‘Just Extraordinary!’ Alex Witt Amazed At Trump’s Continued Strikes on Alleged ‘Narcoterrorists’ Without Congressional Approval
MSNBC’s Alex Witt was dumbfounded over the latest strike by President Donald Trump’s administration on alleged Venezuelan drug runners in international waters.
On Friday, Trump announced via Truth Social that he gave the order for “a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility.”
Trump added, “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.”
This was the third strike on a Venezuelan vessel in the past month without congressional authorization.
“We heard Karoline Leavitt almost gleefully boasting that 17 people were killed in these three operations,” Witt said on Saturday. “Is there anything that any group could do to legally bring action against the administration?”
Leah Lipman with the University of Michigan law school explained it’s “an area of law where it is quite difficult to bring a preemptive lawsuit that would prevent the president from carrying out strikes before he does so, because in order to bring such a suit, you would need a plaintiff to be able to show that they were about to be the target of such a strike. And of course, the president isn’t declaring when he is going to issue these strikes or against whom. So a preemptive lawsuit that could prevent this is basically out of the question, which is why we need a Congress to actually step up and do something.”
“I mean…you could make an argument here, but by these actions, the president’s going against the Constitution!” Witt exclaimed. “I mean, this is just extraordinary. And what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if another country did this to Americans? All hell would break out!”
Conservative analyst Brendan Buck argued that “you have to question whether or not on its face what those boats allegedly are doing is true. And I think there are a lot of people who — and this is probably why the president will get away with this — is there’s a lot of people who look at this and say, ‘These actually are people bringing in illegal drugs into our country that are killing —'”
“Where’s the proof?” Witt interrupted.
“Well, I think that’s the type of thing that the administration probably has an obligation to explain,” Buck said.
Watch above via MSNBC.
