OAN Staff Cory Hawkins
2:27 PM – Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Texas Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett, appearing as a guest on an episode of “The View,” directly compared President Donald Trump to former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, relating the anniversary of the January 6th Capitol protests to the recent U.S. military operation that captured the socialist dictator.
Crockett (D-Texas), a longtime critic of President Trump, continued her critique on a Tuesday episode of the ABC talk show, likening him to Maduro and arguing that the Venezuelan dictator succeeded where the U.S. President failed, implying Trump harbors authoritarian ambitions.
“As we sit here on Jan. 6, I do want to be clear, somebody else was trying to be a Maduro of the United States. Somebody else wanted to do the exact same thing. The difference is Maduro was successful. I also want to point out that we now in the state of Texas and around this country are enduring this ridiculous redistricting scheme. Again, because [Trump] doesn’t really believe in free and fair elections,” Crockett told “The View” on Tuesday.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured in Venezuela last Saturday in a U.S. military operation initiated by the Trump administration’s Department of War. After being flown to the United States, they appeared in federal court in Manhattan to face a superseding indictment that includes charges such as narco‑terrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to import cocaine — charges originally filed in the Southern District of New York from a 2020 indictment. Both pleaded not guilty.
During the recent taping, Rep. Crockett argued that President Trump did not carry out the strikes in Venezuela out of concern for the Venezuelan people or Americans, while pushing back on the administration’s stated motives.
“This ain’t about Venezuelans. I get that there are people that don’t like the leader. But guess what, there are a lot of people that don’t like our leader,” she said. “And, and regardless, somebody coming into the United States and grabbing our leader in the middle of the night and killing people in this country, I’m sure everybody would be outraged at them doing it that way.”
Crockett also argued that the military strikes in Venezuela were illegal and unconstitutional, lacking congressional approval.
“The biggest problem that I have is that it was illegal. Everything that this administration does is illegal, and so I don’t know how you take the moral high ground when you are actually executing something in an unconstitutional way in the first place, and so if you have what you needed, which he truly believes that, I guess, then you just would have went to Congress and gotten us involved, but instead, we’re hearing leaks and reports he talked to oil folk, but he didn’t talk to Congress,” she said.
However, others have disputed whether congressional approval was legally required for this specific operation. Defenders, such as Trump officials and legal scholars, contend it was a limited law enforcement operation to apprehend an indicted fugitive, not requiring congressional approval.
“Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) told Fox [News] that ‘the Constitution does not give the President the right to initiate military action.’ That is entirely incorrect. The Constitution does not give a president the right to declare war. However, presidents are allowed to use military forces without such a declaration,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor, best-selling author, and legal analyst, posted on X on Sunday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly dismissed the argument that the administration needed congressional approval for the strikes during an NBC “Meet the Press” segment on Sunday.
“This was not an action that required congressional approval,” Rubio responded. “In fact, it couldn’t require congressional approval because this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation. This is a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action. It was a very delicate operation, too. It was one that required all these conditions to be in place at the right time, in the right place.”
Toward the end of 2025, Crockett announced that she would be pursuing the 2026 Democrat nomination in the U.S. Senate race in Texas.
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