Biden Admin. Owes Trump a $25 Million Bounty for Capturing Maduro

Shortly before leaving office in January 2025, the Biden administration raised the U.S. bounty on Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro to $25 million. If anyone has earned that reward, it is President Trump.

Democrats and liberal activists are melting down over the U.S. role in removing Maduro from power. Meanwhile, Venezuelans are celebrating and publicly thanking President Trump. Across the world, Cubans, Iranians, Burmese, and others living under authoritarian regimes are openly calling on Trump to take similar action against the dictators who oppress them.

Ironically, American liberals and Democrats appear to be among the few groups upset by Maduro’s ouster. As with the deportation of MS-13 gang member Kilmar Ábrego García or the backlash against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s challenge to harmful food additives, Trump has once again pushed the left into defending the indefensible. To their credit, they are putting considerable effort into doing so, even when it defies logic.

Maduro’s illegitimacy is not in dispute. He stole Venezuela’s July 2024 election. Independent exit polls showed opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia winning roughly two-thirds of the vote, yet Maduro declared himself the victor. The regime responded with brutal repression, jailing thousands of protesters and dissidents. Security forces were accused of arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

Venezuela’s economy has collapsed under Maduro’s rule. Nearly eight million Venezuelans—about a quarter of the population—have fled the country over the past decade. The government also barred María Corina Machado, the overwhelming winner of the opposition primary, from running at all.

Despite media narratives suggesting Trump stood alone, more than 50 countries refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. The Carter Center concluded that the 2024 election failed to meet international standards and could not be considered democratic, citing the regime’s refusal to release polling-station-level results as a fundamental violation of electoral principles.

The Biden administration itself acknowledged Maduro’s illegitimacy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the results did not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people. On January 10, 2025, the State Department formally declared that Maduro lost the election and had no right to claim the presidency, recognizing González Urrutia as the rightful winner.

Biden largely maintained Trump-era sanctions, briefly offering limited relief in 2023 to encourage free elections. When Maduro reneged on his commitments, sanctions were reinstated in April 2024. By January 2025, sanctions and visa restrictions targeted thousands of Maduro-aligned officials.

According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration even discussed offering pardons to Maduro and his inner circle in exchange for stepping aside before his planned inauguration. Trump’s first administration placed a $15 million bounty on Maduro in 2020. Days before leaving office, Biden raised that bounty to $25 million and added additional rewards for Maduro’s top lieutenants.

Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer criticized Trump’s actions in Venezuela, despite previously faulting him in 2019 for not doing enough to remove Maduro. In the end, Trump accomplished more to remove Maduro than Biden, Schumer, or any other world leader.

The United States, the European Union, and international bodies all issued statements condemning the stolen 2024 election. They agreed Maduro was illegitimate. Only Trump 2.0 followed words with action.

By his own administration’s terms, the bounty stands at $25 million. President Trump earned it.

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