Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, compared Nicolás Maduro to President Donald Trump during an interview on "The View" on Tuesday.
"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 were captured in Venezuela on Saturday by the Trump administration and flown into New York, where they face federal charges that include narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons-related charges.
She made comparisons earlier in their conversation as she argued that the president didn't carry out the strikes in Venezuela because he cares about the people there.
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"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."
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
Crockett argued during "The View" that the strikes and capturing of Maduro were illegal due to a lack of congressional approval.
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"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.
During "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the argument that they needed congressional approval for the strikes.
"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."
Crockett announced last year she would pursue the 2026 Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race in Texas. Given Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in decades and Trump carried the state handily in 2024, her candidacy is considered a long shot.
