Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump gave the order to “blow up” a vessel off Venezuela’s coast on Tuesday, instead of capturing it.
“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up,” Rubio said at a press conference in Mexico. “And it will happen again.”
Before his trip, Rubio had already signaled that the Trump administration was preparing to “go on the offense” against drug cartels.
Trump, he said, is “going to use the full power of America and the full might of the U.S. to take on and eradicate these drug cartels, no matter where they operate from and no matter how long they’ve been able to act with impunity.”
Administration officials, including President Trump, have defended the attack and warned that more actions may follow. When asked Wednesday in the Oval Office why the boat and its 11 passengers were destroyed instead of detained, Trump explained:
“On the boat you have massive amounts of drugs. We have tapes of them talking about it. There are massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people. You see bags of drugs all over the boat. A lot of other people won’t be doing it again after seeing that video,” Trump said.
He also accused Venezuela of fueling the crisis. “We have to protect our country, and we’re going to. Venezuela has been a very bad actor. They’ve been sending millions of people into the country. Many of them are Tren de Aragua, some of the worst people anywhere in the world,” Trump added.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly warned Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“The only one who should be worried is Nicolás Maduro, who is acting as the kingpin of a narco-state. Not actually elected and indicted for $50 million by the U.S. We know he’s involved in the kind of drug-running that has directly affected the American people,” Hegseth said in an interview with Fox News.
