Juan Guaidó on His Fight to Oust Maduro

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Mr. Guaido, I wonder whether you can, in English, give a message to the American people about your goals for Venezuela. What would you like the American people to know about what is happening there?

JUAN GUAIDO, PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELAN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY: Well, I want to thank you for this interview. I want to talk to all American people who want to help us to recover our democracy our liberty. And I know maybe you know some Venezuelan people in your country, you know all that would — they are good people, we are, and we want to reconstruct our country, our liberty.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Guaido, but the whole world is watching and waiting to see what is the plan for removing President Maduro. Do you rely on the military? How can you persuade the military? Tell me what the plan is?

GUAIDO (through translator): We have determined three phases. We understand we are in a dictatorship then we have the worst crisis here within Venezuela in terms of the large migration that’s leaving this country and what we need to be able to remove Maduro from power and have this transitional government which will then reconstruct all of the institutional basis for a free country. In order to do this, we have to pressure through political means to a dictator. Because in that manner, it is — his character is the way that — Maduro is characterized throughout the world. So, in this sense, we have to take away all of the support that he has at the moment through the military forces and to give amnesty to all of those militaries to be on the side of the constitution. This is an incentive, particularly for the armed forces. For example, although the functionaries that — who have (INAUDIBLE) Maduro, who have asked, who are still, at this moment, with Maduro, offer them an incentive to be able to remove themselves from that power and are ordering them yet to be able to remain not — to be able to take care of the interests of this country.