Vice President JD Vance has faced some backlash after joking about the controversial U.S. strikes on Venezuelan boats, saying, “I wouldn’t go fishing right now.”
President Donald Trump has ordered two attacks within weeks on what he claims are drug boats headed to the U.S., raising eyebrows about the legality of the military actions.
On Monday, Trump announced the killing of three men in a strike against what he said were “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists.”
“Be warned — if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you!” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social.
Earlier this month, Trump said the U.S. killed 11 others in a strike against “Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.” The Trump administration has classified Tren de Aragua and other gangs as designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Speaking to a crowd of Trump supporters in Michigan Wednesday, Vance commented on the deadly boat strikes.
He recalled a conversation with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, in which Hegseth said, “We don’t see any of these drug boats coming into our country. They’ve completely stopped.”
“I said, ‘I know why,’” Vance said as he was met with laughter. “I would stop too. Hell, I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world.”
The vice president continued: “But that is what a military that is dedicated to its purpose and a commander in chief that is dedicated to the national good can do.”
Vance’s comments were met with contempt by some online when a clip of his speech circulated on X.
One X user commented: “This really isn’t funny. Countries don’t have the right to shoot down vessels in international waters without legal justification.”
“This regime gets giddy about violence. It’s sick,” another wrote.
A third said, “The Vice President of the United States doesn’t even know if they are killing drug dealers or fishermen.”
The Independent has reached out to Vance’s office for comment.
In a letter to the White House earlier this month regarding the first strike, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine and 24 other Democratic members of the upper chamber said the Trump administration has provided “no legitimate legal justification” for the strike and demanded more information from the administration on the situation and use of U.S. military power.
“Depending on the evidence, there might be paths where the strikes could be legal,” Duke University law professor Charles Dunlap told Politico in a recent article.
The former senior Air Force lawyer added: “But I don’t think it’s helping the administration by not being fully transparent about everything they had to draw them to the conclusion that a military/law-of-war-type response was what was necessary.”
Two days after the first boat strike, Trump sent a letter to Chuck Grassley, president pro tempore of the Senate, notifying him of the strike and “the potential for further such actions.”
In the letter, Trump said drug trafficking cartels posed a threat to national security and foreign policy interests.
“In the face of the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories, we have now reached a critical point where we must meet this threat to our citizens and our most vital national interests with United States military force in self-defense,” the president wrote.
Venezuela’s interior minister said last week that none of the 11 people killed aboard the vessel belonged to Tren de Aragua.
“They openly confessed to killing 11 people,” Diosdado Cabello said on state television. “We have done our investigations here in our country and there are the families of the disappeared people who want their relatives, and when we asked in the towns, none were from Tren de Aragua, none were drug traffickers.”
The minister questioned how the U.S. could determine whether drugs were on board the vessel and asked why the individuals were not arrested instead.
