The Washington Post issued a devastating report that esse- essentially paints Pete Hegseth's attack on a so-called Venezuelan drug boat as a war crime. And after initial denials, it looks like Caroline Leavitt is basically [00:00:15] confirming that, yeah, it happened. Now here's the headline which claims that Hegseth told SEAL Team Six to kill them all. As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team Six, the joint special operations commander followed the defense [00:00:34] secretary's order to leave no survivors. And The Intercept and CNN issued similar reports. In all, the boat was allegedly attacked four times, twice to kill the crew [00:00:49] and two more times to sink the boat. And I'll show you what the Trump administration said and what they are saying. But first, Cenk, what are your two cents here? Yeah, the two cents are, one, who gave the order? We're gonna give you some details and we're gonna tell you who the administration is throwing under the bus. [00:01:04] Uh, and is that person guilty of a war crime and of homicide? The second question's nearly unarguable. It's definitely murder, uh, and they should be going to prison if there's any justice. I guess that leads to the third question. Will there ever be justice in America for someone powerful, ever? [00:01:24] Ever? And this is a good case of that, and we'll find out, uh, if something as brazenly illegal as this is allowed to stand. Yes. Now, if it's true, the attack on these survivors would amount to a war crime, [00:01:40] according to pretty much every expert that isn't in Trump's pocket. What is Pete Hegseth saying? Well, on his official Secretary of War account, he wrote a very lengthy statement which has all of the standard denials. [00:01:56] "As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland." And I'll spare you the rest, which mens- which mentions Biden, drug cartels, and even people from Afghanistan. [00:02:16] Meanwhile, on his personal account, he posted this. "For your Christmas wish list," featuring Franklin the turtle. Now, that, I think that's very disparaging to Franklin. He's a peaceful turtle. And when asked about it, Trump said this. [00:02:32] Take a look. 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%. So you don't know if there was a second? You're talking about the two men? The second strike to kill the two men after - Yeah. [00:02:47] No, I, I... He said he didn't do it. He said he never said that. Would you be okay with that if he did? He said he didn't do it, so I don't have to make that decision. Trump says he wouldn't have wanted a second strike. Meanwhile, Republican Markwayne Mullin had this response for Dana Bash. [00:03:08] If they do find that the defense secretary gave an order to eliminate people who were already injured on a boat, which a lot of legal experts say is illegal. Mark Kelly was just here and he said it's potentially a war crime. Should Pete Hegseth face consequences? [00:03:28] Listen, you're once again making assumptions that's not even kind of accurate, I don't believe. All we're doing is talking about an assumption. This isn't been proven, it hasn't been said it was actually true. And far as Mark Kelly, what he says, Mark Kelly is saying the most ridiculous [00:03:43] things I've ever heard right now. He's encouraging, uh, men and women in uniform to, uh, question the orders of superior officers. He just got done saying that the president was racist because he doesn't like brown people, yet I sit in front of you as a Cherokee Indian and I'm very close friends with the president. [00:04:02] Okay. Until this afternoon, the Pentagon spokesperson was the only person who could manage to put a sentence together responding to these bombshell reports, saying, "The entire narrative is completely false. [00:04:17] Ongoing operations to dismantle narco-terrorism and protect the homeland from deadly drugs have been a resounding success." Parnell also said, "These people just fabricate anonymously-sourced stories out of whole cloth." But then, today, [00:04:34] White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt confirmed that Pete Hegseth authorized Admiral Frank Bradley to carry out the strikes. Take a look. