President Donald Trump on Tuesday confirmed that U.S. forces had fired upon a suspected drug boat off of Venezuelan waters as the administration ramps up its efforts to fight the drug cartels operating out of that country.

"You'll see that we just over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat, lot of drugs in that boat," Trump told reporters. "And you'll be seeing that, and you'll be reading about that. It just happened moments ago."

"We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time, and we just these came out of Venezuela, and coming out very heavily from Venezuela," he added. "A lot of things are coming out of Venezuela, so we took it out, and you'll get to see that after this, after this meeting is over."

Trump's comments follow the Department of Justice doubling its bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom they have accused of leading the cartel.

Maduro, for his part, said that his country was at "maximum preparedness" for possible U.S. aggression.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.