TJ Walker discusses Rand Paul's criticism of Trump's military actions near Venezuela. Paul raises concerns about GOP unity, international law violations, and the implications of designating Venezuelan organizations as terrorist groups.
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Senator Rand Paul warns Trump's Venezuela strikes could shatter GOP unity. Senator Rand Paul is issuing a loud warning to President Trump and to Republicans who have supported him. According to Politico, Paul says Trump's expanding military campaign near Venezuela could fracture the very coalition that brought him to power. On CBS's Face the Nation yesterday, Paul said many people, including himself, backed Trump because he promised to avoid new foreign war. But now Trump is escalating controversial boat strikes in the waters off Central and South America and is preparing to label a Venezuelan organization as a foreign terrorist group. Paul says the move effectively allows Trump to act as if the United States is at war without congressional approval or public debate. Paul also revealed that despite chairing the Senate Homeland Security Committee, he. He has received zero. That's zero briefings on these operations. That's unusual, folks. Meanwhile, the United nations has condemned the killings linked to these strikes as violations of international law. Paul argues that the real solution to drug trafficking is addressing addiction and demand at home, not launching undeclared conflicts abroad. Okay, the real message here, one of the biggest appeals of Donald Trump all the way back to 2016 is he was willing to say, enough of this typical Republican nonsense of starting wars everywhere. Let's bring our soldiers home and focus on making the country better. That was one huge appeal he had. Now seems like he's throwing that away, saying, I could be the dictator of the world. Oh, I think this person might be a drug dealer. Let me just bomb them. No need for a trial, a jury, a judge, a conviction. I. I can just kill anybody I want. And if you look like you're dark skinned or speak Spanish or know anything about Venezuela, boom, you're toast. Let's dig a little deeper here. So Senator Rand Paul is more of a libertarian sort. Obviously. His father, Ron Paul, sort of the godfather of the modern political libertarian movement in America, Son is following in his footsteps. He's one of the few Republican senators who has occasionally, I mean, occasionally spoken out against some of the excesses of the Trump administration. Administration. He still typically votes in favor of what? Anything Trump asks for. But he is one of the few Republicans in the Senate to say, hey, this is a clear cut violation of either conservative principles or more libertarian principles, traditional principles of our party. Now, it's one thing when Trump does something that is very popular. So Trump. Trump has deviated from traditional Republican orthodoxy in many areas. The traditional Republican orthodoxy says, let's cut the social safety net, let's cut Social Security. And Trump's like, oh, no, I don't want to touch Social Security, and he's by and large kept that promise. So there are times when Trump is different from Senator Paul, but it's had a strong base support. But starting wars needlessly when the United nations condemns it, that's not one of those things where there's a huge constituent. That's what's different about this issue. Let's go a little deeper into some of the facts. So Trump, again, he ran every time he's run for office on this idea of stopping dumb wars. Now he seems to be inventing one off of Venezuela's coast. Let me ask you, if you're an American, how often has a Venezuelan come to your house and attacked. How often has a Venezuelan come to your home and forced you to buy some drugs that you didn't want or that you couldn't have bought from some other source if it were illegal? And I'm not recommending you do that. I. I'm guessing the answer is never. And that's, in fact why you don't see polls showing some huge support for starting a war against Venezuela. Now Trump is escalating the controversy with these boat strikes. What's supposed to be neutral waters, just bombing boats in the Caribbean, saying, well, I kind of maybe sort of think they look like drug dealers, so let's just kill them all. Not how America is supposed to operate. That's not traditionally what we've done. And that is, in fact, why United nations human rights organizations are condemning this. Now you could say, well, I don't like the U.N. they're a bunch of radical leftists. Okay, I don't have the time to debate you on that today. But who is really in favor of this? The administration has labeled Venezuela's Cartel de las Solas a terrorist group. Okay, I'm not an expert on all the ins and outs of Venezuela. Let's say, hypothetically, they are. It doesn't mean you can just pick out a fishing boat on a hunch, bomb it, blow it to smithereens, kill people on a hunch. Because as we've already seen, in the last few months, there have been some accidents, there have been some people blown to pieces, and, oops, this guy's just a local fisherman who comes home every night and brings the fish to his family in his little village. And they're gone now. They're absolutely gone. There's no doubt Venezuela is a mess. I am not in any way suggesting I support the current administration running that country. But guess what? There are a lot of countries in the world where we don't like the government. I personally don't like the leadership of Russia, but I don't see this administration say, hey, these people in Russia are terrorists, therefore we gotta bomb them and go to war against them. Could you're not going to see that happen, nor do I think that would especially be a good idea. We could certainly stand up to Russia a little more often, but I don't want to go to war against every country who has leadership that I don't like. I don't particularly like the leadership of Saudi Arabia. I'm not a huge fan of Muhammad Sawbone Salman or Bonesaw Salman. That's what the MBS stands for. I'm not a huge fan of his, but am I in favor of the United States bombing ships that are coming out of Saudi Arabia? No, I'm not. So this is one of those areas where, you know, say what you will about Trump, he typically does things that do one of two things. They either line his own pockets, as in the case of countless meme coins and other crypto nonsense he's done in this term, or it panders to some base and going and starting a war in Venezuela and getting, rallying the entire world against us doesn't really seem to fit in either of those two categories. So you just kind of have to chalk it up to here's a guy, he's got power. He realizes he can't at least legally run for another term. He might not ever leave the White House, but he realizes he's got power. He's never going to have more power than he does right now, so he might as well just do stuff, because he can and he might not ever have a chance to again.
