Trump blows up a third Venezuelan boat

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(with far more evil consequences than even WW2)!

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday confirmed that the United States Coast Guard“apprehended” an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.

“In a pre-dawn action early this morning on Dec. 20, the US Coast Guard with the support of the Department of War apprehended an oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela. The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” Noem wrote in a post on X. “We will find you, and we will stop you".

he Coast Guard took the lead in the operation, both officials said. The U.S. military supported with helicopters that dropped off Coast Guard personnel and observed overhead, one of the officials said.

In her post Saturday, Noem referred to the boat as an “oil tanker” carrying “sanctioned oil,” but did not say whether the boat itself was sanctioned and whether the U.S. had a warrant.

The tanker is not on a list of vessels sanctioned by the U.S., according to someone familiar with the list.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X that a "lightning strike operation" was executed Saturday morning "to seize the Motor Tanker Centuries, which is suspected of carrying oil subject to U.S. sanctions."

The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment and to clarify whether the U.S. intends to keep the oil on board.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said on X that the tanker contained sanctioned oil from PDVSA, a state-owned oil and natural gas company.

"It was a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime," she said.

Saturday's operation comes after the U.S. interdicted a large, sanctioned oil tanker known as the Skipper off the coast of Venezuela last week. The ship, previously identified by the Treasury Department as the Adisa, is an oil tanker tied to a sanctions-evading smuggling network that U.S. officials say moved Iranian oil to generate revenue for Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

After that seizure, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted about the operation and said the U.S. had “executed a seizure warrant” and that the “oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States.”

Noem called that operation a successful one, “to ensure that we’re pushing back on a regime that is systematically covering and flooding our country with deadly drugs and killing our next generation of Americans.”

After that operation, the Trump administration sanctioned six more ships believed to be carrying Venezuelan oil.

President Donald Trump said in an interview with WABC radio in New York that the U.S. had “knocked out” a Venezuelan facility, a move that would be a major escalation in U.S. military strikes to counter alleged drug-trafficking by the South American country.

The apparent attack follows months of U.S. military pressure, including dozens of strikes on boats in international waters. The White House has claimed that the boats carried drugs, though officials have not provided evidence.

In the short phone interview on Friday, Trump responded to a comment about Venezuela by touting the administration's attacks on alleged drug boats before referring to a strike on a "big plant or big facility" that he said took place two nights earlier.

We just knocked out — I don't know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from," Trump said in the interview. "Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard."

Trump did not provide further details during the interview about the apparent attack on the facility, which if correct would be the first known land strike in the U.S. counternarcotics efforts against Venezuela. NBC News has not independently confirmed the strike. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president's remarks.

Asked by a reporter at Mar-a-Lago on Monday whether the U.S. military conducted the attack, Trump said, “Well, it doesn’t matter, but there was a major explosion in the dock area, where they load the boats up with drugs.”

They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats and now we hit the area, it’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement,” he continued. “And that is no longer around.”

When asked by a reporter whether the attack was the only U.S. strike inside the country, Trump declined to comment.

The administration has ramped up pressure on Venezuela in recent months. In October, Trump confirmed that he had authorized the CIA to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an unusual acknowledgement about covert action. The president told White House reporters that he took the action because the country "emptied their prisons into the United States of America," a frequent accusation he has made without providing evidence, and also because of narcotics trafficking.

In the interview with WABC radio, the station's owner, John Catsimatidis, argued that "Venezuela is going to provide a lot more oil to the United States of America if Maduro leaves," referring to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

"Well, it's about a lot of things," Trump said. "It's about that. It's about, you know, they took our oil, they took it, and they also sent millions of people in there from jails into our country, from jail, some of the worst people on Earth."

Trump then went on to talk about drug trafficking, which the adm

The U.S. military said Wednesday that it had carried out strikes against five more vessels it said were engaged in drug trafficking, killing eight people in all.

U.S. Southern Command said in a statement Wednesday night that two vessels were struck earlier in the day, killing three people in one boat and two in the other. It called them "narco-terrorists."

The statement did not say where the strikes took place.

"Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and engaged in narco-trafficking," U.S. Southern Command said in a post on social media, which included a video.

Earlier Wednesday, it said the U.S. military conducted strikes against three suspected drug boats Tuesday, killing three people.

"On Dec. 30, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted kinetic strikes against three narco-trafficking vessels traveling as a convoy," U.S. Southern Command said on X, alleging that narcotics were transferred between the vessels before the strikes.

"Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement," Southern Command said in the earlier statement. "The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels."

The exact location of those strikes was also not specified, nor was it clear from the statement how many people were aboard the two other vessels before they were struck. The statement added that the U.S. Coast Guard was notified after the strikes to activate its search-and-rescue operations.

Boy is that a stretch!