What Next - Trump Blew Up 11 People. Is That Legal?
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Last week, Donald Trump announced the military had blown up what he said was a drug-smuggling boat. This week, we still don’t know why he believes the boat was full of smugglers.
But even if they were trafficking drugs, can the president legally blow up 11 people in international waters?
Guests: Shane Harris, staff writer covering national security and intelligence for The Atlantic.
Ana Vanessa Herrero, journalist based in Caracas, Venezuela and reporting on South America for the Washington Post.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's a sign of the times that last week, the President of the United States snuck the news of a major military action into the end of an Oval Office news conference. |
| 0:18.8 | So thank you all very much. You are going to leave me alone now. |
| 0:22.7 | You're not going to call me anymore and talk about this subject, right? |
| 0:25.7 | You promise. |
| 0:26.3 | This news conference was on Monday, September 2nd. |
| 0:29.2 | Trump was just ushering senators and congressmen away from the podium when he suddenly |
| 0:34.6 | got serious. |
| 0:36.2 | When you come out and when you leave the room, you'll see that we just, over the last few minutes, |
| 0:42.3 | literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat, and you'll be seeing |
| 0:50.3 | that and you'll be reading about that. |
| 0:52.3 | Just happened moments ago. Donald Trump was |
| 0:58.0 | soft launching the deaths of 11 people killed by the United States in international waters. |
| 1:06.5 | And you'll see. And there's more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time. |
| 1:14.2 | A few hours later, the president sent out a video of it. |
| 1:19.3 | There are these crosshairs trained on a boat, and then there's this huge flash, and the boat is on fire. |
| 1:26.2 | And according to the president, everybody aboard was killed and no |
| 1:29.7 | Americans were lost. |
| 1:34.2 | Shane Harris covers national security over the Atlantic. |
| 1:39.0 | He says the casual way the president has talked about this mission. |
| 1:42.7 | It struck him. |
| 1:46.7 | In a social media post, Trump claimed the people killed here were members of a Venezuelan gang, Trend to Aragua. But we don't know |
| 1:52.9 | their names, or how they found themselves in this motorboat with a target overhead. |
... |
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