Welcome to meet the press now. I'm Kristen Walker in Washington, and we begin with more breaking news. President Trump just moments ago confirming reports that the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela

amid the growing escalation between the White House and the Maduro regime.

Here's what President Trump said in the last hour at the start of a roundtable event with business leaders.

As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large.

Largest one ever seized, actually.

And other things are happening, so you'll be seeing that later,

and you'll be talking about that later with some other people.

The president also said the tanker was seized for a, quote, very good reason, and that he

believes the U.S. will keep the oil that was seized.

Now it comes as the Pentagon continues to target suspected drug trafficking vessels.

And just last night, President Trump again warned that the U.S. could begin land strikes

on Venezuela.

This afternoon in a speech to farmers, Venezuelan regime leader Nicolas Maduro referred to the tensions with the U.S.

calling these historic times and saying his country is ready for a fight.

Joining me now is NBC News, senior national security correspondent Courtney Kubey.

Courtney, I know this is all just breaking around us. The details just coming in. We just heard from President Trump about this for the very first time. But what more can you tell us about this oil tanker that was seized? So so far, we believe that at least the Coast Guard was involved. All we've heard are sort of vague, you know, it was U.S. forces, but we don't really know the

details of that. Now, that would make sense. The Coast Guard has historically been involved in

interdictions in that region, but the big, that is generally interdictions of drugs, not oil like this.

So the big question is, under what authority is the U.S. doing this? And if they are actually

holding this enormous tanker, as the president has described it, under what authority are they doing

that? And how long would that happen? President Trump, apparently, he's taking questions right now

still as part of this event and apparently was just asked who was going to keep the oil. And it didn't

...