Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a simple solution yesterday for ending the crime and terrorism of drug cartels: “What will stop them is when you blow them up. You get rid of them.” He went even further, saying, “The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco terrorist organizations.”
Rubio was elaborating about a military strike on Tuesday, which blew up a boat full of what President Donald Trump called 11 “Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.” Trump added:
TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere. The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!
As messages go, blowing up 11 TdA terrorists was a powerful one — worthy of, wouldn’t you know it, 11 exclamation points.
The strike was a follow-through on Trump’s August order authorizing military force against the cartels — specifically Tren de Aragua, which he designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in March. “TdA,” said Trump’s March order, “operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking.”
Maduro, by the way, stole the last “election” in Venezuela and has a $50 million bounty on his head. On Monday, he accused the U.S. of “seeking a regime change” and also hilariously called U.S. military presence in the South Caribbean “the biggest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth didn’t deny the regime change accusation, instead calling Maduro “a kingpin of a drug narco-state, not actually elected,” and saying that “we’re prepared with every asset that the American military has.”
Meanwhile, Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, where he said, “We have reached a historical level of cooperation.” Yeah, a strike killing 11 terrorists will nudge other countries in that direction — maybe even Mexico’s far-left President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Regarding Muduro’s “biggest threat” comment, that would be the drug cartels, which do exactly what Trump accused them of doing. Their heinous activities result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every year. The cartels also facilitated what we have called the intentional invasion allowed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four years.
“Under President Trump,” Rubio warned, “those days are over.”
Legally, there has been a lot of wrangling over the word “invasion.” Trump may be the master of hyperbole, but as I already noted, he’s not the only one calling the mass wave of illegal immigrants in recent years an invasion. In this case, he means it literally — at least for the purposes of stopping it.
For better or worse, Trump has always — and even more in his second term — concerned himself more with what gets done than how it happens. Results matter more than process or methods, so he selects the method he thinks will be most effective at achieving his desired end.
In the case of TdA, the terrorist designation was part of Trump’s efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens. His March order invoked the Alien Enemies Act to facilitate the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of “all Alien Enemies.”
Because Democrats defend criminals, illegals, and terrorists, they challenged his order. After Trump lost two rounds in lower courts, the Supreme Court blocked him in May, albeit temporarily, to allow the Fifth Circuit to more fully consider the issue.
Well, on Tuesday — the same day as the terrorists’ boating mishap — the Fifth Circuit Court blocked him again. The reason? “Because we find no invasion or predatory incursion.”
The majority opinion, written by Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, explained, “We define an invasion for purposes of the AEA as an act of war involving the entry into this country by a military force of or at least directed by another country or nation, with a hostile intent.”
That brings things full circle to Trump’s military actions. He’s essentially trying to prove that this is a foreign invasion, complete with an American military response. If our Navy is fighting cartels on the seas, we ought to be deporting cartel members from the U.S. posthaste.
Trump is effectively making the case that you don’t stop a deadly invasion by making thousands of arrests and scheduling thousands of court hearings that will be delayed and haggled over by thousands of activist lawyers and judges for months and years on end.
Are we at war with Venezuela? That’s ambiguous. The president is obviously pushing the envelope with his legal reasoning, but, again, he’s more interested in solutions and results than process. When the country is facing a crisis created by the dereliction and lawlessness of his predecessor, Trump doesn’t have time for what he considers legal niceties.
We can argue all day long over whether and how that’s a dangerous line to walk, but he clearly thinks he was saved from an assassin’s bullet and elected by sweeping all seven battleground states for a reason. And it wasn’t to play nice.
