The dictator of Venezuela has claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election. Although credible pre-election opinion polls showed Nicolas Maduro losing by a significant margin, although all exit polls on Sunday showed the same thing, and although millions of anti-Maduro Venezuelans flooded the streets outside polling stations, Maduro somehow beat Edmundo Gonzalez 51%-44%, according to the National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro.

China and Russia have rushed to endorse Maduro’s victory, lending their voices rather than democratic credentials to election theft. Brazil’s socialist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, also endorsed this electoral fiction as well, pledging that he would “not endorse any narrative that there was fraud.”