President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has “great confidence” that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not give a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea in September.

Trump said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100 percent.”

During an attack on a boat on Sept. 2 - the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere - a live drone feed showed two survivors from an original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat after an initial missile attack, The Washington Post reported Friday afternoon.

To comply with a spoken order from Hegseth to kill everyone, the Special Operations commander overseeing the mission ordered a second strike th

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