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As President Donald Trump defended his administration’s lethal strikes on boats alleged to associated with narcoterrorists off the coast of Venezuela, he indicated that the military campaign could continue “by land.”
“We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control. We’ve had a couple of days where there isn’t a boat to be found. And that, I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump added.
Trump said that Coast Guard efforts over the past 30 years to stop drug traffickers have “been totally ineffective” and “never worked” when it was done in a “politically correct manner.”
“They have faster boats. Some of these boats are seriously, I mean, they’re world class speed boats,” Trump said. “But they’re not faster than missiles. But we’ve been trying to do that for years, and so much of the drugs 25, 30% would come in through the seas. Right now, we have, I would say, none coming in through the seas.”
Trump said targeting people in the strikes has saved thousands of lives that might have been lost due to overdoses.
“If you lose three people and save 25,000 people — these are people that are killing our population, every boat is saving 25,000 lives. And you can see it, the boats get hit, and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean. It’s like floating in bags,” Trump said.
