“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again,” Rubio said in Mexico City.
Politics
GOP Senator Under Fire For Backstabbing Trump On National Television
One of President Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican U.S. Senate critics took to Fox News to denounce him for bombing a boatload of Venezuelan drug dealers on Monday, arguing the targeted strike was a violation of Venezuela’s international rights.
Trump has boasted about the killing of 11 suspected drug dealers driving a boat through international waters, going so far as to share video of the drone strike that obliterated it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Thursday that he was offered the opportunity to intercept the vessel but that he chose to destroy it to “send a message” to the rest of the world.
Asked on Newsmax if he views the move as a “brilliant deterrent” against drug dealers, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was much more critical.
“It’s hard to have any sympathy for drug dealers trying to import product into our country,” he began, “but at the same time, I guess, you might ask the question, where does it end?”
Paul, first elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, carries the mantle of his father, former Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian icon. Both have railed against what they view as the encroachment of U.S. military and counterterrorism operations on Americans’ civil liberties.
In the Senate, Paul has adopted an isolationist approach, which he emphasized in his interview.
“Are we the world’s policemen, the international policemen? Are we gonna be blowing people up off the coast all around the world?” he asked.
“Really, I’m not sure we have the finances to be the world’s policemen. So on the face of it, sounds good, nobody’s gonna have any lost love for a bunch of drugs going down in the ocean and killing some gang members. But at the same time, really, where does it end, and is it the constitutional duty of our government to be, you know, policing, international drug trade everywhere around the world?”
Challenged whether targeting drug dealers bound for the U.S. versus other nations should be considered, Paul said there is “absolutely a U.S. interest” in preventing such illicit trade. He cast doubt on whether the boat of drug dealers was bound for the U.S.
“I don’t know the details of where the drugs were going, they may have been going to our country. But this was done off the coast of another country, so it is a little bit different,” he added.
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