Who?
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) — Member, Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)
This was first published by our sister outlet, Ask a Pol Drugs.
LISTEN: Laslo & Kaine
Ask a Pol asks:
What do you make of President Donald Trump’s orders to strike cartels in the Caribbean? Stateside cartels illegally grow cannabis in some states — so where’s that line?
Key Kaine:
“Well, it’s a line that the president shouldn’t be able to do it unilaterally,” Sen. Tim Kaine exclusively tells Ask a Pol. “If you’re using military action to wipe out boats that you claim are drug trafficking boats, you need congressional authorization to do it.
“The reason that — they believe they have more of an international legal rationale if it’s in international waters. They need both the domestic rationale and international rationale. We’re pressing them on the no domestic rationale...”
Caught our ear:
“When you bomb you often don’t recover narcotics,” Kaine tells us. “In at least one of the instances, there’s no narcotics recovered. It’s not clear that was what was on the boat. It might have been human traffick.”
Below find a rough transcript of Ask a Pol’s exclusive interview with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), slightly edited for clarity.
TRANSCRIPT: Sen. Tim Kaine (10-7-2025)
SCENE: Ask a Pol’s Matt Laslo waits in back of Sen. Tim Kaine as he finishes answering a few reporters’ questions in the Senate basement.
Once the Senator finishes the impromptu interviews, Laslo helps him and his aide find an open elevator, which he then proceeds to invite himself onto…
Matt Laslo: “Hey how are you?”
Tim Kaine: “Good.”
M.L.: “Venezuela...”
T.K.: “Ahuh.”
M.L.: “...this AUMF [Authorization for Use of Military Force]...?”
T.K.: “Yeah?”
M.L.: “Is it going to be an AUMF?”
T.K.: “Well, I don’t know. The Republicans might be putting one together. Our War Powers Resolution is about the Caribbean, not about Venezuela.”
M.L.: “Yeah?”
T.K.: “So it’s only about actions in international waters in the Caribbean. If there is an effort to strike in Venezuela, we’ll file a War Powers challenge to that.”
M.L.: “What do you make about just them going after cartels? I mean, here stateside, the cartels are growing cannabis in some states.”
T.K.: “Yeah.”
M.L.: “So where’s that line?”
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T.K.: “Well, it’s a line that the president shouldn’t be able to do it unilaterally. It should — I mean, if you’re using military action to wipe out boats that you claim are drug trafficking boats, you need congressional authorization to do it.”
M.L.: “And that law kind of changes at the border? At international waters?”
T.K.: “The reason that — they believe they have more of an international legal rationale if it’s in international waters. They need both the domestic rationale and international rationale. We’re pressing them on the no domestic rationale...”
M.L.: “Yeah.”
T.K.: “..and not so much on the international side, although I think there’s a case to be made on that as well.”
M.L.: “Hmmm.”
T.K.: “What if Mexico, which doesn’t like guns being run into Mexico, sees a boat leaving from San Diego and is in Mexican water, do they just have the ability to just bomb it willy nilly on the say so of President [Claudia] Sheinbaum? If what Donald Trump is saying about his authority is so, then that would be so. There’s got to be some more justification for this.”
M.L.: “Do you guys know that it was fentanyl or cocaine in some of those bombings?”
T.K.: “In — there’s, there are two, three of the four that, yes, we do know, and there’s one that we don’t. And they haven’t produced any evidence that it is.”
M.L.: “Yeah? How worrying is that?”
T.K.: “Tren de Aragua does human trafficking. And they…”
M.L.: “Yeah.”
T.K.: “When you bomb you often don’t recover narcotics. In at least one in the instances, there’s no narcotics recovered. It’s not clear that was what was on the boat. It might have been human traffick.”
M.L.: “Because they — human cargo wouldn’t just be called ‘human’?”
T.K.: “Yeah.”
M.L.: “It would be called…”
T.K.: “Right.”
Kaine nods in agreement (Laslo’s covered the Senator for more than a decade, and it seems they communicate like a married couple…).
M.L.: “Interesting.”
T.K.: “Yeah, so…”
M.L.: “Preciate ya.”
T.K.: “Yeah.”
Kaine heads over to Democrats’ weekly Caucus lunch.
