Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Wednesday sharply criticized Donald Trump for his unilateral decision to bomb a suspected drug vessel from Venezuela Tuesday — and reminded the president that such actions could set a dangerous precedent.
“It’s hard to have any sympathy for drug dealers trying to import product into our country,” the Republican lawmaker told Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt. “But at the same time, I guess, you might ask the question, ‘Where does it end? Are we the world’s policemen?’”
“We all assume these people were bad people and drug dealers, but if they were caught off the coast of Miami, we would stop the boat. If they don’t shoot at us, we don’t shoot at them,” Paul explained Wednesday. “They’re confiscated; they’re put in jail.”
Trump announced the strike himself Tuesday and claimed on social media that the eliminated targets had been “positively identified” as members of the Venezuelan drug cartel Tren de Aragua. He even shared footage of what appeared to be the explosion, which killed 11 people.
Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and has been vocal about protecting civil liberties, not only criticized Trump’s decision — but said the U.S. no longer has “the finances to be the world’s policemen.”
He also argued that the entire point of our legal system is to not “automatically assume guilt” and said unilateral strikes at merely suspected criminals could lead to catastrophe if the targets were suddenly revealed as innocent “people fleeing Venezuela.”
“I think probably that we had the facts correct, we got bad people here, but … it isn’t our policy just to blow people up,” the lawmaker explained. “We don’t blow up ships entering our waters unless they’re hellbent on attacking another ship or unless they are resisting with gunfire.”
Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. has used “established intelligence” to merely “stop” drug boats for far too long. He said “it doesn’t work” and added that strikes such as Tuesday’s will “happen again.”
Paul reminded viewers Wednesday that the U.S. doesn’t — or shouldn’t — operate that way.
“We arrest people,” he said. “So it is difficult and it’s hard, because obviously they’re bad people, so people want something bad to happen to them. But typically, even the worst people in our country, if we accuse somebody of a terrible crime, they still get a trial.”
“They get a lawyer,” Paul explained. “They get their day in court.”
Schmitt, who called the strike “a brilliant deterrent” against drug traffickers earlier in the show, appeared unconvinced by his guest’s constitutional argument, and said, “But if we’re at war, you know, we blow up bad guys all the time. I think they’re saying that it’s a war.”