Even a GOP Senator Thinks JD Vance’s War Crimes Comment Is Disgusting

Vice President JD Vance hit a new low while attempting to defend a deadly extrajudicial military strike on an alleged “drug boat,” and even Republicans are noticing.

Vance, who is known for his emotional outbursts—both online and off—has once again demonstrated that he can’t take any amount of criticism.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance wrote on X Saturday morning, referring to the president’s strike on a boat in international waters last week. The government has claimed the strike killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang who were bringing drugs to the United States.

Brian Krassenstein, a political podcaster and social media influencer critical of Trump, stepped in to remind Vance that the government hadn’t provided any actual evidence to support the claim that they were TdA members. (If it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be the first time.)

“Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime,” he wrote.

“I don’t give a shit what you call it,” Vance replied.

What Vance might have imagined as a defiant mic-drop moment betrayed his disturbing willingness to ignore federal and international law to commit executions.

Republican Senator Rand Paul slammed Vance’s statement.

“JD ‘I don’t give a shit’ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the ‘highest and best use of the military.’ Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote in a post on X. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

Vance’s comment was particularly disturbing in light of remarks from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who imagines that he has “absolute authority” to commit acts of war against nations Congress has not declared war against.

In reality, the Trump administration received no legal authorization for the use of force, and is still struggling to invent a legal basis for its own strike. It seems they even struggled to decide where to say the boat was headed.

The Supreme Court on Monday accepted an emergency request from President Donald Trump, allowing him to remove Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter as she challenges her ousting.

The president attempted to fire Slaughter in March, leading the commissioner to challenge the move as presidents may only legally remove FTC commissioners for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

A federal court in July blocked Slaughter’s removal, deeming Trump’s attempt “unlawful and without legal effect.” The ruling cited Supreme Court precedent in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which limited the president’s ability to remove officials from agencies such as the FTC.

The lower court’s decision was upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which last week stated that Trump “has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent.”

Nonetheless, the Trump administration has appealed, and as is its wont, sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts faithfully obliged—temporarily blocking Slaughter’s reinstatement as her case progresses.

President Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts are like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.

On Monday, the president came for beloved actor Tom Hanks, celebrating the fact that West Point canceled a ceremony meant to honor the actor.

“We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The military academy’s alumni association was set to bestow upon Hanks the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award for his advocacy work and multiple on-screen portrayals of service members. But for reasons that remain unclear, they canceled the festivities meant to honor him at the last minute.

“This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army,” wrote Mark Bieger, president and chief executive officer of the West Point Association of Graduates, in an email that was obtained by The Washington Post.

Hanks has been a public supporter of former President Joe Biden. The actor narrated a video marking one year of Biden’s presidency in 2022, and recently portrayed a Trump supporter on Saturday Night Live as a racist who refused to shake cast member Keenan Thompson’s hand.

Luckily, Hanks can take comfort in his two Oscars, seven Emmys, five Golden Globes, and four Tonys.

On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told the world that President Donald Trump was actually an FBI informant collecting intelligence on Epstein, absolving him of any criminality. On Sunday, he admitted that he lied. 

“[Trump] has never said or suggested or implied—I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”

Johnson’s comment, made very casually, lit up the airwaves. 

“No officer i am an fbi informant tasked with smoking this weed,” one user posted ironically. 

On Sunday, Johnson changed his story. 

“The Speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump—who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago—was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator,” Johnson’s office wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. 

There’s a big difference between being “willing to help prosecutors” and being an actual FBI informant, which is exactly what Johnson said while surrounded by cameras and reporters. 

The speaker shouldn’t be let off the hook so easily for such an absurd comment. The sitting president is only implicated in the case of a serial sexual abuser because he was acting as an informant for the FBI? Did Johnson expect us to think Trump was wearing a wire while he was hanging out with Epstein in the 1990s? And for him to introduce and walk back such a massive lie so offhandedly speaks to the ridiculous amount of deceit that is commonplace in this administration.  

The Trump administration has handled the Epstein case with lies from the jump, back when Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had the Epstein files on her desk. Now we have the House speaker defending a president who thinks this is all a hoax, by promoting him to the level of secret agent. 

“It was a fantastical story for about a day,” said GOP Representative Thomas Massie, who is leading the bipartisan discharge petition to force the release of the Epstein files in full. “What compelled (former career attorney) Mike Johnson to claim the President was an FBI informant?”

President Donald Trump is stealing credit for infrastructure improvements achieved under Biden-era legislation he actively sought to sabotage.

The New York Times reports that signs emblazoned with the words “PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” and “REBUILDING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE” are popping up across the country at improvement projects financed by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (perhaps better known as Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), which passed against Trump’s best efforts in 2021.

As Trump was seeking to derail the legislation, he called it a “loser” for the country.

“Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill is a disgrace,” he said in August 2021 before a Senate vote on the bill, warning that Republican lawmakers who supported it would be committing political suicide. After it passed Congress, he referred to it as a “terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan.”

Now Trump appears happy to claim Biden’s achievement as his own. The only indication on the signs pointing to the truth is smaller text noting the project was “funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”

An Amtrak spokesperson told the Times that the signs currently appear at sites in Connecticut, Maryland, Boston, and Philadelphia, as well as on a Baltimore-to-Washington, D.C., Amtrak route, as part of a “voluntary Amtrak initiative” to update signage “following the change in presidential administrations earlier this year.”

When Biden’s bill passed, the then president claimed credit for its achievements with signs bearing the words “Project Funded By President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.” Republicans were outraged at the time but are curiously quiet now. According to the Times, Senator Ted Cruz, who accused Biden of running afoul of the Hatch Act for his signs, “did not respond to an email asking whether the Trump signs might also violate the Hatch Act.”

Numerous Republicans who voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act have, since its passage, taken credit for its results. For example, Representative Nancy Mace—despite voting “no” on the bill, which she called a “socialist wish list”—has since falsely said she “helped secure the largest infrastructure grant in state history, in South Carolina history.”

Similarly, when the Trump administration took over Union Station last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy touted rail improvements made possible by Biden’s legislation as part of Trump’s effort to “Make Travel Great again.”