The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The other day, President Trump announced that he’s bombed yet another boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea. More than two dozen people have been killed this way as of now, and the bombings have been denounced as almost certainly illegal by a wide range of legal experts. Now, in a strange turn of events, we just learned that the head of the military’s southern command, Alvin Holsey, is stepping down. He’s the one who had been overseeing these bombings, and as of now, there’s no rationale that’s been given. Did his resignation have anything to do with these bombings? Congressman Adam Smith of Washington State, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, thinks the answer is likely yes. And we’re talking to him about all this today. Thanks so much for coming on, Congressman.
Congressman Adam Smith: Well, thanks, Greg. It’s always good to see you.
Sargent: So The New York Times is reporting that Alvin Holsey, the head of the military’s Southern Command, is leaving his job. He’s the one who has been overseeing Trump’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea, which is now up to six boats bombed and 27 people killed.
Congressman, what do you know about the situation?
Smith: Well, I know that Admiral Holsey is the Southern—was the Southern commander—and it is his ultimate decision on whether or not to fire a shot like that. And I also know that he’s a year into his service. And prior to Trump becoming president, no combatant commander that I’ve ever dealt with has resigned in the middle of their term. So it sounds an awful lot like—and we have heard rumors to this effect—that he has been forced out. And this is a question that I’ve raised with senior leaders at the Pentagon on a number of occasions in recent days.
Look, ever since Trump became president, one of the big questions in my world of the Department of Defense is: What do you do if you’re given an illegal order? And the military, you know, has steadfastly said, we serve the Constitution, we will not carry out illegal orders.
The orders to blow up those six boats, in my view and in the views of most legal scholars, are absolutely illegal. It is an extrajudicial killing. There is no possible Article II justification for that, and there has been no congressional authorization for the use of force.
So I don’t think it takes an enormous leap of logic to think that maybe Admiral Holsey wasn’t comfortable with that. They had a discussion, and then he was forced out. We’ll see if something else comes out in the next couple of days, but I think that has to be the presumption until we see some evidence otherwise.
Sargent: Congressman, can I ask, have you heard anything that indicates to you that he was pushed out or that he objected to the bombings or that he resigned under pressure? You talk to the Pentagon fairly regularly, your staff does. What have you been informed about the situation?
Smith: I have not heard anything specifically. No one has said to me, hey, there was a meeting between Holsey and Hegseth and it got heated and he said ... but again, the logic of the situation—I cannot imagine a reason why Admiral Holsey would leave this job voluntarily, just because.
And it has certainly been a matter of intense debate within national security circles—the legality of these strikes, and specifically of the men and women in the Department of Defense who have been charged with carrying them out.
And as I mentioned, that starts with the Southern Command commander, Admiral Holsey. So all of those conversations swirling about concerns about illegal orders, and then the Southern Command commander just happens to resign? I mean, coincidences do happen—but not very often.
Sargent: Are you picking up signals that there’s deep discomfort at the highest levels of the Pentagon about this? You mentioned that this may entail carrying out illegal orders. Do you have a sense of whether there’s discomfort with that or a belief that that’s what they’re being asked to do?
Smith: Not sure. I know that within the Pentagon there is discomfort with the way Hegseth and Trump have run DOD—so political, so focused on personal loyalty. And you’ve seen it. I mean, Holsey is—but yeah, I’m—well, I have to count through all of them—all of the senior DOD officials, starting with C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have been forced out in the last eight or nine months.
And in many cases, very clearly forced out—not because they weren’t doing their job, but because they were insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump personally. We saw that most dramatically with General Hawke, who was the head of NSA Cyber Command. Laura Loomer showed up in the White House and told Trump that Hawke was insufficiently loyal. Days later, he’s out. And no one questioned his ability as a general or the job he was doing as the head of NSA Cyber.
So, yeah—and of course we had the little trip to Quantico a week ago, where it was definitely implied that the military needs to be loyal to Trump much more than to the Constitution or to doing their job well. There is a deep amount of discomfort within the Department of Defense with being forced into that type of loyalty.
Sargent: Well, let’s review here. Like we said—six bombings of boats ordered by Trump, 27 people killed. So what do we actually know about who these people are on these boats and what the circumstances are surrounding these bombings?
I believe some members of Congress, including yourself, have been briefed in some sense by administration officials. I understand that some of this is going to be classified, but what can you tell us about what you’ve learned?
