WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed Tuesday morning that the US military sank a third alleged drug-running boat originating in Venezuela.
“We knocked off, actually, three boats, not two, but you saw two,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn as he departed for a state visit to London.
“And the problem is there are very few boats out in the water. There’s not a lot of boats out in the water. I can’t imagine why.”
President Trump revealed Tuesday morning that the US military sank a third alleged drug-running boat off the Venezuelan coast. AFP via Getty ImagesThe president said he wants Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to “stop sending Tren de Aragua into the United States, stop sending drugs into the United States” and “stop sending people from your prisons into our country.”
The Pentagon referred questions about the third attack to the White House, which did not immediately release information.
Trump, 79, posted footage Monday of three alleged drug smugglers dying in a US airstrike after publishing a similar clip on Sept. 2 of the US military killing 11 in a boat.
“We knocked off, actually, three boats, not two, but you saw two,” Trump said. Truth Social/Donald Trump/DOD / SWNSThe White House last month placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s head for allegedly overseeing a vast drug enterprise.
The left-wing autocrat, indicted on US criminal charges in 2020, claims an American invasion of his country is imminent.
Trump has justified the airstrikes and a massive naval deployment as self-defense against deadly narcotics.
The president told reporters Monday that “big bags of cocaine and fentanyl” were “spattered all over the ocean” in the second attack.
A person on the boat appears to wave at the camera shortly before it is blown up, according to reports. Truth Social/Donald Trump/DOD / SWNSAbout 78,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the 12 months ending in March of this year, down from about 104,000 in 2023-2024, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The attacks in international waters have created novel legal questions due to the fact that drug dealing typically is handled with the arrest of suspects rather than targeted killing.
The Trump administration has declared various drug-running groups to be foreign terrorist organizations and the president on Monday threatened to broaden strikes to land-based smugglers.
“When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats. And you’ll see that. But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won’t happen,” Trump warned.
“They killed 300,000 people in our country last year, and we’re not letting it happen anymore.”
