President Donald Trump appeared to slightly walk back comments he made last week regarding a highly scrutinized follow-up airstrike the U.S. military launched in September against alleged narco-terrorists in the Caribbean Sea.
Over the past five months, the Trump administration has publicly touted the strikes against alleged drug boats, claiming that each boat destroyed saved some 25,000 lives, but the Washington Post reported in late November that, following a successful strike in September, War Secretary Pete Hegseth personally ordered a second strike to kill survivors spotted clinging to the wreckage.
The administration initially denied the reporting before later claiming that Adm. Mitch Bradley, not Hegseth himself, ordered the strike but that the president approved of the decision. Trump said Wednesday that he would “certainly release” video of the second strike as part of the government inquiries into the incident.
However, speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump claimed to have never agreed to release the footage.
“I didn’t say that. This is ABC, fake news,” the president testily responded when asked about comments Hegseth made over the weekend suggesting that the Pentagon may not release the footage from the strike in its entirety.
“Whatever he decides is OK with me,” Trump continued. “I saw the video. They were trying to turn the back back to where it could float.”
On Saturday, Fox News asked Hegseth at an event in California when the Pentagon would release the video, based on Trump’s comments from the prior week, but the secretary demurred.
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“We’re reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods — it’s an ongoing operation,” he responded. “We’ve got operators out there doing this right now.”
Trump’s comments can be seen in full below.