Swampscott resident and 6th District congressional candidate Rick Jakious criticized the U.S. military action in Venezuela, suggesting that they “needlessly risk the lives of America’s military, spies and diplomats throughout the world” in pursuit of oil.
“There is no doubt that President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is illegal,” Jakious wrote in a post.
In a military strike, the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. At least seven explosions swept through Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, during the attack. Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández said Maduro and Flores were captured in their home, outside of Caracas. According to an indictment made public Saturday, Maduro is indicted on four counts of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
The overnight operation left several people dead, though Venezuelan officials have not confirmed the number.
Representatives and 6th District candidates criticized the attacks and questioned their motives. Many Democrats have said that the strike was not authorized. Jakious called out the “justification” as a “lie.”
“The president’s repeated justification for these strikes—drugs –is a lie, and he has now made clear why we are now occupying a foreign country: oil,” Jakious posted. “Trump’s fraudulent drug claim is the same one he used when he crippled the American economy and drove up prices with his disastrous tariffs. It also flies in the face of Trump’s recent pardon to the Honduran ex-president- convicted of drug trafficking in the U.S. – in December.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps combat veteran who currently serves as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called the military actions in Venezuela as “reckless, elective regime change” that is “risking American lives.”
“Is anyone going to just stop for a second and be honest? This is insane,” Moulton said on CNN Saturday. “What the hell are we doing? We’ve got a lot of problems in America today, and invading, occupying, running Venezuela does not solve any of them.”
Moulton also told MSNBC “that’s not democracy.”
“You don’t get to just invade a country when you don’t like the leader and want its oil,” Moulton said.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who will be Moulton’s opponent in the midterm elections, posted “Trump can’t manage the American economy and now he says he’ll run Venezuela and its oil infrastructure?”
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Markey said in a video. “By invading Venezuela and kidnapping President Maduro, Trump has broken Venezuela and now he claims that he is going to fix it, but now we know what this was all about all along: regime change and oil, oil, oil. We’ve seen what happens when we destabilize countries on behalf of American fossil fuel CEOs. They profit, our service members get hurt or die, and regions collapse.”
Markey’s Democratic Massachusetts representative peer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, also posted that “Trump’s unilateral military action to attack another country and seize Maduro — no matter how terrible a dictator he is — is unconstitutional and threatens to drag the U.S. into further conflicts in the region.”
Congressional candidate and former State Rep. Jamie Belsito told the Swampscott Tides that “any move toward U.S. military action in Venezuela must be treated with the seriousness it deserves.”
“It puts real Americans in harm’s way,” Belsito said. “This is yet another reckless act from Donald Trump that puts American lives at risk, threatens to destabilize the region, and distracts from urgent priorities at home. Our country must exercise restraint, exhaust diplomacy, and ensure we are prepared to care for those we ask to serve.”
Another candidate for the 6th District, State Rep. Tram Nguyen (18th Essex District) called Trump’s actions “reckless and unlawful.”
“This is about oil, not helping the Venezuelan people,” Nguyen posted. “My family came here as refugees fleeing foreign intervention and authoritarian rule. I know how fragile democracy is, and why this moment matters for Venezuela and the region.”
Dan Koh, who previously served as chief of staff for former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and is also running for the congressional position, posted a video from his car, sharing that “this is not about keeping Americans safe” or about “curbing the drug epidemic.”
“This is about oil. Venezuela sits on the largest reserve of oil in the world, not Saudi Arabia, not America. Trump knows this and so do his oil allies,” Koh said. “He told them, ‘Raise me $1 billion and I will kill renewable energy in this country and I will enrich you.’ That is exactly what he is doing…You should be disturbed about what happened just now. We need to fight back. This is not American.”
Beth Andres-Beck, a software engineer also running for the 6th District seat, called the invasion a ploy for “Trump’s personal piggybank.”
“It is wild that President Trump came out and boasted that this invasion was about stealing Venezuelan oil. Usually that would be a fringe conspiracy theory, not the official justification for violating international law,” Andres-Beck posted to Bluesky. “The government should not be kidnapping heads of state for the personal profit of the President. Congress could have stopped this, but that would have required them to do their job.”
John Beccia, the final announced candidate for the district at this time, has not posted to social media about the invasion, at the time of publication.
Maduro landed late Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York City’s suburbs. He is being held in jail in Brooklyn. Maduro was charged along with his wife, his son and three others. It is not immediately clear when Maduro and his wife will make their first court appearance.
President Donald Trump had asserted on Saturday that his administration would “run” Venezuela with the help of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who is now the interim president after a high court’s order.
“She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple,” Trump said.
During a televised address, Rodríguez, however, instead called for Maduro to be freed, saying that what happened is “an atrocity that violates international law.” She also said Venezuela is “willing to have respectful relations” with the Trump administration.
Trump, who has been in Florida since the weekend before Christmas, told The Atlantic on Sunday in a phone interview that Rodríguez could “pay a very big price” if she does not do what he thinks is right.
Venezuelan armed forces “categorically reject the cowardly kidnapping” of Maduro, General-in-Chief Vladimir Padrino López said. He also said Venezuela’s military is “united and cohesive in the face of the imperial aggression.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in interviews with CBS and ABC on Sunday that Washington will use control of Venezuela’s oil industry to force policy changes. He called the Venezuelan government currently in place as illegitimate but a step closer to where the U.S. wants the South American country to be.
“We want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But obviously, we don’t have the expectation that’s going to happen in the next 15 hours,” Rubio said. “There has to be a little realism here.”
Trump also mentioned Venezuela’s oil infrastructure multiple times, suggesting that there would be a substantial U.S. role in the South American country’s oil industry. Trump also suggested U.S. oil companies would fix the broken Venezuelan infrastructure.
“We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend,” he said.
Trump did not indicate if the military strike would mean there would be additional U.S. military involvement in Venezuela at this time.
Jakious, like other candidates and representatives, said Trump “made it clear” the invasion was about Venezuela’s oil and warned the “decisions will undoubtedly produce chaos in our hemisphere that is likely to play out for a decade or more, they will embolden those in Russia and China who seek regime change in Ukraine and Taiwan.”
“Why is Trump creating this chaos? In order to change the subject from the struggling economy, the Epstein files, his family’s corruption and this week’s anniversary of January 6th, when he attempted a coup of his own,” Jakious posted. “His unhinged leadership is going to get Americans killed.”
