Pete Hegseth Freaks Out When Asked About the Boat Strikes

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth absolutely lost it Tuesday as he scrambled to shirk responsibility for reportedly murdering the survivors of a September 2 drone strike on an alleged drug trafficking vessel in the Caribbean. 

Sitting beside a drowsy Donald Trump during a lengthy Cabinet meeting, Hegseth claimed that while he had been perfectly happy to take responsibility for the dozen extrajudicial executions of people who the government couldn’t prove were drug traffickers, he wouldn’t dare claim credit for that one Pentagon decision.

Instead, the war chief continued to redirect responsibility for the strike onto Commander Frank “Mitch” Bradley, and even the president himself. 

“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine at the Department of War we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting,” Hegseth said.

“A couple of hours later I learned that that commander had made the—which he had the complete authority to do—and by the way Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

Despite his blatant efforts to throw Bradley under the bus, Hegseth insisted Bradley had made “the right call, we have his back.”

Hegseth claimed he was not aware there were survivors after the first strike, adding that the “fog of war” would’ve made it difficult to determine if anyone had survived. He also noted that he’d written about this in his book last year, in which he complained at length about rules and regulations governing warfare in the U.S. military. In fact, two people were reportedly clinging to the side of the burning vessel after that September 2 strike and were killed in the second strike.

Hegseth then railed against the press and claimed that The Washington Post’s report that he’d instructed his underlings to “kill everybody” was “not based in anything, not based in any truth at all.”

But Hegseth wasn’t done covering his own tracks—and even implicated Trump directly.  

“President Trump has empowered commanders, commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people,” Hegseth ranted. “We support them, and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.”

Pressed on how long there had been between the first and second strike, Hegseth said: “I couldn’t tell you the exact amount of time.”

Donald Trump is openly threatening Minnesota’s Somali American community and making racist attacks against them.

After the president’s Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he heard “Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions. Every year, billions of dollars. And they contribute nothing. The welfare’s like 88 percent. They contribute nothing. I don’t want ’em in our country, I’ll be honest with you. Somebody would say, ‘Ooh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care.”

Trump’s racist tirade (and attack on Somali American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar) comes after The New York Times reported that his administration plans to launch an immigration crackdown targeting the Somali community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, purportedly focusing on undocumented immigrants. About 100 federal officers and agents have been sent to the region from around the country, according to the report.

The state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, criticized the plan on X Tuesday, saying, “We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime. But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey expressed support specifically for the Somali community, saying at a press conference Tuesday, “We love you, and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid.”

“Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country. They’ve been here for decades in many instances. They’re entrepreneurs and fathers. They benefit both the culture and the economic resilience of our city,” Frey said. “Targeting Somali people means that due process will be violated. Mistakes will be made. And let’s be clear: It means that American citizens will be detained for no other reason than the fact that they look like they are Somali.”

Frey was backed up at the press conference by Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who said the city’s police department would not work with federal agents. He also defended citizens’ right to protest against the Trump administration.

“In moments like this, I know how real the fear is in our community. People are going to want to speak out, protest, and exercise their First Amendment rights. We will absolutely defend people’s right to do just that,” O’Hara said.

President Trump used the last few minutes of his hours-long Cabinet meeting Tuesday to launch a particularly nasty attack on Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar and the entire country of Somalia. 

Trump’s rant was spurred by a leading question about Minnesota governor and former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s supposed complicity in allowing massive Social Service System fraud in his home state. Trump completely ignored the question, instead opting to personally attack Walz before shifting to Omar unprompted. 

“When you look at what [Walz has] done with Somalia, which is barely a country … they have no anything, they just run around killing each other,” Trump said. “And when I see somebody like Ilhan Omar—who I don’t know at all—but I always watch her, for years I’ve watched her complain about our Constitution, how she’s being treated badly … hates everybody, hates Jewish people, hates everybody. And I think she’s an incompetent person.” 

As an outspoken Black, progressive, Muslim, African, refugee, and woman in office, Omar is someone whom the president—and the rest of the GOP—can cast their slanderous bigotry toward, much to the delight of the MAGA base.

