Dem Rep. Smith: Seizure of Oil Tanker 'Sure Doesn’t Seem Legitimate'

Friday on CNN’s “The Arena,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said the U.S. Coast Guard seizing an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea didn’t “seem legitimate.”

Host Kasie Hunt said, “The oil tanker that was seized by the U.S., do you think that was a legitimate action or was it illegitimate?”

Smith said, “I don‘t know yet. It sure doesn‘t seem legitimate. And that gets us into the other piece of this. Supposedly, this is about stopping drugs from coming into the U.S., but of course, we have the well-documented efforts of president — sorry, well-documented decisions by President Trump to pardon drug dealers in a number of different areas if it seems to meet other needs that he has. Or is this really more about what was in the national security strategy last week, where President Trump reasserts in his mind the right of the United States of America to dominate the Western hemisphere? So, is this more about the fact that he wants to go after Maduro and Petro because he finds them insufficiently loyal to the United States’ dominance of the region? And that is deeply troubling as well. If you have this expanded rules of engagement and he‘s after regime change in potentially multiple countries, I think that’s the wrong national security strategy for our country.”

Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN