US Vice President J.D. Vance has bluntly rejected accusations that a missile strike on a boat carrying alleged Venezuela-linked cartel members amounted to a war crime.
On Tuesday, the US destroyed what President Donald Trump described as a “drug-carrying boat” in international waters in the southern Caribbean, killing 11 people on board. Trump claimed the vessel was tied to the Tren de Aragua cartel, which he has designated as a terrorist organization. Venezuelan officials dismissed the footage as fabricated, calling it “cartoonish.”
In a post on X on Saturday, Vance praised the strike, saying that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
Social media influencer and frequent Trump critic Brian Krassenstein challenged the attack’s legality, arguing that “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.”
“I don’t give a s**t what you call it,” Vance replied.
While many Trump supporters backed the vice president, Senator Rand Paul condemned his remarks as “despicable and thoughtless.”
The strike followed the deployment of a US naval armada in the western Caribbean last month as part of Trump’s crackdown on drug trafficking. In 2020, a US court indicted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on charges of leading the Cartel de los Soles, an allegation he denounced as a plot to topple him.
CNN reported on Friday that Trump is considering strikes against cartels inside Venezuela. The president has denied regime change plans but described the country’s 2024 election as “very strange.”
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