Vice President JD Vance defended using America’s military for “killing cartel members” that bring drugs into the United States on Saturday, dismissing a critic who asserted a recent airstrike on a boat allegedly trafficking drugs was a war crime.
“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance posted to X on Saturday morning.
He then engaged in a back-and-forth with Brian Krassenstein, an anti-Trump social media influencer and podcaster, who said “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.”
“I don’t give a shit what you call it,” Vance replied.
The interaction between the vice president and a critic comes days after the Trump administration ordered an airstrike against an alleged drug vessel leaving Venezuela, which President Donald Trump said was aimed at the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua group, killing 11 suspected traffickers.
“Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Two senior administration officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have emphasized that the strike carried out in the south Caribbean won’t be a one-off.
“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 said on Fox News on Wednesday. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco terrorist will face the same fate.”
During the campaign trail this past fall, then-candidate Vance advocated strongly for using the U.S. military to fight against drug cartels. “I think we’ve got hundreds of thousands of very fine Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen, who are pretty pissed off at the Mexican cartels,” he said at one rally. “I think we’ll send them in to do battle with the Mexican drug cartels, too.”
Questions remain over the legality of the strike, with some critics arguing that may break international law. The strike was “conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests,” said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, adding it was “fully consistent” with the law of armed conflict.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has been vocal in ensuring that Congress approves military action, said this week that he will be “digging into” the legality of the strike.
Vance’s comments also come one day after the president signed an executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense to “Department of War,” a title that amounts to a nickname for the agency, as a formal title change would require an act of Congress.
Still, some Pentagon officials view the change as a waste of resources, as officials may need to change the Department of Defense seals on everything from letterhead to signage at more than 700,000 facilities across the country.
