CNN host grills GOP Senate intel chair for evidence on boat strike justification

Thursday, December 4 on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arizona) — chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Republican Conference — aggressively defended the Trump Administration's Venezuela policy, including military strikes against Venezuelan boats that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claim are smuggling illegal drugs to the United States. Especially controversial is a second strike carried out on September 2 after two men on a boat were already shipwrecked, according to reports.

The following day, on Friday morning, December 5, Cotton continued to defend the Trump Administration's actions in Venezuela during an appearance on CNN.

Asked what "threat" the two men posed if they didn't have a radio, Cotton told CNN's John Berman, "Well, John, the threat they pose is the threat that the boat that was destroyed yesterday posed and that all of these other boats posed. They're running drugs in high volumes into the United States that have killed hundreds of Arkansans in recent years and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans."

Cotton added that U.S. Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley "said that they didn't have any intercepts of these two drug traffickers trying to radio or call for assistance."

The GOP senator continued, "That doesn't mean they weren't doing so. It doesn't mean they weren't trying to access communications equipment on the boat, or that they didn't have any of their drug trafficking pals trying to come pick them up because they were just off the waters or just off the coast of Venezuela. And that's a known area for drug cartels."

But Berman persisted, wanting to know if Cotton had any hard "evidence" of the two men "trying to use a radio" on September 2 to "call for assistance" from drug smugglers after the first strike.

Cotton told Berman, "No, I didn't, John. But they were clearly not incapacitated. They were not distressed. One guy took his t-shirt off like he was sunbathing. They were trying to get the boat back up and to continue their mission of spreading these drugs all across America… And that's why Admiral Bradley ordered the second strike…. No, they didn't, because we killed them, and we were right to kill them."

Berman continued to grill Cotton, asking if it would be "legal for police in Arkansas to kill suspected drug dealers in a boat in an overturned lake." But the senator never answered Berman's question, saying that Democrats "think the entire operation is not well-founded."