President Donald Trump on Sunday defended Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over allegations he ordered a second strike on a Venezuelan drug boat, saying he believes Hegseth’s denial and would not have supported a follow-up attack if it happened.

The exchange came during a gaggle aboard Air Force One as reporters pressed Trump on claims that Hegseth authorized a second strike that allegedly killed two wounded men after an earlier attack on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel.

Trump repeatedly said Hegseth denied giving such an order. He added that he was aware of the allegation but stressed that Hegseth told him the claim was untrue and that he accepted that explanation without hesitation.

‘He said he did not say that, and I believe him 100%,’ Trump said.

Reporters asked Trump whether he would have approved a second strike if Hegseth had ordered one, prompting him to again distance himself from the allegation while stressing that he trusted his secretary of war.

Trump said he planned to seek additional information about the reported incident but reiterated that Hegseth assured him nothing improper happened.

‘No, I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike,’ Trump said.

Still, he praised the wider campaign targeting drug-smuggling boats, saying the strikes had sharply reduced the flow of narcotics into the U.S. by sea in recent months.

Trump argued the vessels posed a deadly threat and framed the operations as necessary to protect Americans, calling the missions lethal but justified.

‘You can see the boats,’ he said. ‘You can see the drugs in the boats and each boat is responsible for killing 25,000 Americans.’

Trump went to Hegseth’s defense after reports from outlets such as The Washington Post and CNN claimed the U.S. military ordered a second strike on a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 after the earlier attack left two survivors.

According to The Washington Post, the commander overseeing that operation told colleagues on a secure conference call that the survivors were legitimate targets because they could still contact other traffickers for help and ordered the second strike to comply with what he said was a directive from Hegseth that everyone must be killed.

‘As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,’ Hegseth wrote on X on Friday.

‘As we’ve said from the beginning and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’’ Hegseth continued. ‘The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.’

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman and Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.

Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, will travel to Moscow on Monday, a U.S. official tells Fox News.

The trip comes as peace talks between Ukraine and Russia show signs of progress, with the White House pushing a peace plan to end the nearly four-year-long war.

On Sunday, Witkoff — a central figure in negotiating the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas — joined Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior advisor Jared Kushner in Florida to meet with Ukrainian negotiators. 

Rubio described the meeting as ‘very productive.’ In a statement, Rubio said that the end goal is ‘not just the end of the war.’

‘Obviously, that’s essential and fundamental. We want to see the end of the killing and the death and the suffering, and I’m sure the Ukrainian side, I know they do as well,’ Rubio said. 

‘They want peace. But it’s also about securing an end to the war that leaves Ukraine sovereign and independent and with an opportunity at real prosperity.’

Last week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow could reject the White House’s peace deal framework if it does not uphold the ‘spirit and letter’ of what President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to at the Alaska summit in August.

He warned that if the terms of the ‘key understandings’ are ‘extinguished’ then the situation would become ‘fundamentally different.’

Despite Lavrov’s comments, Putin showed interest in Trump’s plans to end the war on Thursday, calling the drafted plans a starting point.

‘We need to sit down and discuss this seriously,’ Putin told reporters, according to The Associated Press.

Trump’s plan as ‘a set of issues put forward for discussion’ rather than a draft agreement.

‘Every word matters,’ Putin added.

Fox News Digital’s Sarah Tobianski, Kyle Schmidbauer and Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump defended calling Venezuela’s airspace closed, saying the country is sending criminals into the U.S., but told reporters not to ‘read anything into it’ when asked whether the warning suggested an imminent strike.

While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Venezuela is ‘not a very friendly country’ and claimed it has sent criminals, gang members and drug traffickers into the U.S.

On Saturday, Trump told airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers to ‘consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.’

When asked Sunday if the warning meant an airstrike is imminent, Trump said: ‘Don’t read anything into it.’

Trump also confirmed a report from the New York Times that he spoke on the phone with President Nicolás Maduro, though he offered no details about the conversation.

‘I wouldn’t say it went well or badly,’ he said. ‘It was a phone call.’

The president’s comments come amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela over Venezuela’s failure to stop drug traffickers from sending narcotics into the U.S.

Since September, the Trump administration has conducted over 20 strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin American waters and beefed up its military presence in the Caribbean as part of Trump’s effort to crack down on the flow of drugs into the U.S.

The strikes have brought the total number of suspected narco-terrorists eliminated to over 82, with three survivors.

But as the U.S. continues to bolster forces in the waters off Venezuela, Maduro has called for peace but also remained defiant against what he called ‘imperialist aggression.’

Maduro delivered an address in Caracas last week while brandishing a sword and warning supporters to prepare for confrontation, saying the U.S. will ‘very soon’ begin stopping suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers on land.

He appeared at a mass rally in the capital holding the sword of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century independence leader regarded as the liberator of much of South America. Maduro told supporters the country was facing a decisive moment.

The Associated Press reported that he said, ‘For anyone, whether civilian, politician, military, or police –  Let no one make excuses. Failure is not an option. The homeland demands it! Our greatest effort and sacrifice. And with (Simón) Bolívar, I come to say that if the homeland demands it, the homeland will have our lives, if necessary,’ he declared while raising Bolívar’s sword.

