MSNBC's Joe Scarborough bashed President Donald Trump's administration for carrying out a series of military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats near Venezuela.
The U.S. military has killed at least 60 people in the strikes over the past two months as Trump pressures Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who the administration claims is illegitimate and the leader of a drug-trafficking organization, and the "Morning Joe" host accused them of "lying" about the situation.
"It's bizarre," Scarborough said. "I mean, you look at where the drugs are coming in from Central and South America, the vast number of them are not coming from Venezuela. The suggestion that you're going to stop fentanyl trafficking and the trafficking of cocaine and other drugs by blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela is just complete lunacy and everybody knows it."
"Democrats and Republicans alike know they're lying," he added. "This isn't about a drug war."
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius compared the administration's posture to the 1823 foreign policy doctrine established by President James Monroe declaring that North and South America should be free from European influence.
"This is about flexing your muscles in your own hemisphere," Ignatius said.
"The Wall Street Journal cleverly described this as the 'Donroe Doctrine,' playing off the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted that the this hemisphere, North and South America is our space and nobody's allowed to to infringe on it, and Trump, as in so many other ways, seems to be moving back to the 19th century, and those definitions of American foreign policy at a time when U.S. interests are so clearly threatened in Europe by a very aggressive advancing Russia, and in Asia by by a growing Chinese threat. All this focus on Central, Latin America is just hard to understand."
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