Did you hear about the U.S. Coast Guard making its biggest drug bust in 20 years? The one on December 5, when it seized 20,000 pounds of cocaine valued at $148 million from a speedboat in the eastern Pacific?
Probably not.
However big that bust may have been, the crew was only arrested, not killed. And it was not accompanied by dramatic aerial video of a targeted, what court papers call, “go-fast vehicle (GFV)” speeding across the sea, and then suddenly obliterated in a fiery flash, as in 22 strikes in which the Department of War has killed 86 since September 2. That body count includes two who survived an initial strike but died in a “double tap.”
The video on the Coast Guard’s Facebook and Instagram pages of its historic Dec. 5 bust shows no “taps” at all.
“We didn’t do a full press release for that case, just what’s in the captions on FB/IG,” a Coast Guard spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
There is only a sniper firing a .50 caliber rifle from a Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) chopper to disable the target boat’s multiple outboard engines. A boarding party on a small boat from the stern of the Coast Guard Cutter Monro then closed in to arrest the crew as a first step towards justice, but not extrajudicial death.
Yawn.
Back in April, the Trump administration sought to publicize its anti–drug efforts with a press event in Florida featuring Attorney General Pam Bondi and FDI Director Kash Patel dockside with the Coast Guard Cutter James, which had seized 44,500 pounds of cocaine and 3,800 pounds of marijuana valued at some $500 million in 11 interdictions over six weeks in the eastern Pacific. A Coast Guard captain recounted stopping six GFVs in 72 hours. The overall effort resulted in 34 arrests, but no drug runners were eliminated. And, the prospective punishment was only a few years behind bars. The event generated even less excitement than most Bondi/Patel appearances that do not involve the Epstein files.
Barely even a yawn.
Then, on Sept. 2, President Trump announced an exciting escalation.
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action.”
Trump also posted a 29-second video marked “UNCLASSIFIED” that amounts to a snuff film clip. The footage showed a GFV at the moment it was blasted by an aerial projectile and included three different views of fiery results.
“A clear demonstration of military might,” declared Pete Hegeth in keeping with his rebranding as a Secretary of War whose favorite word seems to be “lethal.”
But Trump and Hegseth failed to mention that two of the crew had survived for 45 minutes before they were dispatched with a “second tap.” That only came to light with reporting by The Intercept and The Washington Post. Even some Republicans in Congress demanded to see the full video. President Trump initially agreed.
“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” he said.
But the president again lived up to his nickname TACO Trump, chickening out and saying it was Hegseth’s call. Hegseth said he was “reviewing” the matter.
In the meantime, the U.S. had continued to conduct strike after strike, releasing even more video snuff clips stamped “UNCLASSIFIED.” The designation was apparently predicated not on national security, but on public relations. And it extended only so far as the images that make the Trump administration look good.
That seems to have been the guiding principle after an Oct. 16 strike left two more unwanted survivors. Rather than again just unleashing a “second tap,” the military sent in a rescue helicopter that carried the two men to safety. Both were subsequently released, including 42-year-old Andres Fernando Tufino Chila of Ecuador, who had been arrested in an unheralded 2020 Coast Guard HITRON operation while at the helm of a GFV carrying more than a ton of cocaine. He was sentenced to five years, but was freed early, in January of 2024.
In the midst of all this, Trump decided to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison after being convicted at trial for his role in a conspiracy said in court papers to have “transported through Honduras more than approximately 500,000 kilograms of United States-bound cocaine.” Trump maintained that Hernandez had been the victim of a “Biden set up,” even though Emil Bove had been a prominent member of the prosecution team. Bove went on to represent Trump in the porn star hush money case. Bove then served as a high-level justice official until June, when Trump appointed him to a lifetime position as a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hernandez was freed from Hazelton Federal Prison in West Virginia on Dec. 1. The government of Honduras has since issued a warrant for his arrest. But he apparently remains one undocumented Honduran with a criminal record who is immune from being grabbed and deported by ICE.
Three days after Hernandez was released, the U.S. blasted another GFV, this time killing four. The Trump administration posted the latest video clip, but continued to resist releasing the longer one from Sept. 2 for reasons of public relations passed off as national security. Hegseth remained loving of lethal.
“We are tracking them. We are killing them, and we will keep killing them so long as they poison our people with narcotics!” he said at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Dec. 5, the same day as the huge aerial drug raid in which the Coast Guard killed nobody.
If the 79-year-old president really cared about national security, he would spend more time highlighting the successes of the Coast Guard and less time bragging about a killing spree.
