The Washington Post reported that there was a second strike of the first boat alleged to be transporting drugs out of Venezuela.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

As previously argued, the first strike was illegal. But even if one assumes that’s debatable, there is no question that the second strike was murder. Secretary of War Defense Pete Hegseth gave the order to kill everybody.

The WaPo report was based “on interviews with and accounts from seven people with knowledge of the Sept. 2 strike and the overall operation,” all anonymous in the story. While this sourcing is facially significant, the anonymity of the sources raises the possibility that the story might not be accurate. For many of the MAGA faithful, that’s more than enough to dismiss any possibility that Hegseth ordered the killing of two helpless survivors. For many more of the MAGA faithful, they just don’t care if it was murder.

The replies to this twit are illuminating. https://t.co/IPPymllZlt

— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) November 29, 2025

But was it murder? Before facing the question as to the survivors, the initial strike should not be sloughed off.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

But for those who buy whatever nonsensical rationalization proffered by Trump for killing people on the high seas, can they similarly pretend killing two helpless survivors clinging to the wreckage is acceptable? Jack Goldsmith calls it “A Dishonorable Strike.”

One might also, possibly, stretch the laws of war to say that attacks on the drug boats are part of a “non-international armed conflict,” as OLC has reportedly concluded. This line of argument likely draws on a super-broad conception of the threat posed by the alleged drug runners as well as the expansive U.S. post-9/11 justification for treating as targetable (i) dangerous non-state actor terrorists off the battlefield; (ii) those who merely “substantially support” the groups with whom one is in an armed conflict; and (iii) activities that provide economic support to the war effort, such as Taliban drug labs or ISIS oil trucks. I don’t think this argument comes close to working without deferential reliance on a bad faith finding by the president about the non-international armed conflict and much greater stretches of precedent than the United States previously indulged after 9/11. Still, the unconvincing argument is conceivable.

But there can be no conceivable legal justification for what the Washington Post reported earlier today: That U.S. Special Operations Forces killed the survivors of a first strike on a drug boat off the coast of Trinidad who, in the Post’s words, “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”

Of course, Goldsmith’s assertion, that there can be “no conceivable legal justification” for these murders is only meaningful if one cares about the law, about not engaging in illegal conduct and not committing murder. As Anne Bower of Lawfare notes, that’s not Hegseth.

An entire chapter in Hegseth’s book is literally titled “More Lethality, Less Lawyers.”

It’s almost as if the signs were there all along. pic.twitter.com/913W07O8a8

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) November 29, 2025

It’s murder. It’s illegal. It’s dishonorable. And the MAGA faithful just don’t give a damn.