Transcript: Trump Drug Boat Bombings Get Worse as Damning Info Emerges
Sargent: And then on top of that, Trump’s tweet announcing the second bombing was just sick. It said, quote, all in caps, “be warned if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you.” Now, this is a bloodthirsty kind or a quality that I really find worrisome. Am I being overly alarmist here?
Finucane: No, I don’t think so. Unfortunately, I think it’s a piece of, you know, we earlier in the year, we saw Trump showing photos and video of the men who were sent down to CECOT being abused at the prison there, he was showing these at rallies. And so I think it’s similar to that. I think there’s a few different things going on here. One is, again, the president likes performative military actions. That’s why he’s posting these videos. I think there’s an aspect of, you know, they own the libs, know, trolling going on here. But also like using this framing about counterterrorism, war, protecting Americans, of strength, you know, they’re trying to, you know, maneuver Democrats or the opponents of these operations into a bad spot politically and paint them as weak and, you know,
will they tolerate the poisoning and death of their fellow Americans? A lot of this is obviously malarkey, right? So I think that, the framing of terrorism and counterterrorism just doesn’t work. The United States has not suffered an attack like on 9-11 on the threat posed to this country by illegal drugs. It’s very different. It doesn’t have any military solution. You’re not going to bomb your way to victory in the war on drugs.
Sargent: I want to bear down on that point just to close out because it’s really critical and I think it escapes a lot of people. People who didn’t politically come of age in their aftermath of 9-11 don’t really understand just how bloodthirsty and how Islamophobic the atmosphere in this country was. People really wanted blood. They were baying for blood. We’re not in anything close to a similar situation right now. Trump and Stephen Miller, in particular, and some of the other more authoritarian types around Trump have really tried to manufacture a sort of similar sense of terror and emergency out in the country and it’s failing. And I think that’s essential and I hope Democrats keep that in mind when they sort of think through how to respond here and don’t get suckered into thinking, we can’t object because we’ll look weak.
We’re really far away from anything like the post 9-11 environment, and that matters, doesn’t it?
