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Trump Says Will Attack Drug Traffickers on Land If Needed (Q&A)
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December 2, 2025
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18:17Now PlayingPresident Donald Trump suggested the Pentagon will soon start targeting drug cartels with strikes on land in Venezuela and beyond, after a campaign that has mainly focused on alleged trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
“We’re going to start doing those strikes on land, you know, the land is much easier, it’s much easier, and we know the routes they take,” Trump said on Tuesday at the White House, adding that the US would start land strikes “very soon.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wasn’t watching when a top US admiral ordered a second strike on an alleged drug-running boat on Sept. 2, further distancing himself from an attack that has drawn bipartisan scrutiny and prompted accusations of possible war crimes.
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting alongside President Donald Trump, Hegseth said he watched the first strike live but then had other meetings to attend and only learned of the full sequence of events a “couple of hours later.” He voiced support for Admiral Frank Bradley, the commander who ordered the second strike, calling his decisions the right call “to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”
“As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs,” he said.
The remarks were Hegseth’s most detailed yet in the days since he and the Trump administration came under scrutiny and bipartisan criticism for the Sept. 2 attack following a Washington Post report that he’d given a spoken order to kill everybody onboard the vessel.
The Post said Hegseth’s order led Bradley to order a second strike once it became clear that there were survivors from the initial attack. That move could amount to a war crime because of laws preventing attacks on survivors who pose no immediate threat.
The White House, the Pentagon and Hegseth have pushed back against the Post reporting. Trump said on Sunday that Hegseth told him he had never given an order to kill everyone on the boat. Of any confusion or criticism of the attack, Hegseth said “this is called the fog of war.”
“This is what you and the press don’t understand,” Hegseth said as Trump looked on. “You sit in your air conditioned offices, you’re up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick.”
Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the administration’s handling of the attack and called the second strike illegal. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican whose vote was key to Hegseth’s narrow confirmation in January, called the second strike “a violation of ethical, moral and legal code.”
“If the facts play out the way they are currently being reported, then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington, whoever it is, the person who made the decision,” Tillis added.
Despite that pressure, Hegseth’s position appeared safe, at least for the time being, with Trump continuing to praise his defense secretary after a series of controversies.
Trump called Hegseth a “smart guy” after he shared details of a pending attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in two chats on Signal, an unsecured online platform. Trump denied reports in March that Elon Musk would see the American military’s contingency planning for any potential war with China in a presentation led by Hegseth.
Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he hoped Hegseth would testify before Congress about the strikes, and that a request for the secretary to appear was “communicated through others.” Wicker did not respond when asked whether he received an answer from Hegseth.
In the meantime, Wicker and Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the committee, will meet with Bradley on Thursday as part of their inquiry into the September strikes. Bradley will also meet with House Armed Services Committee
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