On Tuesday, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made efforts to disassociate themselves from the decision to execute a secondary strike against a suspected narcotics vessel in the Caribbean. They maintained they lacked prior knowledge of the military’s subsequent action after the initial bombardment failed to neutralize everyone aboard.
Speaking to reporters during a Cabinet assembly, Trump stated he had not been consulted beforehand, adding that even several months later, he still hadn’t received a comprehensive briefing on the specifics of those events.
“I was unaware of the second strike. I had zero knowledge concerning the individuals involved,” he commented. “I had no part in it, though I was aware they had struck a boat; I would assert they carried out an attack.”
Trump further indicated that his expectation was for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to keep him informed regarding the unfolding situation, noting that Hegseth was “content” with the operation executed in September.
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However, Hegseth, as well, denied having a direct role in zeroing in on the survivors on Tuesday. He asserted that he had delegated complete authority for operational decisions to Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, emphasizing that he had exited the scene long before it became apparent that some occupants of the boat had survived.
“I witnessed that initial strike in real-time,” Hegseth stated. “I did not remain for the subsequent hour or two, whatever the duration was, during which all the sensitive digital exploitation takes place, so I proceeded to my next engagement.”
The defense secretary clarified that he only discovered the details of the second strike several hours later.
Both Trump and Hegseth defended Bradley’s conduct, asserting it was appropriate and within the administration’s legal purview, with Hegseth promising that the administration would “support him fully.”
“President Trump has granted commanders the authority to carry out necessary, albeit grim and difficult, actions under the cover of darkness,” he remarked.
But the attempts to place the responsibility for the follow-up strike entirely on Bradley, the commander of US Special Operations Command, arrive amidst escalating scrutiny from legislators across the political spectrum regarding the strike’s legality. Some even posited that it constituted a war crime. Furthermore, Trump had previously stated he “would not have desired that, not a second strike.”
Hegseth’s narrative on Tuesday also cast doubt on his initial description of the strike immediately following the event, when he told Fox News, “I watched it live. We knew precisely who was on that boat, we knew precisely what they were doing.”
GOP Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has vowed “intense oversight” of the decision-making process following initial reports from The Washington Post and CNN that military personnel had killed survivors in a subsequent strike on a presumed drug vessel in the Caribbean in September. As part of its inquiry, the committee has since formally requested all audio and video recordings of the attack.
Democrats have consistently criticized the administration’s Caribbean operations as perilous and unjustified, contending that Trump has exaggerated the danger posed by the alleged drug vessels and provided scant substantiation that any of the dozens killed in these strikes warranted such force.
Nevertheless, the authorization of a second strike targeting survivors spurred a wider coalition of lawmakers from both parties to demand accountability and oversight concerning the incident. Several have warned that such measures surpass what they consider the permissible limits of the administration’s ongoing offensive activities in the Caribbean.
Additionally, some alleged that the administration was deliberately withholding information. Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Dana Bash of CNN, “I am highly suspicious that they have never provided us with that tape and that they are intentionally attempting to conceal what transpired.”
On Tuesday, Trump repeatedly defended his administration’s broader Caribbean activities as essential for combating drug traffickers, even while claiming ignorance regarding the specifics of the September strike.
The president also intimated his intent to soon authorize assaults on targets located inside Venezuela, a step that would significantly escalate an offensive currently confined to international waters.
“We are going to commence conducting strikes on land as well,” Trump announced, adding that targeting alleged traffickers within the nation would be “considerably simpler” and declining to dismiss targeting individuals in other countries if the administration determined they were involved in trafficking narcotics into the US.
Sen. Kaine on Hegseth: ‘True leaders do not shift accountability onto their subordinates’
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Hegseth—who initially dismissed reports of a follow-up strike as “false” before the administration officially confirmed its occurrence—again criticized reporting on the decision-making process on Tuesday, labeling the scrutiny of the secondary strike as “truly reckless.”
However, he reiterated clearly that, ultimately, the determination was not his own.
“I did not personally observe survivors, because the craft was ablaze. It was engulfed in fire and smoke,” Hegseth explained. “This condition is known as the fog of war.”
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