A clip circulating from The Rubin Report shows Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivering a blunt, no-nonsense warning to European leaders: do not stand in the way of America taking decisive action against Venezuelan drug traffickers. Dave Rubin’s reaction captured what many Americans feel — a tired frustration with a global elite more interested in virtue signaling than stopping poison from reaching our streets.

This blunt rhetoric comes against the backdrop of recent U.S. military strikes on vessels accused of operating as narco-terrorist conveyances, an aggressive posture the administration says is necessary to choke off the flow of deadly fentanyl and cartel drugs. Critics in the mainstream press squeal about legality and escalation, but facts on the water are simple: traffickers treat international waters as a highway to destroy American lives, and the previous intercept-and-release approach has failed.

Rubio has openly defended the harder line, arguing that deterrence only works when the cost to smugglers rises dramatically — and that sometimes means destroying the platforms they use to send poison into our country. This is not recklessness; it is a policy rooted in protecting Americans from a menace that has been allowed to metastasize while soft-on-crime bureaucrats fiddled. Conservatives who understand national sovereignty and the duty to protect citizens should be thanking leaders who finally match words with action.

Unsurprisingly, the strikes have rattled capitals in Europe and parts of the region, with diplomats and commentators fretting about escalation and international law. Some in Europe who lecture the United States about restraint would do well to remember that their comfortable debates have consequences when their ports and markets become conduits for cartel cash and chemicals. Those warnings from foreign ministries are predictable; what matters is whether they back American efforts to secure our border and stop the flow of death.

For patriotic Americans, Rubio’s stern message to the European Union is a welcome reminder that national security sometimes requires uncomfortable choices and firm talk. If European bureaucrats think they can second-guess operations that save American lives from cartels and narco-terrorists, they should be prepared to answer for the consequences of inaction — not lecture the men and women who actually do the hard work of defending this country.

This administration has gone further by designating cartel networks and Maduro-linked actors as terrorist entities, a necessary legal step to give our forces the tools they need to act overseas against criminal networks that act like armies. The designation and the tougher enforcement posture are not about empire; they are about stopping narcoterrorism at its source and denying transnational gangs the impunity they have enjoyed for decades. America cannot be lectured out of defending its citizens.

Let the elites and sympathetic foreign ministers go on as they wish with their moralizing columns; the living rooms of America are filled with grieving families who want results, not lectures. Rubio’s warning to Europe is not bluster — it is the sound of a country that has decided to put American lives first and will not allow international hand-wringing to hamstring tactical efforts that save children from addiction and death. If Europe chooses obstruction over cooperation, they will see that protecting the homeland is not negotiable.