Asked about Venezuela during a Friday appearance on the "Cats & Cosby" show on New York's WABC radio, Trump lauded the U.S. military's attacks against purported drug-smuggling vessels in the region and added that U.S. forces hit a facility two days 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," the president told hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. "Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard."
It is unclear where the facility is located, how the attack was carried out, what damage was done or whether there were any casualties.
On Monday, Trump shed some more light on the attack, saying the U.S. personnel hit an "implementation" area.
"We hit all the boats and now we hit the area, it's the implementation area. That's where they implement. And that is no longer around," the president said while at Mar-a-Lago, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump said there was a "major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs," adding it took place "along the shore."
Both the Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command referred The Hill to the White House when asked about Trump's remarks. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
U.S. officials told The New York Times that a drug facility in Venezuela had been eliminated, but did not provide additional details.
The Venezuelan government has not publicly commented on the alleged attack.
The U.S. military, if given the green light to conduct strikes inside Venezuela, could target drug cartel infrastructure, such as port facilities and warehouses where drug smugglers store cocaine before it is shipped elsewhere, experts previously told The Hill.
If confirmed, the action would mark the U.S.'s first known land strike in Venezuela since the Trump administration kicked off its pressure campaign against Maduro and since U.S. forces began taking out alleged drug trafficking boats in early September.
Trump has mused about authorizing land strikes inside Venezuela in recent weeks. Since Sept. 2, the U.S. military has struck at least 28 alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 105 "narcoterrorists" in what the administration argues is an effort to curb the flow of illicit drugs in the region and protect the U.S.
Critics of the boat strikes have billed them as extrajudicial killings without legal justification, noting Venezuelan cartels are mostly trafficking cocaine, not fentanyl, which is responsible for the vast majority of overdoses in the U.S.
Read the full report at thehill.com.
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