When he’s not championing himself as a peace president, President Donald Trump is busy ordering U.S. military strikes against small boats off the coast of Venezuela that he alleges are carrying drugs. The administration also has ordered a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and blustered about regime change given the nation’s awful socialist leader.
If Americans want reassurance the United States isn’t about to enter another conflict, the president’s messaging isn’t reassuring. “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives,” the president said at a recent press conference. Those numbers — down from his recent claim of 100,000 — are preposterous. So, too, were the pictures the administration shared on social media of drugs on a boat, which aren’t from the recent attacks.
It’s hard to know the White House’s motives, but it is easy to see problems with these strikes. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only prominent Republican to raise points his fellow party members routinely made when Democratic presidents engaged in similarly arbitrary — and likely unconstitutional — attacks.
“For decades, if not centuries, when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters, you announce that you’re going to board the ship and you’re looking for contraband, smuggling, or drugs,” Paul said on a “Meet the Press” interview. “But we know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25% of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running that would be a bizarre world in which 25% of the people might be innocent.”
Progressives on social media savaged Paul — not because of his words but because he felt the need to follow them up with gushing praise of the president even after Trump savaged him on a social-media post. It’s embarrassing watching Republicans constantly kiss the president’s ring, but we’re pleased that Rand made these important points about the underlying policy. The big question: Why aren’t more “constitutional conservatives” making them, too?