‘That’s a little different’: GOP strategist gets stumped defending Trump boat strikes

Republican strategist Tim Parrish struggled to defend President Donald Trump’s military strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats Saturday after being confronted with facts from CNN’s Abby Phillip that flew in the face of the Trump administration’s purported rationale for the military campaign.

“Any family in this country who's lost someone to fentanyl use would absolutely agree with President Trump that we are, in fact, at war with the cartels, and they would appreciate the president taking every action he can to stop the flow of drugs into this country,” Parrish said during an appearance on CNN’s “Table for Five” Saturday.

Trump has ramped up attacks on suspected drug traffickers, announcing this week that another six people were killed after he ordered a strike on a sea vessel in the Caribbean Sea heading toward the United States. This follows other military strikes in the region ordered by Trump in what critics have condemned as amounting to murder.

The Trump administration’s rationale for the strikes is that Trump had designated drug cartels as foreign terrorists via an executive order, and therefore, the execution-style killings – without affording the suspected drug traffickers due process – is warranted, given that they pose an immediate threat to national security.

Phillip, however, accurately noted that Mexico is the overwhelming "dominant source” of fentanyl in the United States, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the nation in 2024.

“If Trump is saying we are in a war against the cartels to stop drug trafficking, that war with be with the Mexican cartels, not with fishermen coming on boats out of Venezuela, so I'm just asking for a real justification that I think we ought to ask for every president when they start dropping bombs around the world for what is the actual reason?” Phillip said.

“Do we actually know who these people are, do we know that they're even Venezuelans? Because some of them, reportedly, were from other countries, and when we start bombing citizens of other countries, we don't want other countries bombing our citizens in international waters, so what are the rules of engagement here?”

Parrish attempted to dismiss Phillip’s statement in arguing that Americans weren’t “bringing drugs from the United States into South America by boat.”

“On the Mexican border, the president has designated several Mexican drug cartels as a terrorist of our country, and there are special forces elements on the ground addressing those,” Parrish said.

“But we’re not bombing them!” Phillip fired back.

“Well, because that's a little bit of a different scenario when we talk about bombing right next door in Mexico,” Parrish said.