WASHINGTON, Sept 4, (AP): US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified the lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the United States to send an unmistakable message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US.

"There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President Karol Nawrocki at the White House. He added, "Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.’”

Tuesday's strike was an astonishing departure from typical U.S. drug interdiction efforts at a time when Trump has ordered a major Navy buildup in the waters near Venezuela. Later Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that such operations "will happen again.” Rubio said previous US interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked in stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States and beyond.

"What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said on a visit to Mexico. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on "Fox & Friends” that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was running his country "as a kingpin of a drug narco-state.” Hegseth said officials "knew exactly who was in that boat” and "exactly what they were doing."

But the Republican administration has not presented any evidence supporting Trump's claim that operators of the vessel were from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and were trying to smuggle in drugs. "President Trump is willing to go on offense in ways that others have not seen,” said Hegseth, who declined to detail how the strike was carried out.

Venezuela’s government, which has long minimized the presence of Tren de Aragua in the South American country, limited its reaction to the strike to questioning the veracity of a video publicized by the Trump administration showing the attack. Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez suggested it was created using artificial intelligence and described it as an "almost cartoonish animation, rather than a realistic depiction of an explosion.”