President Trump and War Secretary Hegseth respond to questions about the controversial September 2 air strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting. “I want those boats taken out. And if we have to, we’ll attack on land also just like we attack on sea… we’re going to start doing those strikes on land too,” Trump said. “I didn’t know about the second strike. I didn’t know anything about people. I wasn’t involved.” “How do you treat al Qaeda and ISIS? Do you arrest them and pat them on the head and say, ‘Don’t do that again,’ or do you end the problem directly by taking a lethal kinetic approach? That’s the way President Trump has authorized the War Department to look at these cartels,” Hegseth said. That commander had the complete authority to… sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He made the correct decision. “This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said. “This is what you in the press don’t understand… You sit in your air-conditioned offices, or up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about ‘Kill everybody!’ based on anonymous sources not based in any truth at all. And then you throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, and the judgments they make.” “President 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,” Hegseth said.

REPORTER: Mr. President, thank you so much for taking questions with your assembled cabinet. I wanted to clarify something that you had said on Sunday regarding the boat strikes near Venezuela. You had said that you didn’t know if the second strike on that one boat had happened, but you wouldn’t have wanted it. Now that your administration has acknowledged that it happened, do you support that second strike? And Mr. Secretary, I want to clarify something you had said in an interview back in September, I believe, on Fox News. You said that you had watched that strike live on television in real time. Did you know that there were survivors after the initial strike? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, look, all I know is this: every boat that you see get blown up, we saved 25,000, on average, lives. Twenty-five thousand lives. They’ve been sending enough of this horrible fentanyl and other things, like cocaine and other things-but fentanyl right now is the leader of the pack-to kill our entire nation. Because a little speck on the head of a pin can kill somebody. It’s very dangerous stuff. I know so many people with their sons who were drug addicts. They had one little sample, and they died. They died. They were-they couldn’t believe it. As far as the attack is concerned, I didn’t-you know, I still haven’t gotten a lot of information because I rely on Pete. But to me, it was an attack. It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn’t know about the second strike. I didn’t know anything about people. I wasn’t involved in- I knew they took out a boat. But I would say this: they had a strike. I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is extraordinary. He’s an extraordinary person. Pete-Pete, speak about him. But Pete was satisfied. Pete didn’t know about a second attack having to do with two people, and I guess Pete would have to speak to him. I can say this: I want those boats taken out. And if we have to, we’ll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea. And there’s very little coming in by sea. I think we’ve knocked out over 90% of it. There’s very little. And I understand that there’s very little. We’re saving hundreds of thousands of lives with those pinpoint attacks. It’s an amazing thing when you see a boat going along-and you know a lot of the press would like to say they’re not-you see the boat; they’re not maybe drugs. You see these boats-first of all, who has five engines on the back of a boat, going in weird directions and loaded up with lots of white containers? They’re all-they’re bags of things. No, they’ve done an amazing job. And Peter’s done an amazing job. Pete, you could probably better answer the question. PETE HEGSETH, U.S. SECRETARY OF WAR: No, you’re spot on, sir. I think you’ve got to start with the baseline which Marco laid out-everybody’s laid out. We’ve got 20 million people invading our country over four years. We don’t know where they’re coming from. That includes Tren de Aragua and cartels and violent criminals. They bring drugs, and you mentioned it, Mr. President-poisoning, an intentional poisoning of the American people, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. So the president had the courage to designate these cartels as designated terrorist organizations. A number of us here served in the military and spent 20 years fighting terrorists like al-Qaeda and ISIS on the other side of the world. How do you treat al-Qaeda and ISIS? Do you arrest them and treat them, pat them on the head and say, Don’t do that again? Or do you end the problem directly by taking a lethal, kinetic approach? And that’s the way President Trump has authorized the War Department to look at these cartels. 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 and other commanders. The deliberative process, the detail, the rigor, the intel, the legal, the evidence-based way that we’re able to, with sources and methods that we can’t reveal here, make sure that every one of those drug boats is tied to a designated terrorist organization. We know who’s on it, what they’re doing, what they’re carrying. All these white bales are not Christmas gifts from Santa. This is drugs, running on four-motor fast boats or submarines that we’ve also struck. No one’s fishing on a submarine. And I have empowered them to make that call. Now, the first couple of strikes, as you would-as any leader would want-you want to own that responsibility. So I said I’m going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it’s the right strike. That was September 2nd. There’s a lot of intelligence that goes into that-building that case and understanding that-a lot of people providing information. 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 one hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the- which he had the complete authority to do-and, by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat. Sunk the boat and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back, and the American people are safer because narco-terrorists know you can’t bring drugs through the water, and eventually on land if necessary, to the American people. We will eliminate that threat, and we’re proud to do it. REPORTER: So you didn’t see any survivors, to be clear, after that? PETE HEGSETH: 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. This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, and 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. I wrote a whole-I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians-the press-does to warfighters. President 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. REPORTER: And on the second strike-you said it happened more than an hour after the first. Did I hear correctly the exact amount of time? PETE HEGSETH: I already stated my answer quite clearly. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So remember this: we lost last year-I think it was more than that, but you know, people don’t like saying it because they always said 100,000, 115,000, numbers we’ve been hearing for years. So we lost last year more than 200,000 people-dead people. Ruined families beyond the 200,000. And those 200,000-that family will never be the same. But these people have killed over 200,000 people-actually killed over 200,000 people last year. And those numbers are down. Those numbers are down. They’re way down. And they’re down because we’re doing these strikes. And we’re going to start doing those strikes on land too, you know. The land is much easier. It’s much easier, and we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we’re going to start that very soon too. REPORTER: Mr. President, [inaudible]. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you so much. Mr. President, we start that-we’re going to drive those down so low. And then you’re going to have families be able to live without the fear of their son or daughter just having a pill to have a little fun and ending up dying within a period of 60 seconds, right? No, we’re not going to let that happen. We’re not going to let it continue to happen. What Biden did to this country by allowing all these people-and I call them animals in many cases, I think they’re animals-to come into our country and destroy our country and let all those drugs pour in; let people just walk across the border like it was nothing. You look at them-a lot of them-you know, they say, Oh, let’s not discriminate. I’m not talking about color. I’m just talking about-you look into the eyes of some of these people. We’re smart. And you see a killer. Come on in. Just come on in. Eleven thousand, eight hundred eighty-eight murderers-many of them committed more than one murder. He allowed them into our country, totally unvetted, totally unchecked. But he also allowed drugs to come in at record numbers, and hundreds of thousands of people a year died. And we’re taking those son of a bitches out.

RealClearPolitics Videos