http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article230392499.html
By Jim Wyss
Miami Herald
May 14, 2019
Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has lost trust in his inner circle, can't venture out into public and is sleeping in a bunker as he clings to power in the shattered country, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the senior director of the White House National Security Council.
Speaking at the Concordia conference in Colombia's capital Tuesday, Claver-Carone, one of the Trump administration's key national security advisers, pushed back against the idea that a brief military uprising on April 30 in Caracas had been a failure, instead arguing that it had unveiled how many of Maduro's closest allies were plotting against him.
"One of the positive elements [we saw] is that there were many people involved," he said. "And the amplitude of [the conspiracy] is much larger than has been reported."
"I can count the people who support Maduro on one hand," he said. "If pro-Maduro sentiment existed, he wouldn't have to be surrounded by Cubans and Russians."
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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