Palantir CEO Alex Karp weighed in on the Trump administration's efforts to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. and said that he supports the anti-drug campaign and sees elitism in the criticism of it.
Karp spoke on Palantir's earnings call Monday after the tech company posted quarterly results that beat analysts' estimates on strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. He went on to discuss the administration's campaign to crack down on the smuggling of fentanyl into the country.
"Let me say something slightly political, and I'm not saying other people agree with this," Karp said. "But when people are attacking our soldiers for stopping fentanyl from coming to this country, I want people to remember — if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working-class people, we'd be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America."
"We at Palantir are on the side of the average American who sometimes gets screwed because all the empathy goes to elite people and none of it goes to the people who are actually dying on our streets," he added.
Karp, who describes himself as a progressive but disagrees with some of the widely-held views in the Democratic Party, went on to criticize open border policies as hurting working-class Americans.
"When you have an open border, it means that the average poor American earns less. I know my fellow progressives believe that having an open border is going to make things, but that's because they're actually repping elite people instead of the working class," Karp said.
TRUMP SENDS WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL WARSHIP TO LATIN AMERICA — HISTORIC ECHOES OF REGIME CHANGE
He added that he believes the federal government has authority to carry out the steps needed to interdict the smuggling of dangerous narcotics into the country and that he supports those efforts.
"To believe our Constitution does not give us the right to stop 60,000 deaths a year of working-class men and women is insane," Karp said. "This country is right to stop that, and I am very proud — I don't know all the efforts we're involved in — but to the extent we're involved in these efforts, I and most Palantirians are very proud of this."
BIPARTISAN SENATORS CALL ON HEGSETH TO RELEASE STRIKE ORDERS ON ALLEGED DRUG BOATS IN CARIBBEAN
Critics of the Trump administration's military strikes against alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea have argued there needs to be legal justification for destroying suspected drug vessels.
Lawmakers have called on the White House and Pentagon to provide congressional defense committees with details of the orders and organizations targeted.
