The United States began a series of highly targeted strikes on small vessels tied to Venezuelan drug networks this year, actions that have shaken the smugglers who treat the Caribbean like a highway to our cities. What some establishment outlets call “escalation” conservatives call a long-overdue use of force to choke off deadly supply lines that are slaughtering our kids and neighbors.

When Kevin O’Leary — a businessman who knows risk and consequence — squared off with CNN’s Abby Phillip, he did something the rest of the media too often refuses to do: look at outcomes instead of feelings. O’Leary warned that if traffickers know their boats will be destroyed, they will think twice, and even an uneasy Abby Phillip was forced to reckon with the deterrent logic on live television.

Dave Rubin seized on that exchange because it exposes the cowardice of much of the press: they reflexively denounce force while pretending not to care about the tens of thousands dying from illicit drugs. Rubin’s DM clip put the conversation back where it belongs — on saving American lives and enforcing sovereignty against narco-regimes that profit from human destruction.

Of course the usual suspects — lawyers at human rights groups and opinion-driven outlets — shriek about legality and “extrajudicial killings,” as if rhetorical purity keeps fentanyl out of our kids’ pockets. Those critiques ignore the reality that cartels and corrupted state actors operate as transnational criminal enterprises, and that doing nothing is a policy choice that costs lives.

President Trump and his team have signaled they see this as an existential national security issue, even taking dramatic steps to recharacterize the threat posed by fentanyl and its precursors to justify tougher action. Conservatives who love this country should welcome leadership that treats drug kingpins like the national-security threats they are and not like garden-variety criminals; we must defend American lives first.

Patriots should demand two things: clarity and courage. Push Congress and the administration to explain the legal framework and share evidence where appropriate, but do not let jittery elites and virtue-signaling pundits handcuff commanders who are trying to stop a national disaster in plain sight; protecting Americans is not partisan theater, it is duty.