Smith: Sure. We don’t know much. And I have not yet been directly briefed by anyone at the Department of Defense. There was a briefing to one of our subcommittees a couple of weeks ago early on, but it was very light on details.
And look, I’ve been through this stuff many times before—stuff we did in Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia and elsewhere. And when we have a target in this case, the committees are regularly briefed on the specific, very specific details—who was targeted and why, and what was the accumulation of intel and evidence that led to the strike. And they’ve always given us the answer: this was the person, this is who it is, this is why we did it.
None of that has been given on these Venezuelan strikes. But press secretary Leavitt today saying, “We’ve been very transparent on this”—that’s just a complete lie. They haven’t been transparent at all.
All they’ve said is, these people are part of a drug-running gang and we killed them. Who they are exactly, what this gang is, how it’s directly connected to the United States, what the overall plan is here, who is the organization exactly that we are targeting—I’ve never been in a situation like this where there has been less information provided to Congress on the details of that activity.
Sargent: Well, since you’ve brought up White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, we’re going to play for people what she said. Here’s the audio of that.
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): And the president’s been very clear, and he’s been very transparent about these strikes, releasing classified video, unclassifying that video, declassifying it, rather, for all of you to see, and to let the public and lawmakers know with each of these strikes. And there should be no surprise for this. The president campaigned on using every lever of power to go after the drug cartels who have been trafficking illicit poison into our country for far too long.
Sargent: So apparently, Congressman, Levitt thinks it’s transparency to post these little videos on social media. She actually described that as “transparency.” And those videos show us nothing at all, except perhaps showing Trump’s desire to watch things go boom or whatever. You want to say a little more about what she said there? I was really kind of dumbstruck that she would call that transparency.
Smith: Well, I mean, that’s part of the overall disturbing pattern here, is we have seen the president seize more and more unilateral power without any checks and balances on it. And then part of the way he does that is to try to convince the people of this country that it’s normal—this is what people do all the time, nothing to see here, it’s not any different. And that’s just a lie in many instances.
And so I think what’s most interesting about it is that Karoline Leavitt thinks she can get away with that lie—just say it and have people believe it and say, it’s just normal. And this is part of how we’re creeping toward an authoritarian government and seeing, really, the end of our constitutional republic.
I mean, certainly now, we have Speaker Johnson shutting down Congress. You know, we’ve been shut down for three weeks—no intention of bringing us back. We have been in session during every single previous shutdown.
So people need to be really concerned about the fact that Trump and the executive branch are seizing power and undermining the Constitution. And then they just come out and lie about it—sure, yeah, we’re very transparent, we’ve been talking to Congress. They haven’t.
And the fact that they haven’t is troubling. The fact that they feel so comfortable simply lying about it is even more troubling.
Sargent: Well, just to talk about the legal rationale for a second, previous presidents have claimed this inherent constitutional authority for limited strikes on terrorists and so forth. But Trump is now applying this to civilians who just aren’t engaged in an act of war against the United States in any meaningful sense. I want to ask you this pretty straightforwardly, Congressman. Has anyone in the administration at any point presented anything remotely like real evidence to lawmakers or to their staffs indicating that they actually do credibly know that these are drug traffickers?
Smith: No, they have not. And so they haven’t even presented that background, as I said. But also, even if they did, this is not justified by any stretch of the imagination.
I want to make sure people understand this, because I think there’s this perception—and I think too many people who just want to be critical of our government all the time have contributed to creating this perception. There’s this perception that, oh, the military, the U.S. military, we blow whoever we want up whenever we want to do it. That’s simply not true. All right?
And in every instance of the previous administrations I’ve worked with—heck, even the first Trump administration, for the most part, with a couple of exceptions—there is presented a legal justification. And basically, you’ve got two paths here. One is: Has Congress authorized this?
Now, I’m of the opinion that presidents have bootstrapped their decisions onto the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs in a way that is debatable—but at least there was a connection. Just to give one example, this guy al-Awlaki, who we took out in—I think it was Yemen—during the Obama administration, I’m pretty sure, who was putting bombs onto airplanes and trying to have them detonate over U.S. cities.
So (a), there was authority under the 2003 AUMF to take out those terrorist-related organizations doing that kind of thing. And (b), that’s a direct, imminent threat to the United States. It is a direct effort to kill Americans.
