Some congressional Republicans are making the argument that President Donald Trump is under far more scrutiny for his strikes in the Caribbean Sea than former President Barack Obama ever experienced for his drone strikes in the Middle East.
Trump and his administration have carried out several strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats over the last few months, which have garnered scrutiny from both sides of the aisle. Now, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is under fire for authorizing a second strike on a suspected drug boat to wipe out remaining targets, and congressional inquiries are looming.
Some in the GOP are making the case that those actions were warranted and argue that it’s akin to a revamped war on drugs.
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“We’re losing sight of the bigger picture here, of the war on drugs against America,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital. “There are more American lives lost because of illegal drugs than in the last seven years, than WWI, WWII, in Vietnam combined.”
Others, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued that a precedent for strikes was set under Obama, and that the former president didn’t receive near the level of scrutiny that Trump is.
“If the House and Senate Armed Services Committees want to investigate the death of two drug cartel members off Venezuela, maybe they could begin with a roll-call of the innocent civilians, including women and children, killed by President Obama’s orders and a review of the rules of engagement the Obama administration followed,” Gingrich said on X. “I have no doubt Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will compare very favorably with the Obama record.”
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Obama and his administration relied heavily on the 2001 Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress during the Bush administration, which at the time was given the go-ahead in former President George Bush’s “War on Terror.”
The drone strikes were carried out in Obama’s pursuit of the terrorist organization al-Qaida. Congress at the time raised ethical and legal concerns, but no legislative action to rein in the usage of drones was passed.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News that he “felt the same way” as Johnson and Gingrich.
“This is a huge deterrent,” Marshall said. “I think they’re probably struggling to find people that want to drive these boats right now. And every one of these strikes is saving hundreds of American lives. We lose more Americans every year to drug poisoning than we did all of Vietnam. So this is a real war. People just don’t see it every day, but I think that the Trump administration is doing the right thing.”
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Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., scoffed at the connection to the administrations and contended that Trump has had “virtually no scrutiny for pardoning of convicted criminals.”
“There had been purely, starting with President Bush, a major bipartisan consensus that the terrorists who led to 9/11 needed to be eradicated that was explained to the public clearly,” he told Fox News Digital. “We’ve had no such explanation about what’s happening in the Caribbean.”
Broadly, Senate Republicans aren’t raising much of a stink about Trump’s strikes in the Caribbean, with many viewing it as a means to an end to stymying the flow of drugs into the country.
“What happened is a bunch of bad guys with a bunch of drugs didn’t make it to America,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “That’s the long and short of it.”
But others believe that investigations into the details of what exactly happened in the double-tap strike are warranted, as they should have been during Obama’s tenure in office.
“Well, I’ll take it at face value,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital. “Maybe there wasn’t, but there should have been. What else? You know, it’s like, because we failed to have scrutiny in that case, it doesn’t justify failing to have scrutiny in this case.”
