Sen. Rand Paul ripped into his fellow Republicans Tuesday over their tepid response to the Trump administration’s series of strikes against suspected drug-running vessels, saying his colleagues on Capitol Hill “don’t give a s— about these people in the boats.”
“We’ve been blowing up these people in boats off the coast of Venezuela. They’re accused of running drugs, but nobody knows their names and nobody’s put up any evidence,” Paul (R-Ky.) said during an apperance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
“And so what I think is bizarre is I hear mostly my Republican colleagues say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t have to—how do we know they’re not armed?’ And it’s like, but there’s this thing called presumption of innocence,” the former opthamologist added. “They say it doesn’t apply. Well, it actually always has applied on the oceans. We have always had drug interdictions, but we have always stopped boats and asked to search them. If they flee or shoot at the Coast Guard, they will get shot and blown up. But it’s usually an escalatory sort of steps.”
“So I look at my colleagues who say they’re pro-life and they value God’s inspiration in life, but they don’t give a s— about these people in the boats,” Paul went on. “And are they terrible people in the boats? I don’t know. They’re probably poor people in Venezuela and Colombia.”
Since Sept. 2, the US military has carried out at least 35 strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least 115 people, according to announcements by the Pentagon. Critics, mainly Democrats, have argued that the strikes violate the laws of war and have been carried out without proper congressional approval.
Paul, 63, argued to host Joe Rogan that while the Trump administration has played up the threat to American lives from drugs trafficked by Venezuela-based gangs, the boats targeted in the strikes are “not even coming here. They’re going to these islands in the south part of the Caribbean, the cocaine — and it’s not fentanyl at all.
“The cocaine’s going to Europe. Those little boats can’t get here. No one’s even asked this common question. Those boats have these four engines on them. They’re outboard boats. You can probably go about 100 miles before you have to refuel. [They’re] 2,000 miles from us. They have to refuel 20 times to get here.”
Paul claimed that the strikes were “a pretense” for the US to arrest Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on federal drug and weapons charges Jan. 3 in a daring special forces raid on Caracas.
“But the weird thing about it is,” he told Rogan, “they really care about drugs, except for the former president of Honduras, [Juan Orlando] Hernandez, who was given a 40 year sentence, was tried, was found guilty, was given 40 years in a US jail and he’s let go. At the same time we’re arresting Maduro because he’s attacking the United States with drugs.”
Last week, Paul was one of five Republican senators who voted to advance war powers resolution that would bar Trump from taking further action against Venezuela without the consent of Congress, earning the wrath of the commander in chief.
During a speech to the Detroit Economic Club Tuesday, Trump complained that Democrats “don’t have a Rand Paul that votes against everything.”
“I got him elected twice,” the president claimed. “He was a stone-cold loser. I went to Kentucky, where I won by a lot. I did a rally for him, then I did another rally, he won. Then I went the second time, he won. Then he votes against [me] all the time. It’s just crazy. I don’t get it.”
