Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he was compelled to publicly dress down Vice President JD Vance, a fellow Republican and former colleague, over the “disdain for human life” shown Saturday in an online post praising a deadly strike on alleged drug traffickers.
After Vance said the strike on a small Venezuelan boat was the “highest and best use of our military,” Paul lashed out Saturday night: “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” he wrote on X.
The Kentucky Republican told reporters Monday that the message was in keeping with his long criticism of unchecked U.S. military power and questioned whether the attack, which reportedly killed 11, was legally or morally justified.
“Maybe [the boat] was coming here. Maybe it wasn’t. But nobody’s even asking whether we need to prove that. We just blow them up,” he said, adding: “I got no love lost for these people. But at the same time, is this the new Coast Guard policy? … Almost none of the boats we’ve interdicted does it end up with us blowing up the boat.”
“But I think what really ticked me off and got me going,” Paul continued, referring to Vance, “was for someone to glorify the idea of killing people without any due process and saying he just didn’t give a shit what anybody who was going criticize him was going to say. That to me was a disdain for human life and a disdain for processes.”
Paul said he had not heard from Vance or anyone at the White House about his post. He also demurred on the possibility of holding a hearing on the strike in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chairs.
“Hearings aren’t always the answer to everything,” he said. “But at the same time … you know, what is the evidence?”
Paul also responded to accusations that his criticism is tantamount to supporting drug traffickers.
“It doesn’t mean I’m pro-fentanyl because I think we should figure out if someone actually is a drug dealer before we kill them,” he said. “No, that just means that I’m pro having some kind of process before you kill people.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.