Vice President JD Vance “doesn’t give a s***” if people consider the Trump administration’s strike on an alleged Venezuelan gang’s boat a “war crime,” he posted Saturday on his official X account.
The Trump administration has been under pressure to explain a lethal military strike it carried out September 2 on a boat allegedly carrying drugs and affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The strike killed 11 people.
Legal experts, former national security officials, and Democrats have raised concerns that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority by carrying out the strike in international waters, without giving those on board due process.
Vance defended the strike Saturday, stating: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
Brian Krassenstein, a prominent social media personality, responded: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.”
The vice president shot back: “I don’t give a s*** what you call it.”
Trump has long-promised to go after drug cartels, blaming them for drug overdoses and deaths in the U.S. He’s particularly focused on Tren de Aragua, a transnational organization that has a reputation for engaging in extreme violence, sex trafficking and drug smuggling.
Trump has designated Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organization” which allows him to bring financial or legal penalties, or sanctions, but does not automatically authorize the use of lethal force.
While the president has the power to use military force when it constitutes national interest, it’s unclear if that legal justification applies because cartel members, historically, have been treated as criminals with the right to due process.
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Navy veteran, told Axios he did not think U.S. military members should be put in a situation where they’re “doing things that are outside of legal boundaries.”
Juan S. Gonzalez, a former National Security Council official in the Biden administration, wrote on X that the attack was “legally questionable under both U.S. and international law.”
The Trump administration has offered few details about the strike. Those killed have not been identified, nor have any details about the drugs they were supposedly carrying.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has maintained that U.S. officials were certain that members of Tren de Aragua were on the boat and intended to “poison” the U.S. with drugs.
In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed they had identified those on board as “Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists” who were “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro,” the president of Venezuela.
On Friday evening, Maduro condemned the boat strike and urged Trump to engage in respectful dialogue over the two countries’ differences, according to PBS.
A White House spokesperson said the strike against a “designated terrorist organization” was “fully consistent” with armed conflict law and done “in defense of vital U.S. national interests.
Senior administration officials have made it clear they intend to continue carrying out strikes against cartels.
“We’ve got assets in the air, assets in the water, assets on ships, because this is a deadly serious mission for us, and it won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth told Fox & Friends last week. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco terrorist will face the same fate.”
Vance’s comment comes one day after, the president signed an executive order to informally rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War.
