The Trump White House stopped dodging and finally put a name on the order that’s been ricocheting around Washington for days — and it wasn’t the one many expected. In a stark break from the early hedging, the administration acknowledged Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally authorized the second strike on a burning drug boat in the Caribbean — a strike that killed two survivors left clinging to the wreckage after the first hit.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt laid it out during a press briefing, telling reporters that Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to follow through with the deadly follow-up attack.
“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said.
She defended both the legality and the intent of the operation, insisting the military was acting squarely within its authority.
“Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” she said. “This administration has designated these narco-terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations. The president has the right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is what they are doing.”
But her comments also confirmed the central claim the allegation that Hegseth had issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” on board before the first strike. According to the Post, when two people survived that initial blast, Bradley ordered the second strike to carry out what he understood as Hegseth’s directive: no survivors.
The details have rattled lawmakers in both parties. Several Republicans and Democrats have raised the alarm that such an order, if accurately described, edges into war-crime territory. The legal foundation of the administration’s broader campaign — a sweeping effort to target “narco-terrorists” not only in the Caribbean but across the Pacific — is being questioned more intensely with each new revelation. That campaign has already resulted in the deaths of at least 80 alleged traffickers.
By confirming Hegseth’s role so plainly, the White House may have hoped to settle the issue. Instead, it underscored exactly where the order came from — and that clarity is likely to deepen, not calm, the storm.
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