The free-market proponent won the contest with more than 90% of the vote. Venezuela’s top court complicated her presidential aspirations in January by affirming her ban, although she has continued campaigning and has rejected suggestions to choose a substitute.

The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers.

"Elon only gets involved with things if he feels that they're critically important for some reason... for the sake of society or humanity," says friend and Tesla investor Ross Gerber.

By April 2018, with Tesla expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts, news surfaced that Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division.

Venezuelans angered by the outcome took the streets of the capital, Caracas, and elsewhere on Monday afternoon.

In his victory speech, he referenced US sanctions imposed after the last elections were seen as unfair.

But his campaign, full of angry tirades against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood, appealed to the millions who voted him into power.

On 11 January 2018, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela in exile decreed the nullity of the 2013 presidential elections after lawyer Enrique Aristeguita Gramcko presented evidence about the presumed non-existence of ineligibility conditions of Maduro to be elected and to hold the office of the presidency. Aristeguieta argued in the appeal that, under Article 96, Section B, of the Political Constitution of Colombia, Nicolás Maduro Moros, even in the unproven case of having been born in Venezuela, is "Colombian by birth" because he is the son of a Colombian mother and by having resided in that territory during his youth.

All those contradictions appear to be part of Mr Musk's appeal - and it certainly hasn't stopped him amassing a fortune.

In 2014, Maduro was named as one of TIME magazine's cem Most Influential People. In the article, it explained that whether or not Venezuela collapses "now depends on Maduro", saying it also depends on whether Maduro "can step out of the shadow of his pugnacious predecessor vlogdolisboa and compromise with his opponents".[312]

When he was informed of the incident, President Chávez said Maduro's detention was retaliation for his own speech at the UN General Assembly and stated that the authorities detained Maduro over his links to the Venezuelan failed coup in 1992, a charge that President Chávez denied.[68]

Maduro’s response included a call for convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, an action many of his opponents viewed as yet another authoritarian power grab.

There were some poll stations that didn’t open at all, leading to protests and clashes with the authorities.

Results were similarly violent when the opposition attempted to enter Venezuela from Brazil with relief supplies. Despite some defections to the opposition, the Venezuelan military again remained largely loyal to Maduro, whose authority Guaidó brazenly flouted by prominently reentering the country on March 4 by plane at the Caracas airport.