So that’s the second thing that a president has: Article II, the inherent right of self-defense. If somebody is about ready to launch missiles at the U.S. or launch an attack, the president does have the authority to strike those people.
Drug runners do not qualify for that. And I know, drugs kill, and they do. They kill tens of thousands of people. But it is not the intention of the drug runners to kill people. They’re selling drugs, and drugs are a major problem in this country. I happen to think it’s as much of a demand problem as it is a supply problem—but it is not a direct attack to try and kill Americans or seize territory in America.
And it sure as hell isn’t that on a boat off the coast of Venezuela that is thousands of miles from the U.S. And that’s the other thing—they haven’t presented a shred of evidence that those boats were even headed to the United States.
Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about that as well. Just to be clear for people, Trump is claiming that drug trafficking constitutes an act of war. They keep using the word narco-terrorists, as Karoline Leavitt did in that clip we listened to. He’s claiming they’re somehow akin to Al Qaeda. That’s absurd on its face. But I just want to be clear. Nobody has seen any evidence that they actually credibly know they’re drug traffickers, correct? Do you think that they are drug traffickers? Is it within the realm...
Smith: I don’t know. It’s possible. Certainly possible. I mean, there certainly are drug traffickers down in that region of world and it’s certainly possible that they are.
Sargent: Right, and there’s been nothing—so it’s perfectly possible, it’s within the realm of possibility, that some of these are migrants, and not drug traffickers, correct?
Smith: Absolutely. Yes. And they may or may not be headed to the U.S. at all.
Sargent: Right—so we really know nothing, is what you’re saying.
Smith: Yeah and also understand the other connection, as you’ve seen the stories about Trump authorizing CIA action in Venezuela. I have no independent confirmation of that other than what I’ve read in the media. And as you see the rhetoric from him ramp up about the Maduro regime in Venezuela, is this really about stopping drugs or is he engaged in a regime change effort in Venezuela, which certainly hasn’t been approved of by Congress and certainly doesn’t fall under the Article II designation. Trump has mused about how now maybe they may be hitting targets on land within Venezuela. So he is asserting the unilateral right to start a war with Venezuela.
Sargent: Right. And so have any of you been briefed in any sense on this reported covert action in Venezuela? And do you expect war with Venezuela soon?
Smith: I’ve not been briefed. I don’t know if I’d go so far as, I expect war. But if we, as a country, don’t stand up and say, “No, President Trump, you do not have the unilateral power to override the Constitution and do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it”—Trump’s just going to keep expanding.
And look, I’ll tie a little terrifying connection in for you here. You hear what’s going on in Chicago—and it’s going on in other cities as well—but in Chicago, most blatantly, they are literally stopping people on the street and demanding their papers. If they don’t have them—frequently citizens, legal residents—are being detained by your United States federal government, without any probable cause, articulable suspicion, or any measure, just because they showed up and they want to say it.
They are violating our rights individually, and then Trump is asserting his right to use the United States military in any way that he sees fit—certainly in the Caribbean, but also right here in the United States of America. He’s trying to send them to Portland, trying to send them to Chicago.
How far are we away from President Trump deciding to use the U.S. military to do a kinetic strike on people within the U.S. because he sees them as a threat, by whatever definition he wants to throw out there?
I want to say—and I know there’s a lot of people on the left and in the Democratic Party who are all over this—but I want to say to the rest of you who are not: Come on. I mean, you could not like the Democrats, you could not like a bunch of our policies. Hell, you can oppose the Affordable Care Act, you can oppose a bunch of other things.
If you are an American conservative, do you want the federal government to be able to have that type of power to take away your liberty? Whether it’s Trump or anybody else?
Sargent: Well, Stephen Miller called your entire party domestic extremists. And then they said that they’re going to look for ways to crack down on anyone who can be deemed an extremist. So I don’t think it’s really hard to make the leap.
Smith: Yeah, and now we got John Bolton—because Trump didn’t like his book—John Bolton’s got to be apparently prosecuted. And then Trump in the Oval Office yesterday throwing out another three or four people that he thinks should be prosecuted.
Sargent: Well, so, Congressman, have you tried to talk to Republicans on the Armed Services Committee or elsewhere in Congress about putting a check on these illegal bombings? If so, what do you hear back from them?
