Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) questioned the Trump administration attacks on venezuelan ships Without the approval of Congress.
“The administration needs to give Congress insight. That’s part of it. If that were happening with this level of insight under the Biden administration, I would be disappointed,” Lankford said during thursday presence at C-SPAN’s new “Ceasefire” program,
He appeared with Democratic Senator Chris Coons (Del.), who also shared that he was shocked after learning in the press about the attacks ordered by the White House.
“I serve on the Intelligence Committee. He serves as a senior Democrat on defense. This is elite counsel,” Lankford told host Dasha Burns.
“It’s not allowed, but it’s, ‘Hey, I want to let you know this is happening and hear the details of what’s happening and here’s why and what, and here’s what we know,'” he said.
President Trump has alleged that the ships targeted by the military were engaged in drug trafficking, which the Venezuelan government denies. Ten attacks have been carried out since the campaign began in September.
“I don’t think we would necessarily be asking for a declaration of war,” Trump said. told reporters on Thursday“I think we’re going to kill the people who are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has supported the operation and shared video footage of the attacks on the social platform X.
“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs into our hemisphere, we will treat you the same way we treat al-Qaeda,” Hegseth wrote after Thursday night’s attack, which left six “narco-terrorists” dead.
“Day or night, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down and kill you.”
Lankford said lawmakers do not oppose Trump’s efforts to address the international sale of illegal narcotics, but he urged the president to keep members of Congress informed of his plans.
“I have Oklahomans who are dying from methamphetamine, from cocaine, from fentanyl, and from different medications that have fentanyl laced on them and mixed in. It’s happening in my state as it is happening all over the country. We’ve tried a lot of different ways to be able to stop it,” Lankford told Burns.
“The president has turned the volume up to 11 and said, ‘No, we’re going to stop drugs coming into our country that are killing people,'” he said. “It’s completely reasonable to do that. What we’re missing is the ability to communicate, coordinate and be able to say, let’s talk out loud about this. We’re not their rivals on this. We’re allies to be able to solve this, but we need to be able to have a voice on this as a co-equal branch.”
