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In response to a question about the Sept. 2 strike of a Venezuelan boat allegedly transporting drugs, Mr. Trump and Hegseth provided new details about the attack.
The president said he has not gotten all of the information about the strikes, and relies on Hegseth.
“To me it was an attack. It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes,” Mr. Trump said. “I didn’t know about the second strike.”
The president said Hegseth was “satisfied” and “didn’t know about a second attack having to do with two people.”
“I want those boats taken out and, if we have to, we’ll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea,” Mr. Trump said.
Hegseth, meanwhile, said he watched a live feed of the first strike on Sept. 2 but left before the second attack.
“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we’ve got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour, two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs,” he said. “So I moved on to my next meeting.”
He said he learned later that Bradley, the admiral in charge of the operation, made the decision to “ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”
The defense secretary said Bradley “made the correct decision” and had “complete authority” to order a follow-on strike.
“And I wish everybody could be in the room watching our professionals, our professionals like Mitch Bradley, Admiral Mitch Bradley, and others at JSOC and SOCOM, other commanders, the deliberative process, the detail, the rigorous, the intel, the legal, the evidence-based way that we’re able to, with the sources and methods that we can’t reveal here, that make sure that every one of those drug boats is tied to a designated terrorist organization,” he said.
Hegseth said he did not “personally” see survivors after the first strike.
“I did not personally see survivors, but I stand — because the thing was on fire. It was exploded, and fire and smoke, you can’t see anything, you got digital — this is called the fog of war,” he said. “This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about ‘kill everybody’ — phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything. Not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.”
Mr. Trump has “empowered commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night, on behalf of the American people. We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people,” the defense secretary said.
