Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones railed against Democrats for questioning the legality of the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes against alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and Pacific, saying Congressional briefings are unnecessary because “bad guys are dying.”
“This is moronic,” Jones fumed at Democratic criticism over the administration’s lack of transparency over the boat strikes.
The Fox morning host’s defense of the White House’s escalating hostilities against Venezuela came during a friendly interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson, who claimed that Democrats are only saying they’re unsatisfied with the administration’s briefings on the boat strikes because they are motivated by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
With the US military recently conducting its 14th strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat off the coast of South America, bringing the death toll to at least 61, the administration held classified briefings on Capitol Hill that left Democrats frustrated and annoyed.
In the Senate, for instance, Democrats were shut out of a GOP-only briefing this week on the boat strikes, prompting the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee to rail against Republicans and the White House.
“I don’t know how you even begin to rebuild trust. This is against every norm of how national security policy has worked,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said, adding that “when you politicize decision making about putting service members in harm’s way, you make them less safe.”
Meanwhile, Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee were invited to a members-only classified briefing on Thursday, but they came away dissatisfied with the administration’s legal rationale for the strikes or the “end game” of the campaign.
“Our job is to oversee the use of lethal force by our military outside of the United States, and I’m walking away without an understanding of how and why they’re making an assessment that the use of lethal force is adequate here,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) told reporters after the briefing.
On top of that, the Miami Herald reported Friday morning that the Trump administration is now poised to target military installations in Venezuela and that the strikes could happen at any moment, escalating its purported campaign against drug cartels. “The sheer scale of the deployment has led many analysts to conclude that the mission’s ultimate aim is the removal of the Maduro regime, though U.S. officials have provided few specifics about any planned actions inside Venezuela,” the Herald reported.
During Friday morning’s interview with Johnson, the president’s favorite morning talk show brought up the Democratic criticism of the administration’s campaign against Venezuela – though some Republicans have also become increasingly outspoken about the legality of the strikes and lack of answers from the White House.
“They are upset, they say there is no legal basis and there’s no evidence to prove what the president is saying. What’s your response?” Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked.
“To the shock of no one, House Democrats are not satisfied with a briefing from the Trump administration. I mean, give me a break,” Johnson replied. “If they came out and said they were satisfied, it would be pilloried by their own supporters. Again, they are motivated out of fear and – as you said, Ainsley – Trump Derangement Syndrome!”
The speaker went on to claim that he’s seen “exquisite intelligence” in his briefings on the strikes, claiming that the boats “are bringing massive amounts of deadly narcotics into the country.” He also brought up how fentanyl was the leading cause of death among young people in recent years, grumbling that Trump is “protecting the American people and they ought to be applauding this.”
Chiming in, Jones groused that “this is moronic” from the Democrats before also tying the fentanyl epidemic to the boat strikes.
“As you’ve laid out, all the kids who have died. We’ve seen the families on Capitol Hill,” Jones continued, adding that cartels “are funding people to come across the border” to smuggle in drugs.
“I don’t need a briefing. Bad guys are dying, I like it,” the Fox News host, who has regularly been praised by the president, concluded. Fox News, meanwhile, has championed and validated the strikes in recent weeks, calling them “pretty spectacular” while praising the administration’s “aggressive” approach.
“Cartels are at war with the U.S. They are killing more people than we have lost in war. One boatload of this stuff – fentanyl, for example – can kill hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Johnson reacted. “So you take that out, you leave that out at sea, you’ve saved the country! You have helped save lives of innocent people. I cannot imagine why they would be criticizing the White House for taking action!”
Outside of the fact that the administration has yet to provide public proof that the boats are being operated by “narco-terrorists” and have been loaded down with illicit drugs, which would still leave the military strikes legally dubious, the flow of fentanyl into the United States does not come from Venezuela and South America.
“Venezuela plays essentially no role in the production or smuggling of fentanyl,” the New York Times reported this month. “The drug is almost entirely made in Mexico with chemicals imported from countries in Asia, including China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department and the Congressional Research Service.”
Furthermore, those who were briefed by the administration this week said that the military acknowledged that the drugs that typically come from that area of the world do not include fentanyl.
“So they admitted that all of the narcotics coming out of this part of the world is cocaine. They, you know, talked a little bit about the connection between cocaine and fentanyl, although I’m not convinced that what they said was accurate,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) told reporters on Thursday. “And I think it goes to show that this is actually not about addressing fentanyl and the deaths of Americans, which is a really huge problem that we should be addressing.”
