Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro said on Monday that he is “more famous than Taylor Swift” in the United States due to media coverage of him.
Maduro, during an event with members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) broadcast by his regime’s flagship propaganda television channel VTV, claimed that he finds himself “still surprised” to see coverage of himself in U.S. media. As such, he said that he feels “more famous” than Taylor Swift and other international artists.
“And I say, ‘Damn, I’m famous. I’m more famous than Taylor Swift in the United States right now, than [Colombian singer] Karol G. I’m more famous than Bad Bunny. I even want to record an album. To see if we can get some funding for more community council and commune projects with the sales from the album,’” Maduro said, asserting that “I sing well — I mean, I don’t sing that badly.”
Maduro reportedly justified the surprise of his alleged fame by describing himself as “a boy from the neighborhoods of Caracas, born on November 23, 1962, and educated in the assemblies of the working class,” who today “causes so much irritation to the American empire.”
“What do they fear from me? If it’s not me, it’s a people standing up in battle, Bolivarian, chavista, masters of their own destiny, who will never be humiliated or surrendered, and who will defeat imperialism in the face of any threat it makes against our beloved homeland,” Maduro said.
The socialist dictator asserted to his audience that he is “attacked” by U.S. media because “the imperialist vision always personifies itself in one man,” and argued that “if they say all the extravagant things and lies that no one in the United States or the world believes, it’s for a reason.”
Maduro is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges and stands accused by U.S. courts of being a leader, if not the head, of the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking operation run by top members of the socialist regime and the Venezuelan military.
In recent weeks, Maduro and numerous Venezuelan socialist officials have repeatedly claimed that the United States’ ongoing military efforts to fight drug traffickers in Caribbean international waters is instead a pretext for a purported plan to “invade” Venezuela, oust Maduro from power, and steal the country’s resources. In late October, Maduro claimed that his regime foiled three “CIA terrorist plots” seeking to oust him, but failed to present any evidence of these alleged plans.
The Venezuelan dictator also sent a rambling message in “English” to President Trump on late October, telling Trump “no crazy war, please.”
“Not war, not war, not war, yes peace, yes peace, yes peace forever, forever, forever, peace forever. No crazy war, no crazy war no crazy war,” Maduro said at the time. “Please please please, yes please peace forever, peace forever. Victory forever the pits, victory forever the pits.”
Throughout the Tuesday socialist event, Nicolás Maduro defended PSUV’s role in the country’s “electoral conundrums” and dismissed criticism of his regime, which has promoted “Venezuelan democracy” under his rule.
“Of 32 elections in 26 years, we have won 30, with an increasingly aware population that is renewing itself and has built a powerful popular machinery of values,” Maduro said.
“We have won very difficult electoral processes. There are colleagues in Latin America who tell us this with admiration and others who look at us with envy. I’m sorry, because I don’t envy anyone. Do what you have to do, and don’t mess with us,” he continued.
Maduro became president of Venezuela in 2013 after his predecessor, late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez directly appointed him as the new head of his regime weeks before Chávez died from an undisclosed form of cancer in March 2013. Since then, Maduro has stayed in power through several sham presidential elections in which only handpicked “rivals” are allowed to freely run against him.
The Venezuelan socialist regime has only “lost” two sham elections over the past 26 years. The first one, in 2007, narrowly foiled Hugo Chávez’s attempt to modify the Venezuelan constitution and introduce socialist reforms into the core legal text. Chávez nevertheless imposed his socialist reforms through different decrees and laws in the following years before dying in 2013.
The second one, in 2015, saw the Venezuelan opposition obtain a two-third majority in the National Assembly. The outgoing socialist-controlled parliament moved to quickly stack the Supreme Court with loyalists, who on the first days of the new Congress, held parliament in “contempt” under dubious electoral fraud accusations, declaring all Congressional acts null and void, effectively nullifying the results of the 2015 election. The opposition-led Congress, rendered powerless and unable to legally act, was ultimately replaced through a sham election in 2020.
On July 28, 2024 — Hugo Chávez’s birthday — Maduro held a sham presidential election that he claims he “won” despite not having shown any type of voter tally or documentation that can demonstrate an alleged victory at press time. The Venezuelan opposition rallied around elderly diplomat Edmundo González, the only genuine opposition candidate that Maduro allowed to run in the sham election alongside other handpicked “rivals” after the Maduro regime refused to allow María Corina Machado of the center-right Vente Venezuela party to run in the election despite Machado having overwhelmingly won the opposition’s 2023 primary election process.
Machado and the Venezuelan opposition contested Maduro’s fraudulent victory, presenting voter tallies allegedly obtained on the day of the election that, they claimed, show González defeating Maduro in a landslide. The tallies, collected thanks to the extensive efforts of Machado and her party, remain under the custody of the government of Panama since January. Machado remains in hiding at an undisclosed location somewhere in Venezuela since the aftermath of the sham 2024 election.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in October for her efforts in trying to restore democracy to Venezuela, eliciting the ire of Maduro, other members of his regime, and the international left. Machado dedicated her award to President Donald Trump and the people of Venezuela.
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