Was the boat Trump blew up carrying 'migrants', not drugs? NYT

[deminks]

You know that boat the administration blew up? A former law enforcement official told the NYT the boat seemed to be carrying not drugs but *’migrants *
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...

— Eric Umansky (@ericumansky.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T00:32:32.452Z

You know that boat the administration blew up? A former law enforcement official told the NYT the boat seemed to be carrying not drugs but *’migrants *
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/us/politics/hegseth-venezuela-drug-strike.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jU8._oRS.QhFYZjRo5Mb1&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[Irish_Dem]

1. Trump's hatred of brown people is becoming more sadistic and cruel by the day.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. 11 people needed to smuggle a boatload of drugs?

Drug smuggling you'd want the minimum people needed, maybe two.

But could be both. Could be 9 people being trafficked and space left over filled with drugs and two running the show.

[gab13by13]

5. Could be 9 people being smuggled and no drugs.

[Disaffected]

19. Who can tell?

Maybe they were smuggling some gang members for ops in the US? Or maybe they were all heavily armed for protection of the shipment?

We can speculate into the night but that's all we know at this point.

[B.See]

3. Wouldn't surprise me. Trump tried to

smuggle out a planeload of unaccompanied migrant children, under cover of dark, before a judge stopped him. All kept relatively hush hush by many MSM "news" outlets.

Imo, he's capable of ANYTHING

The Questions No One Wants to Answer: Where Were the Children, and Why Were We Kept in the Dark?

[sop]

4. A human (or drug) smuggling run from Venezuela to the U.S. coast would be at least 1400 miles.

These people were in a small, slow Venezuelan Pinero work boat, a rather primitive type of open fishing vessel powered by small outboards with very limited range. With good weather it might make it to one of the islands off the coast of Venezuela. There's absolutely no way this vessel could smuggle anything into the U.S.

[gab13by13]

6. If you're out in your boat

better fly the Magat flag or a Tomahawk missile may come your way.

[John1956PA]

8. It was cold-blooded murder of innocent people.

The perpetrators were Trump, Hegseth and Rubio.

[popsdenver]

17. that is the reason Trump ordered

for it to be totally blown up...........obliterate any and all evidence which would contradict yet another one of his pathalogical lies.

The drug runners have gone to crude rudimentary submarines anyway......a long time ago.....huge capacity, and only crew of three max

What does Venezuela have that U.S. Corporations want, that he would use this show of force to intimidate that country? Oil?????

[Melon]

21. That boat was obviously modified before we go down that path...

It had 4 high horsepower engines across the back. That argument won’t stand up. The boat had very extensive and expensive mods to handle that horsepower.

[sop]

24. That boat did not have "4 high horsepower engines" on the transom, they were probably less than 50-70 hp each.

These traditional wooden panga-style open work/fishing boats, known as Pineros in Venezuelan, are often powered by several small outboards, usually no more than 40 hp each. These Pinero boats can be up to 30' in length, top speed would be about 25 to 30 mph with a limited range, probably only 150-200 miles, depending on how many extra fuel tanks are carried on board.

Cartel drug runners would use much newer, more sophisticated vessels, usually with multiple outboards of 400+ hp each, capable of speeds in excess of 80 mph to outrun authorities, designed to handle heavier offshore sea conditions at those speeds, with a far greater range and fuel capacity. The boat Trump bragged about blowing up was not a high speed, high hp drug boat.

Typical smaller panga-style Venezuelan Pinero open work boat with twin outboards, probably 40 hp each.


Image of the Pinero boat blown up off the coast of Venezuela. These outboards look to be 50-70 hp each. There's no possible way this boat could make it 1400 miles to the U.S. coast.


Typical high speed, high hp, offshore boat with quad 450 hp outboards on transom.

[Melon]

25. I am very familiar with offshore race boats

Nobody is using a $1.2MM midnight express with 4 450hp engines to run drugs as is your example. They aren’t running fountains or cigarettes etc. it’s not the 80’s. The boats often get caught and they want speed but they are disposable assets. A 400hp outboard is $40,000 a piece plus rigging. Those drug runs are one way events.

Those aren’t 40hp engines on the drug boat. Those are larger.

They use 150-200hp engines all the time. You can see in the pictures the size of those engines. Those boats have been caught over a dozen times this year. They are often older or 2 strokes and easy to get a hold of. You can see the boats speed in the video and know those aren’t 50hp engines. Especially with 11 people on board plus cargo in open seas.

[sop]

27. That boat isn't going much faster than 25 mph, amd those engines look like small Yamahas, probably 40-70 hp.

These traditional, flat-bottomed, panga-style, narrow beamed, wooden work boats would literally come apart with quad high hp outboards mounted on the transom. But, then, we'll never know because Trump blew it out of the water with a missile.

