Welcome to the NewsHour. It is exceedingly rare that a U.S. president would announce covert action publicly,

but that is what President Trump did yesterday when he acknowledged a strike on a port facility in Venezuela.

And today, media outlets reported it was the CIA that launched the drone strike on an alleged drug facility.

It comes as the Trump administration is targeting not only drug

smugglers across the region, but also Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro himself.

For months, the U.S. has built up the Caribbean's largest armada in half a century.

Thirty strikes on what the U.S. calls narco-terrorist drugboats, the latest in the Eastern Pacific

just last night.

The capture of two sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers and the chasing of a third tanker

that today reportedly requested Russian protection.

And today, news the CIA reportedly launched a drone strike along the Venezuelan coast.

The reported target, a storage facility operated by the transnational gang, Trend de Aragua,

which the Trump administration connects without public evidence to Venezuelan President

Nicolas Maduro.

There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.

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 and that is no longer around. If the amount of drug trafficking comes down significantly

in the Caribbean and I think it must, the regime is going to have

a lot less money to throw around.

Elliot Abrams was the first Trump administration's special envoy for Venezuela and is today

a senior fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations.

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