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.

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.

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?

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.

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

The perpetrators were Trump, Hegseth and Rubio.

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?????

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dead men tell no tales.

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

That's what they were counting on.

Krasnov has murder in his heart.

his brainless head.

(rhetorical question)

(as someone has already pointed out)

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

What evil lurks in the minds of man?

Wouldn't surprise me he is making up stuff.