[bluedigger]

7. For all we know, they all could have been US citizens.

Dead men tell no tales.

[newdeal2]

9. I believe it. Trump and his kids love drugs

He definitely doesn't care about human trafficking given his friendship with Epstein.

[misanthrope]

10. We'll never know

That's what they were counting on.

[GoodRaisin]

11. One thing we do know is that what we watched happen to that boat was cold blooded murder.

Krasnov has murder in his heart.

[Cha]

22. What "heart"? Traitor has Murder in

his brainless head.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Were there children in the boat?

[Hekate]

14. Chances are, we will never know

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. If you could afford it, would you walk your children through Colombian jungles or go by speedboat to Florida?

(rhetorical question)

[Disaffected]

20. How would such a small boat make it all the way to the US? nt

(as someone has already pointed out)

[Hekate]

13. I hope they keep asking -- personally, I think 11 people were murdered.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

16. Christians killing a boatload of Christians. Isn't that what this really is?

[Warpy]

18. Unlikely, unless they were squashed into small oblong packages wrapped in black plastic

The cargo of that boat was fairly clear and it wasn't people.. The boat was traveling toward either Colombia or Panama.

Venezuela now claims it was all an exercise in AI, that such a boat never existed.

OK, fine, Maduro, whatever you say.

[taxi]

23. A better spin on the story, or how the blundering administration could have told it

would have been to claim the boat was loaded with explosives. The risk of it being underway for the purpose of nearing US ships in a manner similar to the attack on USS Cole was significant and the boat had to be stopped. The attempt to disable to boat by taking out the drive or damaging the hull resulted in detonating the explosives it was carrying. That is why there was such a large fireball, not because we blew it up.
Just my opinion.

[Lovie777]

26. Explain how they knew about this particular boat and drugs?..................

this administration destroyed the US Intelligent Community and are probably using Putin's, BiBi's.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

28. MaddowBlog-Team Trump faces tough questions following strike on boat in international waters

You’ve heard the expression “shoot first and ask questions later”? This appears to be a rare literal example of the phenomenon.

Team Trump faces tough questions following strike on boat in international waters
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— 2kindsjustice (@2kindsjustice.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T15:47:11.570Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-faces-tough-questions-strike-boat-international-waters-rcna229049

When retired Gen. H.R. McMaster served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term, he didn’t exactly enjoy White House meetings. McMaster wrote in his memoir that Trump would routinely become distracted and blurt out “outlandish” ideas during discussions, including one especially memorable instance in which the president wanted to know, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs” before they enter the United States?

That anecdote came to mind this week. The Associated Press reported:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang. The president said in a social media posting that 11 people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Americas, a dramatic escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to stem the flow of narcotics from Latin America.

.....Were the 11 people on the boat actually members of the Tren de Aragua gang? The president claimed they were, but then again, the president claims lots of things that have no basis in reality, and it’s not yet clear whether there might’ve been innocent people on board.

Were there actual drugs on the boat? Trump insisted there were, but there’s no publicly available evidence to support the claim. And even if there were drugs on board, U.S. officials could’ve intercepted the boat, seized its cargo, arrested those on board (or at least offered them an opportunity to surrender) and put them on trial — without blowing anyone up.......

When JD Vance was asked about the administration’s legal authority in this instance, his answer suggested the vice president — a Yale Law School graduate — was confused by what the phrase “legal authority” means.

Q: On the Venezuela vessel strike, what legal authority were you guys working under?

JD VANCE: The legal authority is there are people who are bringing -- literal terrorists -- who are bringing deadly drugs into our country

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-03T20:09:59.147Z

......Around the same time, Ryan Goodman, an NYU law professor and former special counsel at the Pentagon, wrote via Bluesky, “I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be ‘murder’ or a war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.”

Looking ahead, there are a handful of angles to this story that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that there’s no reason to assume the questions will simply go away. Second, if Trump is still campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize, he might want to start lowering his expectations, since the committee tends to frown on extrajudicial killings.

Third, Americans who voted for Trump hoping for a restrained foreign policy and a reluctance to use military force now have fresh reason to question their decision.

[WSHazel]

29. I think Trump is trying to provoke retaliation

Keep attacking adversaries around the world until someone retaliates, then use the retaliation as an excuse to do all kinds of things, from further attacks to martial law.

[kentuck]

30. If so, then it is a war crime.

And he should be brought before the International Court of Justice.

What evil lurks in the minds of man?

[Xolodno]

31. He's doing everything to distract from the Epstein issue.

Wouldn't surprise me he is making up stuff.