“We will stay here until there is a military intervention or the electoral court changes what is happening,” said Antoniel Almeida, 45, the owner of a party-supply store who was helping run the blockade. Mr. Almeida believed the election was rigged. “We need an investigation,” he said.

Television screens up and down the country only showed jubilant crowds, draped in the Venezuelan flag, dancing and cheering on the president.

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator".

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.

Yet claims of fraud were still bubbling up — including from right-wing voices in the United States.

"The will to compete and dominate, that made him so successful in business, did not magically shut off when he came home," she recalled, adding that he told her while dancing at their wedding, "I am the alpha in this relationship."

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.

Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

By February 12, security forces and armed pro-government civilian groups had begun responding violently to the escalating protests, which by the last week of the month had resulted in about a dozen deaths.

During his first term, the economy went into freefall and many Venezuelans blame him and his socialist government for the country's decline.

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

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp. Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

In August 2013, Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time.

“The will of the majority expressed at the polls should never be challenged,” he said, “and we will move forward in building a vlogdolisboa sovereign, just country with less inequality.”