that this is non ideological because you have the communists from China, the nationalists from Russia, and the theocrats from Iran and the kleptocrats from Venezuela.

So it's non ideological. It's about two things. It's about power and it's about a common enemy. The common enemy, it's democracy and the United States at the spearhead of democracy in the world. And they are playing hardball, very hardball, in Africa, in Latin America, in the UN. I've seen it when the discussions of Venezuela come up, how they all very disciplined, just go and support the regimen of Maduro or any other dictatorship.

So this is happening. And in the case of Venezuela, it's been deployed in many different ways. In the case of China, financially, for years, China has created what's called the Venezuelan Chinese fund just to engage financially in infrastructure projects as it's doing in Africa. To financially lock the commitment of governments from Africa and in this case Venezuela.

Diplomatically, they are all for support of Maduro. They have given Maduro different technologies for social control from facial recognition to other technologies to tightening the grip then we have Russia. Since 2007, Russia has engaged in a military relationship with Chavez first and now with Maduro. What used to be a NATO ally armed forces today has become a completely Russian defendant armed forces from the air defenses to the assault rifle, AK 103 to the training that entails.

There is this dependency but not only that. The Wagner group has been in Venezuela for years now. They have been in Venezuela close to Maduro, but also around the gold extraction, in the same way that the Wagner group operates in Africa. Then we have the network of kleptocrats.

And this is very important because the Russians are very similar to the system in Venezuela. That is a kleptocratic system, much more like organized crime structure than a government. And this has ample relations between the Russians and the venezuelan oligarchs. Then we have Iran. Iran has engaged in different ways, but primarily through energy.

Iran has been the mentor to Maduro on how to evade sanctions, how to do ship to ship transfers of oil. How to ghost commerce, most of the oil that is coming out of Venezuela, and how to use cryptocurrency to get payments for these oil shipments. And then there are different ways.

But as you can see, this is happening. I mean, this is not just not statements. These are not the spokespeople of these regimes saying things. These are these regimes doing actually things in one of the most strategically placed countries in the American continent. We are at the heart, in the middle right south of the Caribbean Sea, a couple strokes away from the US, close to the entire region.

And of course, this is strategic for many reasons. And if we put on top of that, the resources that Venezuela has of gold and water and oil is, of course, very strategic for these autocratic regimes as well.

>> H.R. McMaster: Leopoldo, there's a degree of skepticism in the United States about what people might call democracy promotion.

There's kind of a movement toward retrenchment or kind of a neo isolationist sentiment and an argument of, like, we have got problems here at home ourselves. What are we doing trying to promote democracy abroad? But I think what people miss who make that argument, they miss people like you.

It's not the United states coming up with the idea. It's supporting your courageous people like you and your colleagues in Venezuela or in Cuba or in Nicaragua, who are advocating for freedom for their families, for their country, and are worthy of our support. We're not trying to inject democracy into Venezuela.

We're trying to help the Venezuelan people restore democracy. So could you talk a little bit more about that? About your relationships with some others in the hemisphere and beyond and what Americans should know about how worthy of their support they are. And maybe make a counterargument to this skepticism about what some people are calling their democracy promotion, as if we're promoting a foreign idea in countries like Venezuela.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Yeah, I think this is something very important, is just to understand that the struggle for democracy is borderless. I hear many times arguments, especially towards the Middle east and Africa, saying that democracy is not culturally fit for these countries. And then I asked the question. It's like, what do you mean by that?

You mean that the people in those countries are not culturally fit to be free to think freely, to move freely, to associate freely, to have property. I mean, you think that that is something that, that has to do with culture? No, Everyone.

>> H.R. McMaster: Leopoldo, you know what I call that?

I call that bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: That's absolutely, I mean, it's very condescending. It's very condescending. It's as if, we the people that live in autocratic regimes, we don't really know what we want. Of course we know what we want, of course we know. I mean, I know what freedom is about because I lost it and I lost it in every sense.

I mean, I was not able to speak. I was not able to move, I was always followed. I was not able to assemble. My organization was titled as a terrorist organization. Then my house was raided, was taken away from me. I was taken to prison, spent seven years in prison.

