{"id":128036,"date":"2025-09-02T20:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T20:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/128036\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T20:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T20:28:07","slug":"trump-says-us-forces-shot-out-boat-carrying-drugs-from-venezuela-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/128036\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says US forces \u2018shot out\u2019 boat carrying drugs from Venezuela | U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that U.S. forces \u201cshot out\u201d what he described as a boat carrying a cargo of drugs from Venezuela. Pending further details, this would be the most serious incident so far in the heightened tensions<\/a> between the two countries since the Republican\u2019s return to the White House. Trump accuses Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro of being involved in drug trafficking to the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time. And we just\u2026these came out of Venezuela, and coming out very heavily from Venezuela,” Trump said, offering no further details and only indicating that more information about the operation would be released \u201cafter this meeting is over.\u201d Trump was speaking from the Oval Office, where he was participating in an event to announce the relocation of the Cyber Command from Colorado to Alabama.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you come out and when you leave the room, you\u2019ll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat,\u201d said the president, regarding the military operation in the Caribbean. He explained that he had received the information immediately before starting the Oval Office event, when the Chief of Staff \u201cgave us a little bit of a briefing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s statement comes as the United States maintains a flotilla of three Aegis missile destroyers<\/a>, along with submarines and aircraft, deployed in international waters at the edge of Venezuelan waters, in what it describes as an operation to combat drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the operation in a social media message. \u201cToday the U.S. military conducted a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization,\u201d wrote the U.S. diplomatic chief.<\/p>\n

The three destroyers off Venezuelan waters are the USS Gravely, the USS Jason Dunham, and the USS Sampson. They are deployed as part of Donald Trump\u2019s administration plans to confront threats from drug cartels in Latin America, according to the Pentagon. The presence of the destroyers in these waters is expected to last several months. The deployment includes P-8 reconnaissance aircraft, battleships, and attack submarines.<\/p>\n

Trump blames Latin American cartels for the flow of fentanyl and other drugs that, according to him, destroy U.S. communities and cause increased violence in some cities across the country.<\/p>\n

In early August, the Republican secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon authorizing the use of military force against Latin American drug cartels that the administration has declared terrorist organizations, The New York Times revealed.<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt recently stated that the United States is willing to use \u201cevery element of American power\u201d to stop the flow of drugs across its borders and \u201cbring those responsible to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to the U.S. deployment, Venezuela has stationed troops at the border and has called on Venezuelans and militias to enlist to repel a potential foreign military operation. Maduro declared at a press conference<\/a> with international media on Monday: \u201cIf Venezuela is attacked, we would declare armed struggle and a Republic in arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela is facing the greatest threat our continent has seen in 100 years,\u201d said Maduro. \u201cThere are eight warships with 1,200 missiles, and a nuclear submarine aimed at Venezuela. It\u2019s an extravagant, immoral, and bloody threat. They have sought to advance with maximum military pressure<\/a>, and we have declared maximum preparedness in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that U.S. forces \u201cshot out\u201d what he described as a boat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,3,18231,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232],"class_list":{"0":"post-128036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-nicolas-maduro","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa","18":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}