Transcription
The Washington Post broke the news, reporting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. The order was to kill everybody.
"One of them said," two people with direct knowledge of the operation. That means they are inside the Defense Department, watching Pete Hegseth. They are like the helicopter pilot flying over the My Lai massacre and knowing that he had to do something, knowing that what he saw happening on the ground was a crime, knowing what he was watching on the ground was the worst war crime ever committed by the American military. And so he landed that helicopter.
The people who are witnessing the order to kill everybody see only one way for them to try to stop such orders. And so they spoke to the kinds of reporters who have been banned from the Defense Department under Donald Trump. Reporters who are not allowed into the Defense Department press briefing room by Pete Hegseth.
The Washington Post reporting on this story proves once again that access to the press briefing room is access to the least useful reporting that can be done in Washington, in the Defense Department, or in the White House, or anywhere else that has a press briefing room. Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post got this story without setting foot inside the Pentagon because they are banned from setting foot inside the Pentagon.
There is no war in Venezuela. There will never be a war in Venezuela. Donald Trump foolishly decided to publicly play with the idea of war in Venezuela to distract from the Epstein files, a distraction that has failed miserably. And while Donald Trump remains weak in the face of Vladimir Putin's murderous aggression and warmaking in Ukraine, he seems to believe that he somehow looks tough by firing the most expensive weapons ever used to destroy the smallest boats ever destroyed by weapons of war. Small boats with outboard motors in the Caribbean, a place where there is no reason to be firing at anything that is floating there.
There is no evidence, zero evidence, that a single boat attacked by Donald Trump has been carrying drugs. No evidence of that at all. Not one shred of evidence has been presented of a single ounce of a single drug on a single boat for attacks in which 80 people have now been killed by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.
These are the kinds of small boats without motors that you can see in small lakes in New Hampshire. They're not ocean-crossing vessels. They have no cabins. They are just open boats with outboard motors that are used for water skiing and family fishing outings in New England and California and the Great Lakes.
The Washington Post report was about the first such attack on September 2nd. "A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt. Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The special operations commander ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions." Two people familiar with the matter said the two men were blown apart in the water.
The commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Admiral Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo. According to two people, he ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth's directive that everyone must be killed.
Today, the White House press secretary, who has never conducted a press briefing without lying, said that Admiral Bradley issued the order for the second strike on his own, without Pete Hegseth telling him to do that. And Donald Trump's first instinct, as we know, is always to lie about everything. And so, when asked about this, the very first words out of his mouth were, "I don't know anything about it." That's a classic Trump statement. He always says that. That's what Donald Trump says every time he's asked a question about a difficult subject. "I don't know anything about it." And that is what Donald Trump did this time before then revealing he does know something about it. And according to him, he spoke to his possibly criminally liable defense secretary, who is now accused of giving the order to kill everybody.
>> Can you talk a little bit about the strikes and the controversy around Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth?
>> I don't know anything about it. He said he said he did not say that, and I believe him 100%.
>> You don't know if there were...
>> You're talking about the two men...
>> ...the second strike to kill the two men.
>> No, I, I... He said he didn't do it.
>> If there were a second strike that killed wounded people, wounded in the first strike, are you...
>> Well, number one, I don't... Number one, I don't know that that happened, and Pete said he did not want them. He didn't even know what people were talking about. So, we'll look at, we'll look into it, but no, I wouldn't have wanted that. Not a second strike.
So, Donald Trump is now claiming he wouldn't have wanted the second strike, but reports indicate this is not the first time there has been a second strike. According to the Washington Post, the Defense Department told lawmakers that second strikes on these boats are done to eliminate any of the floating wreckage of these very, very small boats so that other ships at sea won't bump into that wreckage. Ships at sea, freighters, tankers, they wouldn't even notice that they'd hit that wreckage. They'd never know. That's how insignificant it is.
The Post reports, "The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal," said Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran and vocal Trump critic who received a classified briefing from Pentagon officials on the strikes in late October with other members of the House Armed Services Committee. "Mark my words, it may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this. This is Seth Moulton speaking. Will be prosecuted for this either as a war crime or outright murder." That's what Seth Moulton said about it.
There will be congressional investigations. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have said that their committees will investigate this killing. Here are two Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee.
>> If it was as, if the article said that, that is a violation of the law of war. When people want to surrender, you don't kill them.
>> Obviously, if that occurred, that would be, be very serious. And I agree that that, that would, would be an illegal act.
Senator Mark Kelly is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He has publicly urged members of the United States military to refuse to follow illegal orders. He says he would not have followed the order to kill everybody.
>> Based on what you, what, what CNN is reporting, what the Washington Post is reporting, do you believe if there was a second strike to eliminate any survivors that that constitutes a war crime?
>> It seems to, uh, if that, if that is true, if what has been reported is ac accurate, I've got serious concerns about anybody in that, you know, chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over. We are not Russia. We're not Iraq. We hold ourselves to a very high standard of professionalism. And this is where I'm really troubled about this, is because I have so much respect for people in the United States Navy. I served in the Navy for 25 years, and there is no organization more professional than Navy SEALs, and they should be revered. And that's why I say I hope what I've heard about this strike is not accurate.
>> You mentioned that you were a captain in the Navy. If you received that order, would you have carried it out?
>> No.
If the Republican-run committees in Congress do inadequate investigations, the Democratic-run congressional committees will finish the job. We are a year away from Democrats winning back the House of Representatives, according to all polls, which are worse tonight for Donald Trump and congressional Republicans than they were last week. And when the Democrats control the investigative power of the House Armed Services Committee, Seth Moulton, who is a member of that committee, his prediction that the truth will come out will be proven true. And Pete Hegseth will not be able to get away with statements like this.
"I watched it live. Uh, we knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented. And that was Trenda Aragu, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States, trying to poison our country with illicit drugs." There is zero evidence that a single word that Pete Hegseth just said about those people in the boat is true. Pete Hegseth killed 11 people that day: nine with the first missile and two survivors clinging to the wreckage with the second missile. He doesn't know who they were. He doesn't know how old they were. He doesn't know who the oldest was. He doesn't know who the youngest was. Was there a 14-year-old boy on that boat? He doesn't know. A 12-year-old? He doesn't know. Pete Hegseth doesn't know. Pete Hegseth doesn't know their names. He doesn't know if any of them have ever met a gang member. And we know Pete Hegseth doesn't know those things because if they knew the names of those people and could show that any of them were criminals, they would have released all of those names and all of their known criminal activity.
And they are deliberately destroying evidence in every one of these attacks. The second strike, in addition to killing two non-combatants who couldn't possibly have done any damage to anyone, also conveniently destroyed all the evidence. No one can now prove that they were not carrying drugs, and no one can ever prove that they were carrying drugs. That can never be proved. And that is true of every one of these strikes.