My family was divided. I was sentenced to 14 years of prison without rule of law, without possibility of defending myself. And that's only one story. That's my story, but that's one, that's one of millions of stories. So we know what freedom is because it's been taken away from us and we will fight.

I can tell you something, H.R. I mean, of course we want the support, but we are not begging the support. I mean, we will continue to fight. You know what I mean? Of course we will like that, this is something worthy of a bipartisan support in a very committed way.

And I would like to see the type of engagement of enthusiasm that we saw at the fall of the Berlin Wall when, there was this sentiment that it was worth it, fighting for democracy, that freedom meant something. Today seems that those ideas have become diluted and in a way questioned and in a way just relativized.

No, this is something worthy. If you care about the environment, if you care about human rights, if you care about corruption, if you care about equality, if you care about gender, if you care about any of these things, you need to care about freedom and democracy.

>> H.R. McMaster: I'd like to just ask you for our viewers.

Well, first of all, our viewers should get your book and read your book, but could you maybe share with them how you coped with the hardships that you summarized. But also how you resisted the regime's effort to instill fear in you and to break you down? And so how you and other courageous advocates for freedom can, can fight against that effort to break you down and to instill fear in you.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Yeah, after spending seven years in prison, I had to escape Venezuela. It was a decision I never wanted to make, but I had to make it. And I started to meet outside Venezuela during my exile. Other people like myself from very different countries, from Milan, Masih Alinejad.

From Russia, Gary Kasparov and from Uganda, Bobby Wine. From Nicaragua, Felix Maradiaga, from Belarus, Sviatlana, the team and wife of Alexei Navalny and many others. And it became very clear to us after talking that it didn't matter, that we were very different in terms of skin color, religion, institutions, even climate.

But when we spoke about our struggle fighting against autocratic regimes, it's incredible. It's as if we are part of the same movement for years because it's the same struggle. So that's how we decided to create the World Liberty Congress. And I found there a way of not just learning, but also working together in figuring out ways that we can become more effective in the struggle in each one of our countries, you were asking me also about how to face the hardships of prison.

I mean, it's a long story, but I can summarize it in the following way. I knew that I was going to go to prison because there had been many, many threats for some time that were intensifying. So I read a lot about different people's experience inside and outside Venezuela.

And from all of that that were very different experiences. The one thing that everybody mentioned was having a routine, and I think this resonates to you with the military, routine is just at the center of facing hardships and complexities. So I remember the first night I went to prison, February 18 of 2014, after a very long day with just massive protests, helicopters, just judges, and many things happening.

I was alone in my cell, it was very dark, it was very quiet, no sound,, and then I decided from day one, what was my routine going to be like? And my routine was, I would pray every day, I'm a Roman Catholic, but I think this applies to anyone with any faith.

Just have a spiritual commitment to humble yourself in a situation like this, to humble yourself, because it's the only way that you can go forward. Second, I would try to read, write, exercise my brain in some way, play, test, do math exercises, whatever, and three, exercise physically. And I decided to live my life in prison, day by day, so if I did those three things, I would win the day, and then I would go the next day to win the day.

And I never thought about when I was going to be free, I never thought of not even praying to God to take me out of prison, because I knew that that could be a mental trap. Because if you set yourself a time in the horizon for something and that something doesn't happen, you collapse, and you don't have the luxury of collapsing in prison.

So that was something that also helped me a great deal. And my pillar, my real pillar, was my wife, the love of my wife, my kids, my mother, who at times visited me even though I was in solitary confinement. I was able to know always that they were there, that the movement was there, that the people were there, and having a purpose, H.R. having a purpose, I think, is the magic of life.

It doesn't matter what purpose is, and I think that's what happiness is really about. And it's not about smiling, it's not about laughing, it's not about feeling cozy. Happiness is not that happiness is having a purpose, I mean, you can sweat your purpose, you can struggle for your purpose.

But that's, at least for me, that's what happiness is all about.

