A collection of Democrat legislators is attempting to manufacture outrage and initiate a legal inquiry into President Donald Trump’s decisive operations against suspected cartel vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The latest flurry of feigned concern arises from a single Washington Post report alleging that the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, issued an order to eliminate survivors from one of the previously struck boats.
“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DOD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” declared Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, conveniently appearing on CBS News on Sunday. Kaine, known for his relentless anti-Trump posturing, added that he and his cohorts are “deeply worried” about “the entire legal rationale for the strikes”—a predictable line from a politician who previously and unsuccessfully tried to pass a bill to handcuff Trump from taking any action against Venezuela without congressional sign-off.
Even while Republican Representative Mike Turner of Ohio acknowledged that “there are very serious concerns in Congress about the attacks on the so-called drug boats down in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the legal justification that has been provided,” it is the Democrats who are clearly seizing this as a political cudgel.
Secretary Hegseth quickly dismissed the Post‘s article as “fake news,” but he didn’t back down from the clear purpose of the strikes, reiterating that the goal is simple: “stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people.”
Trump has rightly pointed the finger at Venezuela’s left-wing regime for allegedly facilitating these cartels, an accusation predictably denied by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who simultaneously warned the U.S. against launching another “crazy war”—a clear attempt to use the investigation to deflect attention from his own government’s potential complicity.
