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.