>> H.R. McMaster: That's a fantastic story and inspirational story, and, I think that as long as, as long as there are leaders like you there, there is hope for Venezuela and other oppressed peoples. Leopoldo, the last question is kind of an impossible one, but I'd like to ask you, how do you see the future of Venezuela?

How do you see the situation evolving? What should we be looking for, in the next months, the next year or so? I mean, do you feel optimistic about the opposition's ability to continue to advocate for freedom and ultimately to restore the constitution and show Maduro the door? What are you thinking about in terms of the future of Venezuela?

>> Leopoldo Lopez: I am optimistic for sure I am, and we've proven over the last two decades that the opposition has been growing, has been there, it reinvented itself, has continued, has changed leadership. I mean, different leadership, taking the same movement and taking it forward, and that gives me great confidence.

Second, I'm confident, optimistic because we won an election by a landslide, and it's very different to feel that you're a majority, to know that you're a majority. And now we know, and so I'm optimistic, and in terms of looking at the future, I would say that there are two periods and I think we need to separate them.

One between now and January 10 and then from January 10 forward because it's very important that we focus on January 10 as a critical milestone and that everything that we do internally, international, all the support that we need from the democratic government, from just civil society, democrats freedom, supporting people, organizations from around the world is around January 10.

We need all the pressure, I believe personally that sanctions should be imposed led by the US in coordination with other countries There will be criticisms from countries like Colombia and Brazil and others, but I think that's the only way that there needs, that there is there to put on some pressure on Maduro.

Who should be sanctioned? Well, the people who committed the fraud, the people who plundered the resources of Venezuela, who were responsible for corruption, and the people at all levels of the chain of command who are committing the repression, incarceration, torture and killings of the Venezuelan people. We know who those people are, they could be sanctioned, and I think that would be a very strong message.

I also think that the cash flow of Maduro should be cut in different ways. In the short term, that means lifting the licenses or reimposing the sanctions on the oil sector in order for this massive cash flow that is coming primarily from Chevron, around $2 billion so far this year going into Maduro.

Actually, I want to make this comment because I read an article, an interview to the CEO of Chevron a couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal, and he was asked about Venezuela. And basically he said he was agnostic about democracy, that they don't take sides, that they engage with those who are in power.

That was very sad to read, and I think it might be a symptom of a bigger problem. I mean, we cannot have agnostic companies to democracy and freedom. At least I think that should be challenged because these are companies who are engaging, who are giving support, who are giving stability, who are giving legitimacy, who are pulling millions of dollars in lobbying to whitewash the image of this dictator who is committing crimes against humanity, who has an open investigation in the International Criminal Court.

I think it's important that there is a commitment to put all of the pressure into Maduro at this moment.

>> H.R. McMaster: I agree, and of course, we did this during the Trump administration in terms of the significant sanctions and then the holding on to any of the revenue and putting those in accounts that would be used once the opposition came back into power, got rid of Maduro.

So I think I agree completely with you on those actions, and I'd just like to offer you the last word, Leopoldo, what else do you think Americans and our international audience, your friends in Venezuela, if they are watching this program, what message do you have for them?

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Well, the first one is, as I said before, to be optimistic, and this is a struggle that is not just of the Venezuelan people.

If you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, you should care about Venezuela because this could be a big win for the region, for the world. And we need your support from just talking about the issue, analyzing the issue, to finding just diplomatic support, government support, to lobbying for different and concrete actions, to getting just different types of support to the democratic movement, and not forgetting that this is happening, because sometimes we think that what's in the news cycle is what the only things that are happening in the world.

We have been in the news cycle, but if Venezuela goes down in the news cycle this next couple of weeks, know that, that the issue is there and that we have a sensitive day coming up January 10.

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, Leopoldo Lopez, I admire you, you inspire me, and I know many, many other people.

Thank you for joining us on battlegrounds and helping us learn more about a critical battleground for Venezuelan people, but also for freedom and democracy around the world. Thanks for joining us, it's great to be with you again, Leopoldo.

>> Leopoldo Lopez: Thank you very much H.R. thank you very much to your team and to your audience, all the best.

>> H.R. McMaster: Thanks, Leopoldo.