This is CNN breaking news.

Welcome to the lead. I am Jake Tapper.

We're going to start today in our politics lead because President Trump pressed by advisors to convince Americans he's focused on the affordability crisis, went to Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania yesterday.

But instead of reassuring supporters struggling because of the continued rise of prices, he

veered wildly off topic instead offering a popery of grievances and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

But we are going to start today talking instead about the fact that President Trump has talked

about how the U.S. has seized control of an oil tanker.

And that oil tanker is a breaking news story. A rather significant news.

Take a listen to President Trump.

As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker

on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large.

Largest one ever seized, actually.

This is a substantial escalation in the U.S. conflict against Venezuela,

which has so far been pretty much a pressure campaign and then a military campaign against

Venezuelan drug boats, alleged drug

boats. The president saying the tanker was seized for a very good reason. We don't know more than

that as of right now, a person familiar with the matter, tell CNN that the tanker was heading

to Cuba. This move comes after months of this, as we mentioned, 23, at least 23 strikes, U.S. strikes, unsuspected

drug boats, or what President Trump calls narco-terrorists, killing some 87 people. President

Trump has repeatedly said that a land strike on Venezuela could come soon. CNN's Kristen Holmes is

at the White House. She was with the president this moment ago, pressing him about this tanker that was seized. Kristen, the president did not seem to offer many details about what went down or why. What did he say to you when you asked about it? Yeah, it was unclear what he knew, what he didn't know. He said that we were going to be learning more details soon. We still haven't gotten any of that information. There was a number of us that tried to press him on various aspects of this, which he ignored. Of course, the main questions are why this tanker, why now? Is this part of this pressure campaign against Maduro, which certainly it seems like it is? Who owns this tanker and where was this tanker going? And we try to get some of the

answers during this question and answer session with the president. Here's what he said.

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