This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 31st, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela appears to be in the final stages of accruing all power in the country

to himself.

Cato's Juan Carlos Hidalgo discusses the vote to rewrite the country's constitution and the

appropriate next steps for the United States.

How credible is this vote in Venezuela?

It's not credible at all.

The Constitution says that if a government wants to call a

constituent assembly he will have to hold a vote first a referendum that what

Chabe did in 1999 when he called for a constituent assembly. In this case,

Maduro skipped that part for obvious reasons.

Poles indicate that between 80 to 85% of Venezuelans don't want a constituent assembly.

We saw that two weeks ago the opposition called for a plebiscite, an unofficial plebiscite, and over 7.5 million Venezuelans came to

vote and rejecting the call for a constituent assembly.

So Venezuelans have been very clear that they don't want this and the

international community has been very clear in the last few hours that they don't

recognize the results of this constituent assembly countries from Argentina

Brazil, Peru, the United States,

Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the European Union, have explicitly say that they

don't recognize the results. So the pressure is growing on the Marluro regime,

given that the people in the streets

...