Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance had a rather blunt response to congressional accusations of war crimes after the U.S. military blasted an alleged drug-running motor boat out of the water, killing 11 people on board — all at the order of President Trump.
“I don’t give a sh** what you call it,” Vance wrote on X.
Going potty-mouth on this was not the response Sen. Rand Paul, the famously libertarian GOP senator from Kentucky, was looking for from the vice president of the United States.
Paul took to X himself that day and fired back:
"JD 'I don’t give a sh**' Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the 'highest and best use of the military,’ ” Paul wrote. “Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??"
"What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said.
Paul’s calling-out of Vance, his fellow Republican and former colleague in the Senate, puts the junior senator from Kentucky squarely alongside liberal Democrats like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin in condemning what they consider the unlawful use of U.S. military might.
David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, said it is rare indeed to see a Senate Republican buck the Trump administration on anything.
“We have seen so many Republican leaders accept Trump's every whim, no matter how lawless or depraved, that it is genuinely shocking when a Republican senator stands up and says right and wrong still matter,” Niven said.
The back-and-forth between Vance and Paul may not be over.
Monday, Trump announced from the Oval Office that a second Venezuelan boat was blown out of the water by the U.S. military, killing three people.
Trump took to his Truth Social platform to justify the second bombing, saying these "extremely violent drug trafficking cartels pose a threat to national security.”
Later, in the Oval Office, Trump was questioned by reporters about what evidence he had that the boat blown up Monday was carrying drugs.
“We have proof,” Trump said. “All you have to do is look at the cargo that was splattered all over the ocean — big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
But, to Paul, what is floating around in the Caribbean is beside the point.
The point is that if these Venezuelans were suspected drug runners — although the first boat was heading in a direction away from the U.S. — they could have been captured, arrested, and afforded the 14th amendment’s due process guarantee that is available to all accused of a crime — even foreign nationals.
“Rand Paul — whether you like his policies or not — has a belief system he governs by,” Niven said. “JD Vance — probably more so than anyone in contemporary American politics — has demonstrated his only code is opportunism.”
Vance, since 2016, when his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” was published, has done a complete 180 on the subject of Donald Trump, who, in that year, was running for president for the first time.
Back then, the Middletown native was on the talk show circuit, describing Trump as “reprehensible” and “America’s Hitler.”
A few years later, when Vance had become a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, he had an epiphany fueled by big bucks from right-wing financier Peter Thiel, following by an endorsement in the GOP primary from another recipient of Thiel’s largess, Donald Trump.
Vance’s Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion earned him the vice presidential nomination in 2024. And he has been one heartbeat away from the presidency since January.
Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, has never been the political shape-shifter that Vance has become. I yam what I yam, as Popeye the Sailor Man would say.
For the most part, Paul has been a reliable vote for Trump’s legislative agenda. Over the years, he has been a frequent golf partner of Trump’s and has had friendly relations with the president.
Those relations have likely become a little frosty this month.
Col Owens, a longtime Democratic activist in Northern Kentucky, called Paul “something of an enigma.”
“He’s a doctor; an ophthalmologist who has called universal health care ‘slavery’ and opposes the Affordable Care Act,” Owens said.
Paul is in his third six-year term as a senator from Kentucky; he will be up for re-election in 2028. He hasn’t faced a serious challenge yet in his political career.
“Rand Paul is not vulnerable when it comes to re-election, not in any way shape or form,” Owens said. “He’s free to be who he is. That’s Rand Paul.”
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