Trump continued to rant against Omar. 

“She’s a real terrible person … I hear [Somalians] ripped off that state for billions of dollars … I don’t want ’em in our country, I’ll be honest with you. Somebody’ll say ‘Ooh that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want ’em in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want ’em in our country.

“We’re gonna go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage.… When they come from hell, and they complain, and do nothing but bitch? We don’t want ’em in our country. Let ’em go back to where they came from and fix it.” 

Trump’s Cabinet members started banging on the table, clapping, and cheering as the meeting concluded on that note. 

Trump entered some sort of racist flow state here. He hit all the points that make his base—from the Groypers to the neocons—foam at the mouths: “I’ll never be politically correct,” “This specific group of immigrants is a problem for us,” and “This woman who opposes me is a stupid and awful person.”  

Pope Leo has implored Donald Trump not to use military force to force out Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The first American leader of the Catholic Church told reporters Tuesday that it would be “better” to “find another way” to apply pressure, such as hosting a dialogue with Maduro, or imposing economic sanctions on the South American nation, “if that is what they want to do in the United States.”

Since early September, the U.S. has destroyed at least 20 small boats traversing the Caribbean that Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—to be smuggling drugs. At least 83 people have been killed in the attacks.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the U.N. human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.”

While chalking the seemingly needless violence up to counter-narcoterrorism efforts, Trump has simultaneously leveraged the aggression to shove Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019.

The White House confirmed Sunday that the two leaders shared a phone call late last week, during which Trump reportedly issued a stern ultimatum.

“You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump told Maduro, according to insiders who spoke with the Miami Herald. That is, “only if he agreed to resign right away.”

Maduro, meanwhile, told thousands of his supporters Monday that he would not capitulate or settle for “a slave’s peace.”

Responding to a reporter Tuesday, Leo suggested that the Trump administration had not been consistent with its policy toward Venezuela.

“On one hand, it seems there was a call between the two presidents.… On the other hand, there is the danger, there is the possibility there will be some activity, some (military) operation.

“The voices that come from the United States, they change with a certain frequency,” the Chicagoan pontiff said.

Republican Representative Elise Stefanik is feuding with House Speaker Mike Johnson after legislation she has been pushing for years related to Russia and the 2016 election was left out of the National Defense Authorization Act, a major defense policy bill.

Stefanik’s legislation would require the FBI to notify Congress every time the bureau opens an investigation into a political candidate seeking federal office. On Monday, she complained on X that her years-old provision was being left out of the NDAA and that, as a result, she would be voting “no” on the bill.

“Unless this provision is added back into the bill to prevent illegal political weaponization of the intelligence community in our elections, I am a HARD NO. I have always voted in support of the defense and intelligence authorization bills, but no more,” Stefanik wrote in a long post. “It is a scandalous disgrace that Republicans are allowing themselves to be rolled by the Dems and deep state on this.”

Johnson was not happy, telling Jake Sherman of Punchbowl Tuesday, “All of that is false.”

“I don’t exactly know why Elise won’t just call me. I texted her yesterday. She’s upset one of her provisions is not being made, I think, into the NDAA.… As soon as I heard this yesterday, I was campaigning in Tennessee, and I wrote her and said, ‘What are you talking about? This hasn’t even made it to my level,’” Johnson said.

This seemed to make Stefanik even more upset. She ranted on X: “Just more lies from the Speaker.”

“And in true to form, the Speaker texted me yesterday claiming he ‘knew nothing about it.’ Yeah right. This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda,” Stefanik posted, complaining that Johnson was “siding” with Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin.

Losing Stefanik’s vote on the NDAA, a major defense appropriations bill that has to pass every year, could be disastrous for Johnson, considering that Republicans only have a narrow two-vote majority in the House. Stefanik also has the support of fellow House GOP rebel Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted on X Tuesday, “No surprises here. As usual from the Speaker, promises made promises broken. We all know it,” quoting a post from Stefanik.

Stefanik will not be in Congress much longer, as she has launched her own campaign for governor of New York. In the meantime, she’s not being quiet, and Johnson should be worried that her feelings might spread within the GOP caucus, especially with other House Republicans eyeing the exits.

