Venezuela's Maduro declares himself 'alive and victorious' after alleged assassination attempt
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was not harmed by a drone carrying explosives which allegedly targeted him for assassination during a Saturday speech in Caracas.
The Maduro government has labeled the incident an attack and says seven soldiers were wounded. Footage of the speech shows Maduro and his wife reacting to a noise and looking to the sky, but an Associated Press report suggests some firefighters at the scene have questioned the regime's account.
Maduro blamed domestic critics and the outgoing president of Colombia for the attack, appearing on television several hours later to declare himself "alive and victorious."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.