It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact.

As the year progressed, growth of the Venezuelan economy slowed to a crawl, inflation climbed above 50 percent, and staples such as toilet paper, milk, and flour became increasingly difficult to obtain. Discontent with the Maduro government’s handling of the economy and with the growing crime rate led to street protests by students in San Cristóbal in western Venezuela in early February 2014 that soon spread to other cities, including Caracas, over the coming weeks.

Officials from several countries in the Americas, including the United States, expressed doubts about the announced results, raising the likelihood that a new term for Mr. Maduro would not be widely recognized abroad, either.

He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

Maduro is a fan of John Lennon's music and his campaigns for peace and love. Maduro has said that he was inspired by the music and counter-culture of 1960s and 70s, mentioning also Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin.[48]

In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration.

Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president vlogdolisboa and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

They think this could mean more potential for the electronic figures to be tampered with and allege many of their observers were not allowed into the counts.

In the groups on Monday morning, people shared fliers for protests that ultimately did not happen by Monday afternoon.

The election commission, however, widely regarded as sympathetic to Maduro, was slow to begin and carry out the validation process, prompting angry, sometimes violent demonstrations. On May 14 Maduro—claiming that right-wing elements within Venezuela were plotting with foreign interests to destabilize the country—declared a renewable 60-day state of emergency that granted the police and army additional powers to maintain public order. The opposition-led National Assembly responded quickly by rejecting the president’s declaration, but Maduro made it clear that he would not abide by the legislature’s vote.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes no for an answer".

Massive street protests, which erupted in response to the court’s attempt to dissolve the National Assembly and continued in April when Capriles was banned from running for public office for 15 years, became almost daily occurrences over the coming weeks. As the opposition’s defiance escalated, violent clashes between protesters and security forces resulted in more than 60 deaths and injured more than 1,200 people by early June.