President Trump once again appeared to struggle to stay awake and alert during his own Cabinet meeting.

The president leaned forward, leaned back, twiddled his thumbs, and did everything in between as his eyelids grew heavy in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon Cabinet meeting. As each of his Cabinet members gave him an update on how great everything is going, the president looked more and more exhausted, his eyes fully closed at several points.

This most recent on-camera nap comes just over a week after The New York Times reported on what appears to be a serious drop in Trump’s energy and activity compared to his first term. The president has been pissed about the story ever since.

It’s clear to anyone watching that the president has issues staying up while sitting in long meetings, like many old men do. Trump has dozed off in other meetings, including during a briefing with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May. This all only adds fuel to the narrative that the man who will end his term as the oldest president in U.S. history is not as mentally or physically fit as he claims to be.

Sabrina Carpenter slammed the White House Tuesday for using her hit song about “freaky positions” in a racist video about brutal immigration arrests.

The White House posted a video on X Monday using the Gen Z pop star’s song “Juno” over footage of people protesting Trump’s immigration operations. The video then cuts to clips of other people being brutally run down and handcuffed by federal authorities. It’s not clear that any of the people in the video were actually undocumented immigrants—they just weren’t white.

“Have you ever tried this one?” the post read, a lyric from Carpenter’s song. “Bye-bye.”

Carpenter replied the next day: “This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

But White House didn’t seem to get the message to keep away from Carpenter’s music. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded with a statement that once again referenced the singer’s lyrics: “Here’s a Short n’ Sweet message for Sabrina Carpenter: We won’t apologize for deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country. Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?”

If this is the Trump administration’s best attempt to reach out to a younger generation, it doesn’t seem to be going too well.

Earlier this month, Carpenter’s fellow pop star and former Disney Channel actress Olivia Rodrigo hit back at the Department of Homeland Security after it posted an Instagram reel promoting self-deportation, using one of her songs. In a comment, Rodrigo said, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched an ad campaign in August to recruit “Gen-Z and early-career professionals” to fill thousands of open roles as so-called “Homeland Defenders.” The Trump administration has desperately worked to boost the number of immigration officers, causing a “shit show” at ICE.

This story has been updated.

Republican leadership is tiring of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Top conservatives have started to publicly voice their discontent with Trump’s appointed war chief, as reports circulate about a Pentagon decision to mercilessly kill survivors of a drone strike in the Caribbean on September 2.

Republicans have been practically mute as Hegseth’s careless, monthslong killing spree has claimed the lives of at least 83 people. But GOP-led panels in the House and Senate are dialing up their scrutiny of the Pentagon, demanding a full account of the September boat strikes.

The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees are both demanding audio and video of the incident. “We’re going to conduct oversight, and we’re going to try to get to the facts,” vowed Senator Roger Wicker.

Senator Thom Tillis told CNN that he was still trying to understand whether Hegseth had ordered the second strike that day, killing a couple of survivors that clung to the wreckage left by the initial attack.

“Obviously, if it can be substantiated by facts, it’s a violation of both ethical and possibly legal requirements,” Tillis said. “If it is substantiated, whoever made that order needs to get the hell out of Washington.”

The North Carolina lawmaker was not the only conservative in Washington irate over the events. Senator Lindsey Graham said that he was still working out “the facts” but suggested that the attack could have run afoul of the law.

“It’s a long-held rule that survivors of the ship attack are no longer combatants, and an air crew member in a parachute is no longer a combatant. You’re out of the fight,” Graham told CNN. “I don’t know what the facts are, but that’s general law. We’ll see what the facts are.”

Before he knew that the White House had confirmed the Pentagon struck the boat twice, West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told the network that a second attack seemed “way over the edge.”

“I don’t see how that’s acceptable,” he added.

Ultimately, Hegseth’s long string of scandals appear to be adding up, pushing his potential congressional allies further and further away.

Representative Don Bacon, who serves on the House Committee on Armed Services, told CNN’s Manu Raju that Hegseth should be forced out of government—if he’s deemed responsible for the second strike.

