Vance says Crockett 'doesn't know what she's talking about' on Venezuela Maduro operation

Vice President JD Vance fired back at Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for criticizing the Trump administration's successful operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, over the weekend.

"Jasmine Crockett, of all people, has the least amount of room to talk on this stuff. She doesn't know what she's talking about," Vance told "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Wednesday. 

"As the president said, you couldn't have a worse spokesperson, a person with less knowledge about world affairs. It's telling that she's the person speaking for the Democrats on this issue."

During an appearance on "The View" on Monday, Crockett sharply criticized President Donald Trump, likening him to Maduro and accusing him of undermining democratic norms.

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Vice President JD Vance looks on as President Donald Trump talks in the Oval Office on Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (left); Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, speaks alongside other elected officials during a rally ahead of a public hearing on the proposed congressional redistricting on July 26, 2025, in Houston. (right) (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (left); Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images (right))

"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 he [Trump] doesn’t really believe in free and fair elections," she said during the show.

Crockett also argued that Trump’s strikes in Venezuela were out of self-interest rather than for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. She framed the operation – namely the overnight capture of Maduro – as effectively a kidnapping, warning that Americans would be outraged if another country acted the same way toward U.S. leaders.

"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.

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Captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is escorted as he heads toward the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse for an initial appearance to face U.S. federal charges including narco-terrorism, conspiracy, drug trafficking, money laundering and others on Jan. 5, 2026, in New York City. (Adam Gray/Reuters)

"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."

Vance pushed back on that characterization, defending the operation as lawful and justified.

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"We engaged in a law enforcement action. We had a legitimate indictment from Maduro for narco-terrorism, for weapons smuggling and weapons trafficking, and we went in with the best military in the world, we got our guy, he's going to stand trial," Vance said.

"By the way, he is given the full due process rights that are entitled to anybody who's in the United States. I think he's going to go away. He's going to be found guilty. That's not a kidnapping, that's a law-enforcement operation."

Fox News' Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.