When retired Gen. H.R. McMaster served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term, he didn’t exactly enjoy White House meetings. McMaster wrote in his memoir that Trump would routinely become distracted and blurt out “outlandish” ideas during discussions, including one especially memorable instance in which the president wanted to know, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs” before they enter the United States?
That anecdote came to mind this week. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang. The president said in a social media posting that 11 people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Americas, a dramatic escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to stem the flow of narcotics from Latin America.
In his online missive (which included 11 exclamation points), the Republican said the people in the boat were “terrorists” and included a short, black-and-white video of what appeared to be a speedboat on fire after a bright flash of light.
If the political goal was to generate some “Trump orders strike that kills bad guys” headlines, that objective was briefly met earlier this week, but it wasn’t long before the administration confronted some awkward questions that still haven’t been fully answered.
Were the 11 people on the boat actually members of the Tren de Aragua gang? The president claimed they were, but then again, the president claims lots of things that have no basis in reality, and it’s not yet clear whether there might’ve been innocent people on board.
Were there actual drugs on the boat? Trump insisted there were, but there’s no publicly available evidence to support the claim. And even if there were drugs on board, U.S. officials could’ve intercepted the boat, seized its cargo, arrested those on board (or at least offered them an opportunity to surrender) and put them on trial — without blowing anyone up.
But just as notable is an overarching question: Was it legal for the Trump administration to use lethal force against a civilian boat in international waters? The New York Times published a report on this with a sentence that stood out: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”
You’ve heard the expression “shoot first and ask questions later”? This appears to be a rare literal example of the phenomenon.
When JD Vance was asked about the administration’s legal authority in this instance, his answer suggested the vice president — a Yale Law School graduate — was confused by what the phrase “legal authority” means.
Q: On the Venezuela vessel strike, what legal authority were you guys working under?JD VANCE: The legal authority is there are people who are bringing — literal terrorists — who are bringing deadly drugs into our country Around the same time, Ryan Goodman, an NYU law professor and former special counsel at the Pentagon, wrote via Bluesky, “I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be ‘murder’ or a war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.” Looking ahead, there are a handful of angles to this story that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that there’s no reason to assume the questions will simply go away. Second, if Trump is still campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize, he might want to start lowering his expectations, since the committee tends to frown on extrajudicial killings. Third, Americans who voted for Trump hoping for a restrained foreign policy and a reluctance to use military force now have fresh reason to question their decision. And finally, the administration is already warning other would-be drug traffickers that they might also be blown up, suggesting this week’s developments were the first step in a larger offensive, not the last. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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