WASHINGTON, DC — President Trump on Tuesday defended the U.S. military’s strike on a Venezuelan vessel in the southern Caribbean by noting that the eleven men aboard were unquestionably drug traffickers, a determination he said had been reached by blowing them up.
The administration has produced no manifest, no intercepted communications, and no surviving suspects, but officials maintain the case is open and shut, mostly because there is no longer a case or, technically, a boat.
“We had high-confidence intelligence,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn, gesturing at a grainy infrared clip of a speedboat becoming a fireball. “Look at the video. Does that look like an innocent boat to you? Innocent boats don’t explode like that.”
Pressed on whether the vessel had been boarded, searched, or even visually confirmed to contain narcotics before being struck by what defense officials described as “a precision munition and also a second precision munition just to be sure,” a senior administration official explained that traditional interdictions are “slow, expensive, and frequently end with a trial,” three problems the new policy elegantly solves at once.
The Pentagon released a fact sheet identifying the men aboard as members of Tren de Aragua, a designation arrived at through what one official described as “vibes and the general direction the boat was pointed.” The fact sheet was two sentences long. The second sentence was a disclaimer that the first sentence could not be independently verified.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the strike “a clear message to the Maduro regime” and “a model for future engagements,” before clarifying that the eleven dead men were not necessarily affiliated with the Maduro regime but were, at minimum, on a boat, which under the new framework is sufficient.
Legal scholars noted that summary execution by Hellfire missile of unidentified civilians in international waters traditionally requires a declaration of war, a finding of imminent threat, or at least a courtroom, but Trump dismissed those concerns as “the kind of paperwork the cartels love.” He added that anyone uncomfortable with the strike was welcome to ride the next boat and see how it goes.
The Venezuelan government condemned the attack and demanded an investigation, a request the White House said it would take seriously the moment Venezuela produced a boat for the U.S. to also blow up, in the spirit of fairness.
Asked Wednesday morning whether the standard of evidence might be tightened going forward, the President said he saw no reason to fix something that had so thoroughly worked. “They were guilty,” he said. “Trust me. I’ve seen the wreckage.”