Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that President Donald Trump gave the order to "blow up" the vessel off Venezuela's coast on Tuesday rather than interdicting it. "Instead of interdicting it, on the president's orders, we blew it up," Rubio said during a press conference in Mexico.
"And it will happen again," Rubio added. Before heading to the neighboring country, Rubio had already anticipated that the Trump administration will l "go on the offense" against cartels.
Trump is "going to use the full power of America and the full might of the us to take on and eradicate these drug cartels no matter where they're operating from and no matter how long they've been able to act with impunity," Rubio said.
The administration's top officials, including the president, have been touting the attack and warning more are set to follow. Asked about it at the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump was asked why the boat in question and the 11 people on it were killed instead of taken into custody.
"On the boat you have massive amounts of drugs. We have tapes of them speaking about it. There are massive amounts of drug 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.
"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," he added.
Earlier on Wednesday Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly warned the country's authoritarian President, Nicolas Maduro, saying he "should be worried" after the development.
"The only one who should be worried is Nicolas 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 affected the American people directly," Hegseth said during an interview on Fox News.
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