Juan Guaidó is the Venezuelan opposition figure the United States recognized as the country’s interim president starting in 2019, in an attempt to depose Nicolás Maduro. John Kiriakou dismisses the effort, and Guaidó’s legitimacy along with it: “When we were at Sputnik, I always referred to Juan Guaidó as George Washington University grad student Juan Guaidó — because that’s all he was.”[1][2]
Kiriakou recounts that a reporter, which he believes was from MSNBC, once asked then-National Security Adviser John Bolton why he continued to refer to Guaidó as “President Guaidó” when the Venezuelan constitution held that an unassumed presidency lapses if the office is not taken up within 30 days of election — and Guaidó had never been elected at all. Per Kiriakou, Bolton had no real answer.[2]
Kiriakou says the U.S. later tried the same approach with María Corina Machado, but argues both efforts were doomed because Venezuelans who support Maduro do so out of allegiance to the Chavista revolutionary ideology, not personal loyalty to Maduro himself.[1]