Maduro framed the situation as a struggle against what he described as external threats, urging Venezuelans to mobilize against any foreign aggression.

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy and Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump delivered a stern ultimatum to Nicolás Maduro to leave Venezuela immediately before announcing the country’s airspace should be closed, according to a report.

Per the Miami Herald, Washington’s warning was delivered in a phone call with Caracas and offered guaranteed evacuation for Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and their son, but only if the dictator agreed to resign on the spot. 

The conversation stalled, U.S. officials said, and within hours Washington escalated dramatically. 

The ensuing impasse, a source told the outlet, was over Maduro asking for ‘global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed, and that was rejected.’ 

‘Second, they asked to retain control of the armed forces — similar to what happened in Nicaragua in ’91 with Violeta Chamorro. In return, they would allow free elections.’ 

The final issue was timing, according to the outlet, as Washington demanded that Maduro resign immediately – but Caracas refused.

Trump went on to announce Saturday that Venezuelan airspace would be considered ‘closed in its entirety.’ 

The Herald also reported that the Maduro government tried to schedule another call to Washington but received no response.

According to a defense expert familiar with the country’s military and state-linked cartel ties, Maduro and key players in his regime could now face their most serious threat yet.

‘I think the operations will start imminently,’ former Venezuelan diplomat Vanessa Neumann told Fox News Digital.

‘The clearing of the airspace is an indication and a very clear public warning that missiles might be coming to take out command and control infrastructure or retaliatory infrastructure,’ Neumann said. ‘This will not be like breaking a jar into a thousand pieces, this is where you can lift the concentration of power, and it’s easier to manage.’

‘The targets have been identified through covert operations over the last several years by people on the ground,’ she continued. ‘So they’re well-mapped. This is a capture-or-kill scenario, but there’s a limit to how many people you can remove quickly.’

On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One not to ‘read anything into’ his declaring Venezuela’s airspace closed when asked if a strike was imminent. 

‘Maduro also doesn’t have that many options, and his military is very weak,’ she warned. ‘You can’t go after 30 people simultaneously, who are spread all around, but certainly high on the list would be Maduro himself.’

Venezuela’s armed forces, once among Latin America’s strongest, have been weakened by years of corruption, sanctions, defections, and lack of maintenance. Much of its equipment, Neuman says, has never even been serviced.

‘Their material is extremely old, decayed, and has not been serviced,’ Neuman explained. 

‘They’ve got junk from the Russians. The stuff they originally had from the Americans is decades old and has not been serviced.

‘So, they have neither the personnel, foreign support, nor the material,’ she said.

Ahead of shuttering the airspace, the U.S. also officially designated the cartel allegedly linked with Venezuela’s government, the Cartel de los Soles, as a foreign terrorist organization.

‘This cartel turned Venezuela’s main oil company into a narcotics trafficking money laundering operation, using the company’s access to international finance, until it was sanctioned,’ Neuman, who has worked with governments on countering transnational organized crime linked to the group, explained.

‘They were using Venezuelan military jets to bring in cocaine from Colombia, process it in Venezuela, and then move it into Central America and then into Europe.

‘Jet pilots were making a lot of money off that, and they’ve tortured people. They target people, anybody who tell on them, they’re disappeared,’ Neuman said. ‘They’re now one of the prime drug trafficking networks into the United States and Europe, and use their military positions, including their military-to-military relations, to grow and accelerate those movements.’

In fact, in September, the European Parliament also voted in favor of the EU designating Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization.

‘The Cartel de Los Soles is also a key collaborator and financier of Hezbollah and some of the drug money has been used to fund terrorist attacks that have killed American citizens, even in the Middle East,’ added Neuman, CEO of Asymmetrica Group, which specializes in defense cooperation.

The U.S. has also ramped up a military and intelligence campaign targeting drug-trafficking networks linked to Venezuela, including strikes on suspected narcotics boats.

‘The decision is President Trump’s because when he says, ‘Go’, we go. And nobody knows when he’ll say that,’ Neuman said. ‘He has mobilized so many assets down there now. But what President Trump is doing now is long overdue.’

‘The timing is right now,’ she added. ‘Because even Maduro’s biggest backers, Russia and Iran, are both on the back foot, and China will not go that far in backing Maduro as it has bigger and broader interests throughout the region.’

She also noted that ‘Maduro is also weakened because his partners are weakened and have their own issues to deal with,’ and that ‘we also now have a concentration of power and deep repression within the country that’s quite unified, which means it’s easy to flip.’

Neuman identified others in the regime who may be targeted, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Diosdado Cabello, Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace and Alexander Granko Arteaga, head of Venezuela’s counter-intelligence agency, the DGCIM.

‘One of the reasons Granko is an important figure is that he’s one of the reasons why they haven’t capitulated and why there has not been a military uprising,’ Neuman explained.

‘It’s because of the brutality of the counter-intelligence that they do to their own military, and hundreds of soldiers are tortured. That said, the Venezuelan people have made it clear that they wanted Maduro out and fought democratically but lost,’ she added.

‘They voted in elections, protested peacefully, lobbied for sanctions, and lobbied for international support,’ Neuman said.