I missed the part where Jefferson promised Louis the XVIth exclusive access to the colonies' wealth, and then France abducted the King.

Better analogy would be Pinochet's coup. Nationalists calling for the US to coup their own country and place them in charge in exchange for acting like docile puppets to US interests. This is exactly what is happening there, Trump said so a few hours ago.

I was completely unaware that Maduro was a foreign colonial power like Britain.

The military clearly moved (or strategically chose to indicate they wouldn't move) for a paranoid, military-aligned dictator to be captured by a small force with only naval backup exactly when everybody most expected the US to move. Unless there's a faction there that actually likes Machado she may even be lower on the next-leader list than "Maduro pays his captors off with the contents of his offshore accounts, meaningful promises of oil money and empty statements about cracking down on narcotics trade". I assume he has ways of finding out who his loyalists are and who they aren't too...

I suspect there is also consideration of strategy here. The regime's lack of democratic approval is actually a benefit. A client state that has democratic approval has much more leeway to go against its master. A client regime that is unpopular with its population has no other base of support than the powerful country that put it there. This maximizes leverage.

> Which makes total sense

Which implies it's may not be the actual reason. The reason might be as trifling as being salty over Machado getting the Nobel peace prize, and not Trump.