Nicolás Maduro has been a marked man for the United States for quite some time.
If you recall, when Joe Biden was in office, he removed sanctions put in place during the first Trump administration to alleviate some of his oil problems, but he eventually put them back in place and also raised the reward for Maduro's capture.
Now, however, Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, is ripping Trump for daring to arrest the Venezuelan president.
Trump first placed sanctions against Venezuela in 2017, then expanded them in 2018, putting the pieces in place that would start to cripple the Venezuelan economy.
In October 2023, facing rising gasoline prices, Biden eased up on some of the sanctions Trump had enacted against Maduro.
Maduro being Maduro, he failed to live up to his end of the bargain, and Biden reinstated the sanctions in April 2024.
At the time, Maduro stated, "They think we're scared. But neither sanctions nor threats will damage our efforts to build a new economy for Venezuela."
One of the countries from which Biden was accepting migrants was Venezuela, with about 600,000 of them already living here and who were given temporary protected status by Biden before he left office.
This was in early January 2025, with only days left in Biden's term (a move the Trump administration would try to reverse in the courts).
Biden also announced that he was going to increase the reward for the arrest of Maduro to $25 million.
Bradley T. Smith, a treasury official at the time, stated, “The United States and its allies in the region have pushed Maduro to commit to a democratic transition. Instead, Maduro and his representatives have continued their violent repression in an attempt to maintain power, and have ignored the Venezuelan people’s calls from for democratic accountability.”
We are again in another scenario in which Biden once barked, but Trump bit, and Harris does not appreciate it at all.
On the arrest of Maduro, she stated, "Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable. That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before.”
Harris continued, "Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price."
First, this is not a war, not even close. Second, just about every move we make internationally revolves around energy, and to act otherwise is just a display of ignorance, so that argument does not wash. Third, this world is a far better place with Maduro behind bars, and based on the reactions of the Venezuelan people, Harris appears to be about as far off base on this as anyone could be.
