{"id":406438,"date":"2025-09-07T23:42:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T23:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/406438\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T23:42:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T23:42:22","slug":"republican-condemns-vance-for-despicable-comments-on-venezuelan-boat-strike-jd-vance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/406438\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican condemns Vance for \u2018despicable\u2019 comments on Venezuelan boat strike | JD Vance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance<\/a> for \u201cdespicable\u201d comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.<\/p>\n

\u201cKilling cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,\u201d the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday\u2019s US military strike<\/a> against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.<\/p>\n

Vance added: \u201cDemocrats: let\u2019s send your kids to die in Russia. Republicans: actually let\u2019s protect our people from the scum of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a> has vowed additional military action against purported traffickers, who are not military targets, after the boat strike, saying \u201cthere\u2019s more where that came from\u201d.<\/p>\n

The controversial attack inflamed already-high tensions between the US and Venezuela. In August Trump dispatched war ships and marines to the Caribbean, which his supporters say is in aid of efforts to oust Venezuelan\u2019s authoritarian leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. On Friday, reports revealed that Trump was sending<\/a> 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to support US military action against drug traffickers.<\/p>\n

Some fear the developments presage<\/a> full military conflict between Venezuelan and US service members. Last month, the US offered a $50m bounty for Maduro<\/a>, twice what it offered for Osama bin Laden, and in July signed a secret mandate <\/a>approving military action against Latin American cartels deemed terrorist organizations, such as the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which Trump officials have claimed Maduro leads.<\/p>\n

Trump also framed the boat attack as military activity against \u201cterrorists\u201d in subsequent statements on his social media platform, Truth Social.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United \u200bStates,\u201d he said. \u201cThe strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike \u2026 Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate committee on homeland security and government affairs, condemned<\/a> Vance\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cJD \u2018I don\u2019t give a shit\u2019 Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the \u2018highest and best use of the military.\u2019 Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?\u201d Paul wrote on X, alluding to Harper Lee\u2019s 1960 novel about a wrongly convicted Black man who is killed as he tries to escape prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for \u201cdespicable\u201d comments apparently in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-406438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115165668651984978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}