Republicans are once again turning on each other as the Donald Trump administration celebrates the gung-ho killing of several suspected Venezuelan cartel members in a military strike that critics say may have violated domestic and international law.
Renegade Kentucky Seb. Rand Paul took the first shot at JD Vance, dubbing him “JD ‘I don’t give a s–t’ Vance” after the vice president called the killing the “highest and best use of our military.”
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul wrote on X late Saturday.
Vance faced a wave of backlash Saturday after declaring that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” He later brushed off criticism by saying, “I don’t give a s–t what you call it” when another user on X referred to the strike as a “war crime.”
“Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul added, in a stretched but semi-pertinent reference to Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning novel about racial tensions in the Deep South, which centers on a Black Alabaman facing the death penalty after being falsely accused of raping a young white woman. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??”
The U.S. Navy carried out the strike Tuesday against a small boat the Trump administration claims belonged to Venezuelan narcotrafficking syndicate Tren de Agua. The attack took place in international waters in the southern Caribbean sea, and claimed the lives of 11 alleged members of the gang.
JD “I don’t give a shit” Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military.” Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??… https://t.co/VdnJbZkGfS
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 7, 2025
Trump has framed the attack as part of an escalating campaign against Latin American drug cartels. He even offered a $50 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom his administration has accused of being involved in narco-terrorism.
Legal experts and political opponents—among them Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who’s promised he’ll be “digging into” the legality of the strike in the coming days—argue the attack may well have constituted an extrajudicial killing, having seemingly been carried out without requisite oversight or due process, and potentially in violation of an impressive variety of international treaties.
Paul isn’t alone among Republican voices to have criticized the strike. Anti-MAGA X account Republicans against Trump added in a comment beneath the Kentucky senator’s post: “Thank you for your moral clarity on this. JD Vance is a despicable and cynical politician.”
Thank you for your moral clarity on this. JD Vance is a despicable and cynical politician.
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 7, 2025
It also comes as his fellow Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, join their Democratic counterparts in pushing for a House floor vote to pressure the Justice Department into releasing more investigative documents on the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case.
Trump—who once called Epstein a “terrific guy” and allegedly even sent him a 2003 birthday card featuring a nude sketch of a woman, along with a bizarre imagined exchange about “enigmas” and “wonderful secrets”—has faced increasing scrutiny of his relationship with the convicted pedophile after the DOJ and FBI concluded Epstein’s 2019 death in police custody was a suicide, and that he kept no “client list” of uber-wealthy co-conspirators.
The findings not only contradict Attorney General Pam Bondi’s assertion earlier in February that the long-rumored “Epstein List” was “sitting on my desk” awaiting review, but also conspiracy theories long cherished by the far-right that Trump himself had implicitly endorsed over the past few years.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on criticism of this week’s military strike.
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