Sen. Rand Paul all but accused the vice president of celebrating war crimes. JD Vance is just fine with that.
The Kentucky Republican ripped Vance over the weekend in a social media fight that could offer a preview of future skirmishes between President Donald Trump’s heir apparent and another Republican with 2028 ambitions.
Paul has long been a thorn in the GOP’s side and regularly clashed with Trump, making him a particularly useful foil for Vance and the administration as they seek to build support for last week’s attack on a boat leaving Venezuela, killing its crew because they were allegedly smuggling drugs.
“The vice president believes in the Trump doctrine and using overwhelming force to protect core American interests and save American lives,” said one person close to Vance granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “That pisses off hypocrites like Rand Paul, who during his failed run for president defended [former President Barack] Obama droning American citizens without due process, but now is sticking up for foreign terrorists thanks to his debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The strike in the Caribbean represented a significant U.S. policy shift, demonstrating the administration’s willingness to attack foreign vessels in international waters in an effort to slow the flow of drugs into the United States. Many, including Paul, have suggested that Trump lacked the legal authority for the attack, a charge the administration has strenuously rejected.
“The big question is, is this a new Coast Guard policy,” Paul asked Monday evening, noting that the Coast Guard intercepts boats all the time without blowing them up.
“So, if the new policy is that we will blow you up if we think you might be a drug dealer, that’s kind of a worrisome policy,” he said. “But, then, if you treat it frivolously … that disdain, I think, is a problem.”
Paul similarly opposed Trump’s attack on Iran in June and joined Democrats in a failed Senate effort to require Trump to seek approval from Congress before taking further action. He also raised concerns over Trump’s strikes against the Houthis.
A second person close to Vance, also granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations, saw the post from Paul as an indication he could be looking to challenge the vice president for the GOP presidential nomination in 2028.
“I can think of few things more helpful [to Vance] than Rand Paul throwing a tantrum about something you’ve said,” the second person said, describing the Kentucky lawmaker as “the GOP’s Elizabeth Warren.”
They added that the iconoclastic Paul — one of the few Republicans in Congress willing to criticize Trump — has “never been easy to deal with. No one’s ever had a good time dealing with him. He’s never been a team player on anything. There’s a degree to which his misbehavior is baked in.”
Asked to respond, Paul said, “I don’t think the Constitution is divided into teams.”
Over the weekend, Vance, on X, had brushed off another anti-Trump influencer’s criticism of the act as a war crime, saying “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”
Paul, in response, asked if “JD ‘I don’t give a shit’ Vance … ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?”
He continued: “Did 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.”
Article II of the Constitution allows the president to use military force when it is in the national interest, and when it does not amount to “war” in the constitutional sense, which requires an act of Congress. But the law also requires that the president establish that targets are legitimate military targets who should be treated as combatants under both international and domestic law.
Cartel members and drug smugglers have traditionally been treated as criminals with due process rights — not enemy combatants. The White House insists that the 11 people killed were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump declared a foreign terrorist organization.
But the administration has yet to disclose any proof for that claim.
Another Kentucky Republican willing to buck the Trump White House, Rep. Thomas Massie, also criticized the Venezuela strikes in a social media post, seizing on the president’s order last week to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War.
“If it is called the Department of War, can we finally acknowledge it commits Acts of War,” Massie wrote, “which require Congressional Declarations according to our Constitution?”
Brian Finucane, an attorney who spent a decade at the State Department advising the government on legal and policy issues related to counterterrorism during the Obama and Trump administrations, said there should be more concern as the president asserts the prerogative to kill people without due process.
“The administration is quite intentionally trying to cloak this operation in the mantle of counterterrorism, use the military tools and trappings of counterterrorism, and frankly, the American public has gotten habituated and inured to drone strikes, lethal targeting of supposed terrorists over the course of last of two plus decades,” he said.
“This is not about counterterrorism, war on terror, counter-narcotics. The really key issue here is the scope of the power being claimed by the president.”
Jen Scholtes and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
