The Caribbean Killings Were Unnecessary. Trump Just Proved It.
If we can seize an oil tanker, why did eighty people have to die?
Donald Trump has never been popular. But after spending most of his first term with approval in the low 40s, and hovering around 40 percent for much of this year, he is now starting to get some of his grimmest numbers ever. His approval rating on the economy, per the latest AP-NORC poll, is a grisly 31 percent—the lowest number he’s ever gotten in that category in that poll. The poll also shows him slipping in areas that he considers strengths: He’s seen double-digit hits to public opinion of his handling of crime (53 percent approval in March, 43 percent now) and immigration (49 percent in March, 38 percent now).
The AP notes that “the good news for Trump is that his overall approval hasn’t fallen as steeply.” That’s a real glass-half-full way to note that his overall approval rating is down “only” six points since March—to an abysmal 36 percent. Happy Thursday.
We Didn’t Have to Kill Any of Them
by William Kristol
Yesterday the Trump administration released a new video of the U.S. military engaging a vessel off the coast of Venezuela. It wasn’t footage of the September 2 killing of two shipwrecked survivors of a missile attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat.1 It was of a new military action in support of U.S. law enforcement agencies: seizing an oil tanker involved in illicit activities. This action was apparently taken pursuant to a warrant issued by a federal judge, as the ship had been put under sanctions by the Treasury Department in 2022 for illegal activities linked to the smuggling of Iranian oil.
Many questions remain about the operation and its justification, and the government should provide clear answers to them. Still, here’s what we’ve been reminded of by yesterday’s action: The U.S. government has the ability to seize boats, sailors, and cargo without killing anyone. The Coast Guard does this routinely and has for years. The military is able to coordinate with and support law enforcement in such efforts. Steps can be taken ahead of time to ensure such efforts are legal.
But the Trump administration has chosen to do none of these things as, over the past three months, it has conducted strikes against at least 22 vessels, killing more than 80 helpless civilians. The administration has provided no evidence to support its claims about the boats and those aboard, and in fact, the original rationale that they were smuggling fentanyl to the United States seems to have been abandoned.
What’s more, the administration has chosen in one case to kill shipwrecked survivors and to try to cover up the fact there were such survivors, and in another instance to return survivors to their home countries rather than risking legal proceedings in the United States that might force the administration to provide a justification for its actions.
And now the administration is stonewalling on releasing the full video of the September 2 strike, despite President Trump’s statement last week he’d be happy to do so. House Intelligence Committee chair and Trump ally Rep. Rick Crawford—installed in that position at the beginning of this year in place of the independent-minded Rep. Mike Turner to ensure congressional acquiescence rather than oversight—said yesterday that he doesn’t want video of the second strike released. His rationale? “What the trained eye can detect from these videos may reveal sources and methods that would imperil troops.” This is implausible on its face. But it becomes a risible excuse for a cover-up when one recalls that the administration was perfectly happy to release the first part of the September 2 video—and then many subsequent videos—for “trained eyes” to inspect.
As Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) noted, “This administration, since they started striking these boats illegally, has been very happy to show their snuff films every time they took out one of these boats. Now suddenly they’re willing to show the first hit but not the second. Why is that?”
We know why. The second strike in particular is horrifying and indefensible.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is bored by the whole matter. He was asked yesterday, “Has Hegseth told you why he hasn’t released the video of the second strike?” His answer: “No, he hasn’t told me. I thought that issue was dead.”
No, that issue isn’t dead. But more than 80 people are dead. Their deaths seem to have been unnecessary, unjustified, and unlawful. President Trump may not care. We should.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Running the Same Dead Case Back to Another Grand Jury? That’s Desperation… GEORGE CONWAY Explains to SARAH LONGWELL the Supreme Court’s newest fights, Trump’s push to control independent agencies, the mess inside his DOJ, the failed effort to indict Letitia James, Alina Habba’s pitiful stint as U.S. attorney, and why the Epstein grand-jury files are finally being forced into the open under the new transparency law.
Dems Struggle to Make Their Moderates Go Viral… They’re searching for a candidate who can be Mamdani in the streets and Manchin in the seats, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
This Isn’t the End of NATO… There’s a reason every previous prediction of the alliance’s dissolution was wrong, writes MARK HERTLING.
Trump’s Deportations Are Ripping Mothers from Their Babies… The president’s immigration policy is “beyond inhumane,” writes MONA CHAREN.
Quick Hits
WHO KNEW HEALTH CARE COULD BE SO COMPLICATED: The Senate will vote today on a pair of dueling pieces of healthcare legislation, which have taken two very different routes to reach the Senate floor.
