MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was pretty upset over news that the U.S. military had carried out a strike on a suspected Venezuelan drug boat in the southern Caribbean on Tuesday. Reporting the incident to viewers the next day, Hayes quoted President Donald Trump, who said he had ordered “a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua narco terrorists.” According to Trump, 11 people on board were killed, and the vessel was carrying illegal narcotics bound for the United States.
“As we learn more details of the attack, I have to say, this is an enormous scandal that is unfolding right in front of us,” Hayes said.
First, he questioned why officials thought the boat was headed for the U.S. when it was located off the Venezuelan coast, which is over 1,000 nautical miles away.
Next, he noted that “this civilian, non-military boat was not struck in self-defense, no weapons were evident, whoever struck it … didn’t try to disable the engines or to board the craft. They just summarily killed everybody on board.”
Civilian? Was Hayes expecting to see the Tren de Aragua logo on the ship?
Next, he quoted a Notre Dame law professor who said the strike violated international law. The U.S. is not in armed conflict.
He claimed that if this same scenario occurred in a Tom Clancy novel, the principals would have to cover it up “because they would know it was illegal. I mean it certainly seems like extrajudicial murder to me. … And that’s the case if everything the administration is saying is true.”
Hayes, who by the way is not a lawyer, is demanding answers. “And I’ll talk to Sen. Chris Van Hollen [D-MD] about that next.”
Last we heard from Van Hollen, he was gazing soulfully at “Maryland Man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia over margaritas in an El Salvadoran prison.
Hayes was hardly alone. On Thursday, his colleague Katy Tur interviewed Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Independent Veterans of America, who called the strike “alarming,” “unprecedented,” and “dangerous.”
And it’s the latest example of how Trump continues to overextend and abuse military power. I think it’s maybe the most important and one of the most underreported stories in America right now. He keeps pushing the boundaries to places we’ve never been before.Not only did they kill 11 people — allegedly — they put American troops at risk. American troops could have died. Right? And any time you put American troops at risk, you owe the American public an explanation as to why.There is absolutely no accountability right now. There is no transparency. And there’s the old saying: ‘First send the country to war, then send the troops.’ We keep sending the troops first without getting the country behind them. …
Tur fully agreed with Rieckhoff and said this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, story out there.
[Rieckhoff’s remarks on the strike begin at 1:55 in the video below.]
The rest of the legacy media quickly joined MSNBC in questioning the legality of the strike.
ABC News showed where their sympathies lie by devoting a large portion of an article to a condemnation of the attack by Venezuela’s special envoy to the United Nations.
The piece goes on to state, “U.S. officials have long claimed that Venezuelan cocaine shipments contribute to overdose deaths in the U.S. — and they accuse the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, of facilitating drug trafficking, which he denies.”
Do they actually believe Maduro’s denial? Please.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that “lawmakers and legal analysts questioned the legality of launching a lethal strike against civilians in international waters outside of an armed conflict.”
Civilians?
In a post on X, a former military officer who worked on counter drug operations claimed the strike was “a complete violation of the international law of the sea and multiple treaties governing navigation, as well as the laws of armed conflict. It was illegal and disproportional. A literal act of piracy.”
The commenter below declared the strike to be illegal and argued that “we can’t execute drug dealers without due process.” He managed to reduce narco terrorist cartel members transporting enough fentanyl into the U.S. to kill tens of thousands of Americans to drug dealers.
And of course, he added the Democrats’ all-purpose accusation: that Trump is simply trying to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. He wrote, “There’s a reason this happened same day the Epstein documents (re-released old docs) were produced by Congress.”
Over 58,000 U.S. service members lost their lives in the Vietnam War, while more than 407,000 were killed in World War II.
Yet in recent years, hundreds of thousands of Americans — most between the ages of 18 and 49 — have died from drug overdoses caused by the flood of lethal substances smuggled into the country by Central and South American cartels.
Can we truly say this is any less of a war than the battles we fought overseas?
A while back, I attended the funeral of my daughter’s 26-year-old friend — a bright, beautiful young life cut short after taking a drug laced with fentanyl. Surrounded by his grieving family and friends, watching his parents bury their child, I felt the weight of the tragedy in every breath. It was a haunting reminder of how merciless and indiscriminate this crisis has become.
And scenes like this are not rare. They have played out hundreds of thousands of times in small towns and cities across America over the past decade — and they continue, every single day.
In February, the Trump administration designated a number of cartels including Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and the Sinaloa Cartel, as foreign terrorist organizations. In August, it was widely reported that Trump had ordered the Pentagon to “prepare options for the possible use of military force” against these FTOs.
At the time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “It [the FTO designation] gives us legal authorities to target them in ways you can’t do if they’re just a bunch of criminals. It’s no longer a law enforcement issue. It becomes a national security issue.”
Every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan has considered using the military in America’s war on drugs. Finally, Trump has had the courage to act.
The Left’s newfound empathy for these depraved cartel members who are making billions of dollars by trafficking deadly drugs into America isn’t a good look. Once again, they are defending the indefensible, and the electorate is paying attention.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY