2025-09-16
22 分钟In early September,
President Donald Trump posted a grainy black-and-white video to his social media.
There's no audio.
At the very top, in all caps, are the words unclassified.
The video shows a small boat riding out in the open ocean.
You can see people on board.
The video then switches to a wide shot taken from above the boat.
Suddenly, the boat goes up in flames.
According to the Trump administration, this boat was on its way from Venezuela to the United States,
allegedly transporting illegal drugs for a criminal gang called Tren de Aragua.
The U.S. could have stopped the boat and taken the alleged smugglers into custody.
Instead, it chose to blow up the boat, and the White House says all 11 people on board were killed.
We just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat.
drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat.
Here's President Trump speaking about the incident shortly after it happened.
We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time,
and we just, these came out of Venezuela and coming out very heavily from Venezuela.
The president considers the people on that boat narco-terrorists and considers the organization delivering those drugs a terrorist organization.
And he's kind of changing the paradigm on how the US reacts to this drug trade.
Tara Kopp covers the military and national security for the post.