SWAMPSCOTT — In the wake of President Donald Trump conducting military action in Venezuela and his decision to put the United States temporarily in charge of running the country, U.S. Rep. candidate Rick Jakious issued the following statement:
“There is no doubt that President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is illegal. 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.
“Trump’s fraudulent drug claim is the same justification 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, Juan Orlando Hernández — convicted of drug trafficking in the U.S. — in December.
“Trump’s record on protecting Americans from drugs does not match his tough talk. For example, his Big Beautiful Bill is going to strip more than 150,000 Americans of medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, and doctors at the University of Pennsylvania estimate it will result in more than 1,000 preventable overdose deaths every year, largely from fentanyl, which his own State Department recently said is not meaningfully produced in Venezuela.
“Trump made it clear today that he invaded Venezuela for its oil, and his 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, and they needlessly risk the lives of America’s military, spies, and diplomats throughout the world.
“What does Trump mean when he says that the U.S. is running Venezuela until a proper transition? That idea is as dangerous as it is divorced from reality.
“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 Jan. 6, when he attempted a coup of his own.
“Trump’s unhinged leadership is going to get American servicemembers killed.”
In a follow-up conversation, Jakious said Trump’s actions in Venezuela are the reasons why people are losing faith in the government.
“We have a president who, as of today, has admitted that this is entirely about oil. It has nothing to do with the original premise — which was fentanyl — and let’s not lose sight of the fact that basically zero fentanyl comes from Venezuela,” Jakious said. “The argument of drugs was never real or honest, and we now have a president who admitted that he read-in the CEOs of oil companies on his plan to depose a foreign leader before he read-in congress.”
He continued, saying that it’s “absolutely unacceptable, and it’s an example of how broken things are.”
“We need members of congress who are willing to step up and push back against that, to push back against republican leadership that seems all too willing to allow President Donald Trump to run roughshod over the Constitution,” he said.
Jakious added, “I think it’s a terrible message to send to U.S. allies. In some ways, it’s also a terrible message to our adversaries. Essentially, what it does is give permission to Russia to continue its unlawful war in Ukraine. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this used as justification by China to escalate its aggressions against Taiwan… It creates a foreign policy that essentially says, ‘Might makes right,’ and that’s dangerous for our service men and women; it’s just plain dangerous.”
