On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and go after them with the full might of the U.S. military. He has kept his word. He has not, however, gone to Congress for an official declaration of war as mandated by the Constitution.
“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” Trump told RealClearPolitics Thursday when asked about strikes against alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean off the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela. “I think we are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead.”
The Trump administration has dealt with drugs, not as a police question, but as a military one, and the president has not hesitated to use military action – despite the procedural objections of some Republicans – to crack down on the scourge of illicit fentanyl.
Without asking permission to strike at the cartels, the White House has kept Congress in the loop. A senior administration official told RCP that the administration has conducted seven separate classified briefings since early September with members and staff in both House and Senate leadership as well as the relevant committees.
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