WASHINGTON (PNN) - September 4, 2025 - Senator Rand Paul (Kent.) on Thursday criticized the President Donald J. Trump regime decision to bomb a boat near Venezuela over claims that it was carrying drugs, an action that was taken without providing any evidence.
“It’s hard to have any sympathy for drug dealers trying to import product into our country,” Paul said in an appearance on Newsmax. “But at the same time, I guess, you might ask the question, ‘Where does it end? Are we the world’s policemen?’”
The Kentucky senator said that U.S. authorities wouldn’t bomb a boat if it was off the coast of the U.S. and suspected of running drugs. “We all assume these people were bad people and drug dealers but if they were caught off the coast of Miami we would stop the boat. If they don’t shoot at us, we don’t shoot at them,” he said.
Rand Paul said, "The reason we have trials and don't automatically assume guilt is what if we make a mistake and they happen to be people fleeing the Venezuelan dictator? Off our coast it isn't our policy just to blow people up… even the worst people in our country.”
He added that in the U.S. even the “worst people” accused of terrible crimes are entitled to a trial.
President Trump claimed that the strike on the boat killed 11 people who were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the U.S. government has labeled “narcoterrorists.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other U.S. officials have said more strikes are coming and he is not ruling out the possibility of pursuing regime change in Venezuela, which may be the real purpose of the deployment of multiple U.S. Navy warships to the Southern Caribbean.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denied U.S. accusations that he is involved in drug trafficking and is vowing to fight if the U.S. attacks his country. Other Venezuelan officials have downplayed the U.S. strike on the boat, claiming that the video President Trump released purporting to show the bombing may have been a fake, AI-made video.