President Trump shocked the world on Saturday with news that Maduro had been seized by U.S. forces in a secret military action and taken to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges. The dramatic move has faced condemnation abroad and domestically, including from the three Democrats facing off in the Sept. 1 primary. While they all oppose Trump’s action, they differ in how to address the situation.
Incumbent Sen. Ed Markey, who is seeking a third six-year term this year, did not respond to WAMC’s request for comment on the news. In a press release issued Monday, the junior senator of Massachusetts characterized the intervention as an illegal war for oil, and said he had sent the president a letter “demanding a cessation of hostilities against Venezuela and answers on the Trump administration’s objectives, legal rationale, and plans for Venezuela’s future.” The senator previously backed an unsuccessful War Powers Resolution put forward by fellow Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia late last year that would have required Trump to receive Congressional approval before any military action in Venezuela.
Both of his challengers say Markey isn’t doing enough.
“My immediate thought was, this is insane. What do we think we are doing here? We do not need to occupy, run Venezuela, whether to get the oil or anything else. This is not in America's interest, and we have a lot of problems right here at home, in Massachusetts and across the country, and running Venezuela with American troops on the ground does nothing to address those problems," said Mass. Rep. Seth Moulton, who has served the 6th Congressional District since 2015. “The No. 1 thing we can do is vote on my piece of legislation to stop American taxpayer dollars from going to ground operations in Venezuela. I wrote that legislation because I feared that this is exactly what the administration would do, and because I have the experience of fighting in the Iraq war to know that this is a bad, bad idea, and we’ve got to do a lot more than ask questions. We’ve got to stop this from happening. So, I am working hard behind the scenes to get a vote on this legislation, even though Republican leadership is opposed to having a vote on my bill, because the American people deserve it, and it's Congress' constitutional responsibility to have that vote on whether or not we support ground operations in Venezuela.”
The third Democrat in the race, political newcomer Alex Rikleen, says neither Markey nor Moulton are doing enough.
“Senator Markey should be using his platform as the longest tenured Democrat in Congress to highlight the grave legal issues at play here and call for impeachment," he told WAMC. "And I think Representative Moulton should be doing his job and filing articles of impeachment and using the tools available to him to call for a privileged motion to bring it to the floor. That's something that he can do. Articles of impeachment are something that there is a mechanism in place to go around the speaker of the House.”
Moulton says he agrees with Rikleen in theory, but not in practice.
“Here's a political reality," the congressman told WAMC. "Impeachment is the right thing to do on principle. It's fundamentally what should be required in this situation, but the stakes are too high. American lives are at risk, and we cannot afford to do anything that will further empower Trump. And my concern is that if we have an impeachment vote, we force an impeachment vote, and we lose. Trump will actually be emboldened by that situation, and that's not something we can afford.”
Former history teacher Rikleen, whose campaign platform asserts that establishment Democrats have done too little to oppose the Trump administration, says he’s invoking a long commonwealth tradition in his call to impeach the president over the Maduro seizure.
“It was Massachusetts’ own member of the Constitutional Convention who wrote that the reason for impeachment was to keep presidents fearful so that they did not abuse their powers," said Rikleen. "And this is a very clear abuse of power on the gravest of all topics. We're talking about war. If this is not something that is impeachable, then you are saying that there is nothing impeachable anymore. Tell me what is impeachable if violating the Constitution when it comes to acts of war is OK.”
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in a Manhattan federal courthouse Monday. Venezuelan officials say the death toll in the U.S. operation to remove him from power has reached around 60.
