--- title: White House Confirms and Defends 2nd Strike on Boat, Contradicting Trump description: Karoline Leavitt's comments contradicted those Trump made a day earlier about striking an alleged drug boat a second time to kill survivors canonical: https://time.com/7337777/donald-trump-second-boat-strike-hegseth/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-12-01T19:30:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:44.463Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House Confirms and Defends 2nd Strike on Boat, Contradicting Trump og:description: Karoline Leavitt's comments appear to contradict those Trump made a day earlier about the boat strikes og:url: https://time.com/7337777/donald-trump-second-boat-strike-hegseth/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte135b01085240c34/6998cc1066d4e3d820cbd144/GettyImages-2248656799.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-TRUMP og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House Confirms and Defends 2nd Strike on Boat, Contradicting Trump twitter:description: Karoline Leavitt's comments appear to contradict those Trump made a day earlier about the boat strikes twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte135b01085240c34/6998cc1066d4e3d820cbd144/GettyImages-2248656799.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # White House Confirms Second Strike on Alleged Drug Boat and Defends Move as Legal > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=63f0205d-5e04-4671-be8a-3f0971de0e15&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: War Secretary Hegseth Cites 'Fog of War' In Defense of Venezuelan Boat Strike VERTICAL [Watch (HLS stream): War Secretary Hegseth Cites 'Fog of War' In Defense of Venezuelan Boat Strike VERTICAL](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gQP5xinY.m3u8) (1:10)  _Published 2025-12-03. Karoline Leavitt's comments appear to contradict those Trump made a day earlier_  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Dec 1, 2025 7:30 PM UTC  President Donald Trump, seen boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on Nov. 30, 2025, told reporters "I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike." President Donald Trump, seen boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on Nov. 30, 2025, told reporters "I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike."Jim WATSON—AFP via Getty Images  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is a former senior White House correspondent at TIME. Dec 1, 2025 7:30 PM UTC White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command acted “within his authority and the law” when striking an alleged drug boat a [second time](https://time.com/7337735/pete-hegseth-boat-strike-caribbean/) on Sept. 2 after the first strike left survivors. The White House has scrambled in recent days to respond to reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an elite military unit to kill everyone on board an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in early September, leading the commander to send a second strike that killed survivors from the first attack. The Washington Post first [reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/hegseth-kill-them-all-survivors-boat-strike/) Hegseth’s order and the second strike on Friday. Speaking to reporters in the press briefing room, Leavitt confirmed that Hegseth authorized Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, to conduct the strikes. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was totally destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said. Leavitt’s comments appear to contradict those made by Trump on Sunday, when he told reporters that he would not have wanted the military to launch a second strike to kill survivors from the first explosion. Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One if a second strike against survivors would be illegal, Trump said he didn’t know what happened and he’ll look into it. “But no, I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” Trump said. “The first strike was very lethal, it was fine, and if there were two people around—but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence in him,” Trump said. The Sept. 2 strike was the first in a [series of U.S. military attacks](https://time.com/7333231/countries-stop-sharing-intelligence-with-united-states-amid-boat-strikes-caribbean/) that have killed more than 80 people. Experts on the laws of war have pointed out that targeting alleged drug boats with military strikes isn’t legal because the U.S. is not at war with drug traffickers. Buteven if the US were at war with people on those boats, giving an order to kill everyone on board, even if they are no longer in a position to fight, would amount to a [war crime](https://time.com/7337735/pete-hegseth-boat-strike-caribbean/), those experts say. Title 18 of the U.S. code, which covers ["war crimes,"](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441?utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fmedium=email) includes as an example someone who " intentionally kills...one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause." **Read more:** [_Trump Says Airspace Above Venezuela ‘Closed in Its Entirety’ After Threatening Land Strikes_](https://time.com/7337463/venezuela-airspace-closed-trump-strikes/) Hegseth and other Trump officials have repeatedly defended the strikes as lawful. In a lengthy [post](https://x.com/SecWar/status/1994552598142038358) on X on Friday, in the wake of the _Post_ report, Hegseth wrote that “these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’” The boats and people being targeted, Hegseth wrote, are “narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people,” and that the military’s “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.” The U.S. military will continue killing people in such strikes, Hegseth wrote on his personal X account. “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” he wrote. ## Transcript I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours or 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. So you didn't see any survivors to be clear, after that first strike? I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. It was exploded. And fire. Smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. This is what you and 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 book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to war fighters. 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