Conservative analyst Bill Kristol said on Monday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a "revealing mistake" about the Trump administration's decision to attack a supposed drug smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela.
Kristol, the editor at large for the conservative outlet The Bulwark, joined Tim Miller on a new episode of "The Bulwark Podcast" to discuss the strike. One thing Kristol noted in particular was Rubio's defense of the strike.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it will happen again,” Al Jazeera reported Rubio telling reporters last week. “Maybe it’s happening right now. I don’t know.”
Kristol argued that Rubio's framing of his response was telling.
"That was a very revealing mistake of Rubio to say that," Kristol said. "But that is not legal. I mean, that is not within the president's power to do, especially because we don't even know that they were drug smugglers."
"So I think the facts are very bad for Trump," he continued. "I think the law is very bad. And, for me, the big reveal is they haven't explained anything."
Kristol compared the strike on the Venezuelan boat to the bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities. After the bomb strikes, Kristol said the Trump administration seemed eager to defend its actions. They haven't shown the same enthusiasm about their strike near Venezuela, he argued.
"The fact that they haven't said anything shows they have a problem," Kristol said.