“I felt that way under Signalgate,” Bacon said, referring to an incident in March when Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen. “He should’ve taken responsibility then, and he didn’t.”

“I’ve seen enough that I don’t think he’s the right leader,” Bacon told Raju.

The White House has repeatedly insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia, though U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction. Pentagon officials reportedly haven’t been concerned with identifying the people on the boats before attacking.

President Donald Trump is all in on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s plan to exploit the shooting of two National Guard members in order to expand one of the Trump administration’s most racist policies: the travel ban.

Multiple U.S. officials told CBS News Tuesday that Trump’s travel ban would be expanded to roughly 30 countries, up from 19. The Department of Homeland Security also released a statement promising that it would announce a slate of new additions to Trump’s travel ban “soon.”

This announcement comes just days after an Afghan refugee was accused of shooting two guardsmen just blocks away from the White House, spurring the Trump administration to pause asylum case decisions for all nationalities and order a full-scale review of green card cases involving immigrants from the 19 countries currently subject to the travel ban.

Not only is it not clear why the alleged actions of one individual would require all citizens of a country to be barred entry to the U.S., but crucially, Afghanistan is already subject to Trump’s travel ban. Trump’s plot to loop in other countries just shows the lengths the administration will go to further his agenda to smear and exclude immigrants.

It seems the idea for this latest blatantly racist backlash originated with Noem, who wrote on X Monday that she’d recommended Trump impose a “full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS,” she wrote. “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”

“EVERY DAMN COUNTRY,” wrote the official DHS X account, sharing Noem’s sentiment.

The Trump administration has also halted all visa and immigration processing for Afghan nationals. The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, served in a paramilitary unit in Afghanistan led by the CIA and trained by U.S. special operations soldiers. He received his asylum and work authorization in April this year. So, despite Noem’s tantrum, it seems that the Trump administration did at one time want these so-called “foreign invaders.”

Trump’s travel ban currently fully bars entry from Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and partially restricts travel from several other countries, including Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice on the rules of engagement in war. 

In his book The War on Warriors, published last year, Hegseth wrote about an instance where he rejected a military judge advocate general’s guidance on the rules of engagement, telling troops, “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains.”

Hegseth wrote that the judge advocate general “used the example of an identified enemy holding a rocket-propelled grenade” and asked Hegseth’s platoon, “Do you shoot at him?”

The former Fox News host said his fellow soldiers replied, “Hell, yeah, we light him up,” to which  the JAG said, “Wrong answer, men.” 

“You are not authorized to fire at that man, until that RPG becomes a threat. It must be pointed at you with the intent to fire. That makes it a legal and proper engagement,” the officer said, according to Hegseth, who wrote that his platoon mates “sat in silence, stunned.”

Hegseth wrote that he pulled the platoon aside after the briefing and told them, “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains. Men, if you see an enemy who you believe is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat. That’s a bullshit rule that’s going to get people killed. And I will have your back—just like our commander. We are coming home, the enemy will not.”

The passage, reported on by The Guardian Tuesday, is one of many instances in Hegseth’s book in which he complains about rules and regulations governing warfare in the U.S. military. In another passage, Hegseth gripes, “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?! Who cares what other countries think.”

Throughout the book, Hegseth repeatedly praises his own commander, Colonel Michael Steele, whom he calls a “certified badass,” and who was later reprimanded for reportedly ordering soldiers in 2006 in Iraq to “kill all military age males” in a raid.

All of this takes on new meaning with news this week regarding Hegseth’s actions in the Caribbean Sea. On September 2, following a strike on boats suspected of smuggling drugs to the U.S., Hegseth reportedly ordered an immediate follow-up strike to kill two survivors. A Washington Post report found that Hegseth made an order to kill everybody on the boats, which the White House denies, instead placing the blame on Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. 

Hegseth’s own words from last year on respecting rules of engagement, as well as international treaties and agreements on war, would seem to suggest that he’d have no problem issuing such an order, which would be a war crime. It would also violate the Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual, which prohibits declaring “no quarter” or conducting operations “on the basis that there shall be no survivors.” Does Hegseth disagree with that as well?