The Trump administration is taking its recent assault on alleged drug boats from Venezuela very seriously—not.
Recalling a recent conversation he had with War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth about the unprovoked air strikes in the Caribbean, Vice President JD Vance joked Wednesday that he “wouldn’t go fishing right now in that part of the world.”
So far this month, the United States has destroyed two small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters, which Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs.
The first attack killed 11 people on September 2, while a second attack on September 15 killed an additional three individuals, according to Donald Trump.
Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, said that the Trump administration had violated U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”
In a rare interview, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil told CNN last week that the nation is not looking for a military confrontation with the U.S.
“We are not betting on conflict, nor do we want conflict,” Gil told the network.
Another incident late last week, in which the U.S. military “illegally and hostilely” detained another boat off the coast of a Venezuelan island, further intensified relations between the two countries.
In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. was “looking for an incident to justify escalating war in the Caribbean, with the aim of regime change” in Venezuela. It further demanded that the U.S. “immediately cease these actions that endanger security and peace in the Caribbean.”
But the White House is apparently not looking to deescalate the situation. Instead, Trump and Vance have openly boasted about the unconstitutional killings. On Monday, Trump publicized that the second attack was on his orders, while promising to continue the “hunt,” and Vance has claimed that the needless deaths were the “highest and best use of our military.”
When a political commentator noted that killing citizens of another country without due process is a war crime, Vance simply retorted, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”
Some Republicans back at home, meanwhile, have not been impressed by the aggressive international display. In an interview last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul told Fox News that he felt compelled to address the attacks, underscoring that not every ship sailing in the Caribbean is smuggling drugs.
“The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs,” Paul said.
Paul additionally lamented that the Trump administration was involving itself in affairs thousands of miles off U.S. coastlines, and expending federal resources on the lowest echelons of the global drug trade.
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