Sunny Hostin is questioning the legality behind President Donald Trump‘s orders to seize an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
On this morning’s episode of The View, the co-hosts wondered why Trump, who has vehemently promised “no new wars,” would seize an oil tanker in international waters. While Whoopi Goldberg worried about the “retaliation” the United States could face from countries like China—which gets its oil from Venezuela—Sara Haines explained why she thought the move might’ve been “a good thing.”
“This was a legal seizure of an oil tanker and a lot of what they’re also saying is this is also going to disincentivize black market ships from stopping in Venezuela and taking this oil to enemy nations,” Haines explained.
The warrant to seize the ship was signed off by a United States federal judge about two weeks ago due to the ship’s past activity of smuggling Iranian oil, which, according to Hostin, is “typically used to finance terrorist activity.” However, Hostin also said it was still “unclear whether or not this was legal.”
“The piece that I don’t understand is that the President of the United States is almost acting as if he’s a pirate and the United States is just a group of pirates,” Hostin said.
Noting that some legal analysts have argued that Trump has “no jurisdiction to enforce unilateral sanctions on non-U.S. persons outside of the territory,” Hostin said she still questions whether it was truly legal for our country to not only seize the ship, but for Trump to say the United States would also be keeping the oil found aboard.
“I’m sort of in that space. Who are we to be able to bomb boats off of the coast of Venezuela? Who are we to board a ship, even with a US federal judge’s seizure warrant, and then keep the oil?” she asked. “That, to me, feels a lot like corruption, it feels a lot like imperialism, it feels a lot like fascism. And while it might be cloaked in an appearance of legality, I still question that.”
The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.
