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Speaking from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. will “hit” drug smugglers attempting to enter the U.S. by land, following a series of lethal strikes on cartel boats at sea.
The president was questioned on his use of military force to crack down on drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Pacific following the eighth such strike in recent weeks.
Trump acknowledged that “it is violent” but said that “every one of those boats that gets knocked out is saving 25,000 American lives.”
“We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And you see a little bit of it there, one shot, every one dead center. And the only way you can’t feel bad about it is you realize … that every time you see that happen, you’re saving 25,000 American lives.”
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“Whenever I see that, I say to myself, I just saved 25,000 lives,” he added.
Trump said that following these strikes, “there are very few boats traveling on the water, so now they’ll come in by land to a lesser extent.”
“And they will be hit on land also,” he said.
Pressed on whether he has legal authority to unleash strikes on drug smugglers on U.S. territory, Trump answered confidently, “Yes, we do.”
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“We have legal authority, we’re allowed to do that,” he said, while also noting that “if we do by land, we may go back to Congress.”
“We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land,” he noted, while insisting, “We don’t have to do that.”
“This is a national security problem,” said Trump. “They killed 300,000 Americans last year and that gives you legal authority.”
“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” he vowed, adding, “They haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that.”
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“Something very serious is going to happen. The equivalent of what’s happening by sea. And we’re going to Congress just to tell them what we’re doing, just to keep them informed. But we have to do it for national security. We have to do it to save lives.”
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that at Trump’s direction, the military carried out its first kinetic strike on “narco-terrorists” in the Eastern Pacific. This was the eighth such strike in recent weeks.