Trump admin live updates: Trump pardons former entertainment exec indicted by own DOJ

Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, gave her first on-camera press briefing on Tuesday, where she criticized The Washington Post's reporting of the second strike on an alleged drug boat on Sept. 2, saying the comments attributed to Hegseth ordering to kill everyone aboard the boat to be "totally fabricated."

"He never said them," Wilson said.

She pointed to the White House comments from Monday that "the decision to restrike the narco-terrorist vessel was made by Adm. Bradley operating under the clear and long-standing authorities to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated."

She added that "at the end of the day, the secretary and the president are the ones directing these strikes, and any follow-on strikes like those which were directed by Adm. Bradley, the secretary 100% agrees with."

Wilson also said that "without a shadow of a doubt, every single one of our military and civilian lawyers knows that these individuals are narco-terrorists."

-ABC News' Luis Martinez

Trump was asked about the his knowledge of the second strike on an alleged drug boat on Sept. 2 that reports say targeted survivors.

On Sunday, Trump said he did not know any information about the second strike, however, the next day White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that a second strike was ordered.

Trump said Tuesday that he hasn't gotten a lot of information on that strike.

"I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people I wasn't involved in. I knew they took out a boat. But I would say this, they had a strike. I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is extraordinary," he said.

The president closed his eyes repeatedly during the roundtable discussion at his Cabinet meeting Tuesday.

The meeting has exceeded an hour with the heads of many of departments and the vice president talking about their achievements and praising Trump's agenda.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at President Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said that "we've only just begun" striking alleged drug boats and narco-terrorists, saying they will be put "at the bottom of the ocean."

"We've only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they've been poisoning the American people," Hegseth said.

Hegseth's comments come after he has faced bipartisan scrutiny over reports that the U.S. military killed two survivors of an earlier strike on a boat suspected of ferrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea in September.

The White House acknowledges that a second strike was ordered on a boat already hit by the military in the Caribbean Sea, and ABC News has confirmed that survivors from the initial strike were killed as a result.