Trump Thinks His Administration Is ‘Like Pirates’

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The U.S. Navy was born to fight piracy. After the Revolutionary War, the United States maintained no standing fleet, but attacks by the Barbary pirates—corsairs based in North Africa who preyed on American merchant ships and took sailors ransom—drove Congress to reestablish a navy in the 1790s. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson dispatched ships to the Mediterranean to fight the pirates, and the successful war that followed proved a template for American interventions for centuries: The U.S. showed it was willing to use military force to defend American commercial interests and to punish bad international actors.Trump has already rejected much of this vision of American foreign policy, a point he demonstrated vividly last month by approvingly likening the U.S. Navy to pirates while describing an interdiction in the Persian Gulf. “We took over the cargo, took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business. Who would have thought we were doing that?” the president said in West Palm Beach, Florida. “We’re like pirates.”Perhaps a man as enthralled by gold as Trump was bound to find a natural affinity with pirates. In fact, the Trump administration is taking a buccaneering attitude around the globe—not just in the actions in the Middle East that Trump described. The U.S. continues to blow up boats, including one yesterday, in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean without any due process or basis in law. And in Washington, a prominent senator has proposed that the U.S. government commission privateers—basically, government-licensed pirates—to battle narco-traffickers.Since the start, the strikes have been a lawless operation. Few legal experts believe there is any justification for them. The Trump administration claims that those targeted are drug smugglers but has presented no evidence for thi