Smith: I have and concerns are expressed—and they don’t really want to do anything about it.
Sargent: What do they say? What’s their excuse?
Smith: Yeah. They don’t really have an excuse other than, you know, “not my hill to die on”–sort of thing. And also keep in mind that since September 19, we have been in session for a day and a half. So for a month now, that’s it. The Republicans are not here. They’re not in Washington, D.C. They’re not in the capital. They haven’t been here since, I think, we came in briefly on September 30. So they’re not around. And that, in and of itself, is a problem.
I actually did a little video today—to self-promote for the moment—talking about, you know, how Mike Johnson is effectively dissolving Congress and drawing a meme to the Star Wars line about how the Emperor has dissolved the senate: “They will no longer be a worry for us. We are wiping away the last vestiges of the Republic.”
So we need to be worried about that, in my opinion.
Sargent: Well, to close this out, Congressman, is there more House Democrats can do? If you win the majority next year, what happens on this stuff, since presumably Trump will continue with the illegal bombings? Do you defund the strikes? Do you impeach? What are the options?
Smith: All of those things are on the table—but just oversight, as a starting point. Because let’s wrap up where we started, when you and I spoke earlier today, and that’s Karoline Leavitt’s press conference where she just lied about it.
And I think a lot of the American people are not paying attention to it. And to the extent they see, well, you know, the president said—they’re telling Congress they’ve been transparent. And then the Republicans who control Congress don’t say anything about that, don’t do anything about that.
If we were in charge of Congress, we could have hearings. We could actually exercise oversight and make it clearer to a wider swath of the American public what’s going on—and not so simply let the administration lie their way out of the authoritarian actions that they’re taking.
Sargent: Well, on that topic of oversight, I think it’s very likely that Trump is asking or commanding people to carry out illegal orders. Do House Democrats have a message to the people carrying out illegal orders for the president?
Smith: Yeah: Don’t. And I know it’s hard, but this has long been a cornerstone of the United States military, is you are not under any legal obligation ... to carry out an illegal order. And you can make that independent decision.
Sargent: And will those people be dragged before Congress and forced to testify about it under oath? Under a Democratic House?
Smith: That is, well—I don’t like your terminology, but we would suggest—and perhaps subpoena—and say we need to have a conversation about this for the sake of the republic. So, yeah, no, I think we can do that.
And I think that’s why this Admiral Holsey story is so important. And I don’t know what’s going to come out in the next couple of days, but, like I said, the odds that this didn’t have anything to do with the strikes going on in the Caribbean are pretty close to zero, in my opinion.
So, I want to hear more, either from Admiral Holsey or from others around him, about exactly what happened here. But, yeah, you’re not supposed to carry out an illegal order and an extrajudicial killing—that’s what we’re talking about here.
This is the president of the United States unilaterally deciding to kill people who pose no direct threat to the United States of America. That’s something that no one in the United States military should be part of.
Sargent: So will House Democrats on your committee solicit testimony from the admiral and try to get Republicans to agree to do that?
Smith: Absolutely. We have repeatedly, on a whole series of issues, asked for hearings—back in the Signalgate days, you know—to exercise more oversight. We’ve been rebuffed, but we’ll continue to do that, and we’ll make our public statements about it as well.
Again, this is all a battle of trying to educate the American people—or, educate is the wrong word—of trying to grow our coalition of people who are concerned about Trump.
And one editorial comment on that: As Democrats, if we’re going to do that, we can’t take all 80-plus million people who voted for Trump and say that they’re ignorant, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, horrible, awful, terrible people. We need some of them. And I don’t happen to believe that they’re all of those things, either.
So we need to do outreach. We need to grow our coalition. And again, I’ll come back—there’s a lot of things as a Democrat, you want this, you want that. No Republican should want an authoritarian president who can take away your liberty here in the United States of America.
I think that gives us a chance. And a lot of Republicans aren’t going to want a war with Venezuela. So let’s grow our coalition.
Sargent: Right. I think there’s a big opening to do that. And that’s really well said. Just to be absolutely clear, your committee will request or even demand the testimony from the admiral who’s now stepping down and you will try to press Republicans to join you.
Smith: We will do that.
Sargent: Congressman Adam Smith, thank you so much for coming on with us. Really illuminating. We appreciate it.
Smith: Thanks, Greg. Appreciate the chance.