President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed the U.S. military’s strikes on suspected drug boats operating in the Caribbean, suggesting they have been so successful that there are “no boats” left.
In a speech at a ceremony for the U.S. Navy‘s 250th anniversary, Trump claimed the deadly strikes on suspected drug boats coming from Venezuela have been “so good,” that “nobody wants to go into the water anymore.”
“Sorry to tell you that,” Trump told the crowd of sailors. “We just can’t find any [boats].”
Trump then said the U.S. military may need to move toward military action on land “because they’ll be forced” to reroute drug smuggling operations due to the strikes.
“They’re not coming in by sea any more, so now we’ll have to start looking at the land,” he continued. “And let me tell you right now, that’s not going to work out well for them either.”
The assessment from Trump comes after he told the Washington Examiner last week that his administration was going to “look very seriously at cartels coming by land.”
Days later, he declared in a memorandum that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Though Trump did not name any of the cartels, all of the strikes so far have targeted small vessels coming from Venezuela, which is heavily influenced by Cartel de los Soles and Tren de Aragua.
It is unclear what military action would look like on land, as both Cartel de los Soles and TdA operate in other countries besides Venezuela. Trump has, however, expressed a desire for the U.S. military to enter Mexican territory to fight the cartels operating there, though that plan ended up being met with stiff resistance from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Despite the apparent pivot from Trump in how next to take on cartels he has designated as terrorist organizations since retaking office, he said on Sunday that another strike on a drug smuggling vessel was conducted “last night.”
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The last such strike to be publicly announced was on Friday, which resulted in the deaths of four “male narco-terrorists,” according to War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In that same announcement, Hegseth vowed to continue the sea strikes “until the attacks on the American people are over.”