The Democrats’ proposal is the same top-priority one they’ve had for months: a three-year extension of pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. It was Republicans’ refusal to renew these subsidies and Democrats’ refusal to give them up that plunged the government into its longest-ever shutdown just months ago; Democrats finally relented in exchange for the up-or-down vote on the subsidies taking place today.
This week, Republicans have backed into their last-minute bill from the opposite direction. GOP senators know they don’t want to extend the Obamacare subsidies—but they also don’t want to be seen doing nothing on healthcare while shooting down the Democrats’ bill as premiums spike across the country. So they asked Majority Leader John Thune to pair the subsidies vote with a Republican proposal, and he agreed. The problem is that Republicans weren’t united behind a plan; several different GOP senators put forward divergent proposals. They were bickering over which of these would and wouldn’t see a vote as late as last night.
Thune ultimately selected a bill from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), which would authorize some new subsidies for health savings accounts for people buying lower-tier plans on the Obamacare exchanges over the next two years. Doesn’t seem like a terrible plan, and certainly both plans are better than careening off the subsidy cliff in the new year. But neither plan will pass today.
The House of Representatives, by contrast, is suddenly showing some surprising movement. Politico reports that sixteen Republican members have signed onto a bipartisan package that would extend the expiring subsidies by one year while applying stricter income phase-outs.
RATES TICK DOWN: It’s not happening as fast as Donald Trump would like, but interest rates just inched a little lower. The Federal Reserve knocked off another 25 basis points at its meeting yesterday, setting rates to a new range of 3.5 to 3.75 percent. But the decision was, once again, not unanimous, indicating just how treacherous the Fed’s tightrope act has become: rising unemployment on one side, stubbornly high inflation on the other. (And don’t forget, they’re walking this tightrope blindfolded—we’re still in the midst of a period of shutdown-induced data blindness at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so the Fed is working with months-old jobs and inflation numbers.)
Meanwhile, Trump’s political pressure on the Fed is intensifying. At a business roundtable yesterday afternoon, Trump called Fed Chair Jerome Powell “a stiff,”2 grousing that “he did, I would say, a rather small number that could have been doubled—at least doubled.” The night before, in Pennsylvania, Trump floated the idea of firing all the Biden-appointed members remaining at the Fed, suggesting their appointments might have been signed by Biden’s autopen—which, in Trump’s ridiculous but frequently stated opinion, would make them invalid. “I’m hearing that the autopen could have signed, maybe all four, but maybe a couple of them,” Trump mused. “We’ll take two.”
“Would you check that out, Scott?” he asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
MELTDOWN OVER CHARLIE: When Charlie Kirk was assassinated earlier this year, many MAGA Republicans, led by top White House adviser Stephen Miller, openly hoped to turn that tragedy into a casus belli for a new phase of total war against the American left. But far from uniting the right to take on a common enemy, Kirk’s death has unexpectedly sparked a remarkably fierce civil war in the MAGA infotainment ecosystem. Podcaster Candace Owens has been the prime offender here, spreading wild conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death, including that the Trump administration or even Turning Point USA itself might have been involved with orchestrating the murder.
The noise has gotten so loud that even Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, who has succeeded him as head of TPUSA, felt compelled to weigh in on an appearance on Fox News yesterday. “My poor team is exhausted, and every time they bring this back up, what are we supposed to do, relive that trauma all over again?” she said. “They watched my husband get murdered. . . . They are rocked to the core. So why every single day do they have to be dragged through the mud?” For more on this, look out for the next edition of Will Sommer’s False Flag newsletter later this morning.
Cheap Shots
At this point, it’s not clear we can trust the administration’s unsubstantiated claim that every boat it targeted had drug smugglers onboard—at least until they provide some evidence.
And it’s not just us that doesn’t trust the administration to be discerning in its targeting: The Wall Street Journal reports that María Corina Machado, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and by many lights the rightful president of Venezuela, felt it necessary to alert the U.S. military about her seaborne escape so that her boat wouldn’t be mistaken for one smuggling drugs and blown to smithereens.
He also called Powell a “dead head Fed—Fed hair,” for those of you keeping tabs on his insult-comic game and/or overall mental acuity.
They had a judicial warrant to seize the Venezuelan tanker. Now, just show us the judicial warrants to blow up the drug boats so we can move on to other important issues...like the Epstein files.
Today the Trump administration asked the ICC to not prosecute Trump under the threat of sanctions. Seems like strong evidence that even the administration knows that what it’s doing is illegal. While he is protected from domestic prosecution thanks to the Supreme Court, I imagine he has a significant fear of facing arrest and prosecution should he travel overseas after his Presidency. Observing all of this, it’s hard not to laugh at the ludicrous threat to prosecute Democrats for telling troops NOT to follow illegal orders.