Today's episode is sponsored by Better Medicare Alliance.

More than 35 million seniors and people with disabilities rely on Medicare Advantage for affordable, comprehensive health care.

But when payment rates fail to keep pace with rising medical costs, seniors can face higher out-of-pocket costs, fewer benefits, and fewer planned choices.

Learn more about what's at stake

for seniors at support medicare advantage.com. We will do whatever it takes and risk, whatever we

have to do, to have a free Venezuela, to which we will bring our children back home.

Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation.

I'm Dasha Burns, Politico's White House Bureau Chief,

and every week on this show, I invite one of the most compelling and sometimes unexpected

power players in Washington and beyond in for a chat to find out how they're navigating

and shaping this incredible era of American politics.

And this week, I sat down with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Karina Machado.

And as fate would have it, our interview happened exactly one month to the day

since the U.S. captured Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife.

But long before Maduro's capture, Machado had become one of the fiercest advocates for democracy

in Venezuela. And that earned her the Nobel Peace Prize last year, which she then gifted to

President Trump in January. Now, many Venezuelans see Machado as a possible future leader of the nation. In fact,

back in 2023, she won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for Venezuela's

2024 presidential election, but she was barred from running for public office by the Maduro regime.

So instead, she rallied the opposition party behind Edmundo Gonzalez,

and organized an independent vote count effort that showed Gonzalez winning the election.

But the Maduro government claimed victory and Machado was forced into hiding. Now, Maduro's

...