Secretary of War Pete Hegseth offered new details Saturday about how he personally authorized the Trump administration’s first strike on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel off Venezuela on Sept. 2, telling Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson that he watched the strike live in the Pentagon after giving the green light.

Earlier in his keynote remarks, Hegseth declared that President Donald Trump is the true heir to Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” doctrine, accusing past bipartisan leaders of drifting into endless wars.

After his speech, Hegseth sat down with Tomlinson for a Q&A that revealed new details about the Sept. 2 operation, which he said was the first in a series of more than 20 U.S. strikes targeting cartel-linked narco-terrorist networks across the Caribbean.

He also sharply rejected reporting that he had instructed U.S. forces to kill all individuals on the boat.

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“Does anybody here from the Washington Post? I don’t know where you get your sources, but they suck,” Hegseth said when asked if he had ever issued such an order. “Of course not… you don’t walk in and say, ‘Kill them.’ It’s just patently ridiculous.”

Hegseth also said it took “a couple of weeks, almost a month” to build the intelligence required for the first strike. He said the Pentagon had to reorient assets that had been focused “10,000 miles around the other side of the world for a very long time.”

He kept strike authority at his level only for the initial operation due to its “strategic implications.”

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“The briefing that I received before that strike was extensive, exhaustive,” he said. “Military side, on the civilian side, lawyers, intel analysts, red-teaming… all the details you need to strike a designated terrorist organization.”

Hegseth said the target was part of an organization President Trump had formally designated as a terrorist group.

“My job was to say execute or don’t execute,” he said.

He approved the strike.

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According to Hegseth, he viewed the mission feed “for probably five minutes or so” before moving to other tasks once the strike shifted to tactical execution.

Hours later, Hegseth said he was informed by commanders that a second strike was necessary.

“There had to be a re-attack, because there were a couple of folks that could still be in the fight,” he said, citing access to radios, a possible link-up point with another boat and remaining drugs on board.

“I fully support that strike,” he said. “I would have made the same call myself.”

He added that re-attacks are common in combat zones and fell “well within the authorities of Admiral Bradley,” who now oversees strike decisions. Hegseth said he no longer retains approval authority for subsequent missions.

Addressing questions about survivor protocols, Hegseth pointed to a later incident involving a semi-submersible drug vessel.

“In that particular case, the first strike didn’t take it out, and a couple of guys jumped off and swam,” he said. After the vessel was struck again and sank, U.S. forces retrieved the survivors.

“We gave them back to their host countries,” he said, adding that the situation “didn’t change our protocol” but reflected different circumstances.

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Hegseth argued that the operations have already had a deterrent effect. “We’re putting them at the bottom of the Caribbean… it will make the American people safer.”

Tomlinson pressed Hegseth on President Trump’s public statement that he did not oppose releasing the unredacted video of the first strike.

“We’re reviewing it right now,” Hegseth said, citing concerns over “sources, methods,” and ongoing operations.

Hegseth said defense spending is one of the issues that “keeps [him] up,” adding that he was recently in Oval Office meetings about the FY26 and FY27 budgets.

Asked directly whether defense spending as a share of GDP will rise, he replied: “I think that number is going up,” while declining to get ahead of President Trump.

“We need a revived defense industrial base,” he said. “We need those capabilities. We need them yesterday.”

Tomlinson also asked whether Hegseth regretted using Signal ahead of combat operations in Yemen, referencing a recently closed inspector general review.

“I don’t live with any regrets,” Hegseth said. “I know exactly where my compass is on our troops.” He argued that morale has surged under Trump.

“The revival of the spirit inside our military… the desire to join and re-enlist is at historic levels,” he said.

Asked whether he prefers troops equipped with more AI-enabled tools or autonomous systems replacing them, Hegseth said the modern battlefield requires both.

“It has to be both,” he said. “What AI is doing to ten, 100, 1,000-x the speed of sensing… is critical.”

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Tomlinson ended with a traditional Reagan Forum question: who Hegseth wants to win the Army–Navy game.

“Well, I’m with Navy,” he said, before adding that the Marine Corps “stood strong” during political “nonsense” in recent years.

Matt Gutman, a longtime ABC News correspondent based in Los Angeles, is leaving the network for a high profile role at CBS News.

Gutman will be the first significant on-air hire by Bari Weiss, who was named editor in chief of CBS News in October, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly. Gutman did not respond to a request for comment.

While there has been speculation Gutman is being considered for the anchor job at “CBS Evening News,” he is said to be joining the network as a correspondent. CBS has yet to name a replacement for the evening news anchor desk following the planned departures of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois later this month.

Gutman’s contract was up at ABC News, which did not counter the offer from CBS, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Gutman joined ABC News in 2008 as a radio correspondent. He has been chief national correspondent on the TV side since 2018. He began his career at the Jerusalem Post, covering the West Bank.

Gutman won journalism awards for his work on the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 rescue mission of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. He also reported extensively from Israel for 18 months after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and covered the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January.

Gutman was suspended by ABC in early 2020 after he erroneously reported on-air that all four of Kobe Bryant’s daughters were on board the helicopter that crashed and killed the NBA icon and eight others. Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, died in the accident in Calabasas. The others were not aboard.

Gutman apologized for the error and later attributed the mistake to a panic attack that occurred while on air. He wrote a book in 2023 about getting over his long struggle with anxiety and panic attacks.

Gutman recently faced criticism for his coverage of the investigation into the shooting death of right wing activist Charlie Kirk. In an ABC News report, Gutman read the texts between the alleged shooter Tyler Robinson and his transgender roommate, describing the messages as “very touching in a way we did not expect.”

Harsh social media reaction to the comments prompted Gutman to apologize. “Yesterday I tried to underscore the jarring contrast between this cold blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk — a man who dedicated his life to public dialogue — and the personal, disturbing texts read aloud by the Utah County Attorney at the press conference. I deeply regret that my words did not make that clear.”