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially [00:04:49] designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on September 2nd, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. [00:05:04] Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated. So she's saying that Hegseth generally authorized the strikes, but did not [00:05:23] specifically authorize the double-tap. However, they're totally okay with the second strike and the admiral was acting in his authority. Now, 80 have been killed so far. 15,000 troops and over a dozen warships have [00:05:39] been deployed over the last few months. Trump issued a statement that the US will be shutting down airspace in Venezuela. Is this a war crime? Will there be consequences? These questions remain. Cenk, what do you think? Yeah. [00:05:55] First, a quick comment on what, uh, Waingrow said. Uh, and then I'm gonna get back to other Republicans who actually think there should be accountability, which is borderline shocking. That's, uh, that actually is the most shocking part of the story. Uh, but, uh, first on Senator Waingrow. [00:06:13] Uh, he says, oh, you know, Mark Kelly doing these outrageous things, like saying don't follow an illegal order.You mean like one's saying that you should do a double tap and murder injured people and, that you're, after the first strike? That's an illegal order. [00:06:29] It turns out Mark Kelly was, if anything, prescient in doing that video. I thought that video had issues, but my God does it apply here, right? And so, this is the very last place you should be bringing up that video, you moron, Senator Waingrow. [00:06:45] Duh. I mean, uh, he said we shouldn't follow legal orders and then Hegseth gave an illegal order to murder people. You see how wrong Mark Kelly was? No. If anything, you're proving his point beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the fact that there are US senators as pathetically unintelligent [00:07:03] and immoral as Wayne Mullen, uh, is a great, you know, slight on our country and it, and it bothers me. So, okay, now, we're gonna come back to how often these double taps happen, all the different people who should be put away, uh, for them, in, in a minute, [00:07:19] but let's break down what happened here. So, now they have confirmed, as Jordan just told you with the press secretary confirming, there was two strikes. Well, there was four strikes, but the second strike was to kill all the injured and all the survivors. [00:07:35] So, now there is no more dispute about that. A second strike against survivors is definitely illegal under international law and under US law. There's a word for it. Put aside war crimes 'cause it triggers people. [00:07:51] So, for a lot of people that are in different parts of the political spectrum, but mainly the right wing, if you say war crimes, they go, hell yeah. All right, we're finally back to being strong! Let's kill people for no reason! No, war crimes is not a good thing. And, but to, I, you know, I put it on the right, to be fair, a lot of the right has [00:08:07] now swung around and, and is complaining about the war crimes that Israel's doing. The number one people in favor of war crimes historically in this country are neocons and Israel First people. We're gonna come back to that. Okay, but right now all of a sudden everyone's acting like, oh my God, it's [00:08:23] a double tap, that's definitely murder. Yes, it is. That's what we've been saying all along. So, all right. So, we've established that it's murder, then they say, okay, it was Admiral Bradley who did it. Okay, so are we gonna bring up Admiral Bradley on charges? Because if he really took it upon his own to say, oh look guys, [00:08:40] there's survivors there, well let's... All laws of war say take them as prisoners of war and then deal with them afterwards in legally sanctioned ways. By the way, none of which are great. They don't get roses as prisoners of war, right? So, they get, you know, there's plenty of harsh treatment, et cetera. [00:08:58] But, we follow due process. It's the equivalent of shooting someone in the head after you capture them. Everyone knows that's illegal, everyone knows that's murder, and that Americans don't do that. So, was it Admiral Bradley? Should he be court-martialed and prosecuted for homicide? [00:09:15] I would be shocked if it was Admiral Bradley. It was almost certainly Pete Hegseth. But, that's my opinion based on all the information I've ever seen about Hegseth, the military, their rules, et cetera. But, maybe I'm wrong. That's why we should immediately have a trial to see who murdered those people. [00:09:31] Now, okay, we're, now we're gonna of course get to the biggest question of all, which is, is there ever any accountability in our government for anything? For any lawbreaking, anything that anyone powerful does? So, they say, oh, it's under the authority of Hegseth [00:09:49] and then Bradley does the double tap. Okay, but the auth- there is no such authority, so whose fault is it, Hegseth or Bradley? Normally, Jordan, we never get to that question 'cause everyone in Washington's like, murder, as long as we do it, war crimes, as long as we [00:10:05] or our allies do it, it's perfectly fine. Okay, now wait a minute. Is that hyperbole? No, we, I have, I have dozens of examples. I'll give you two pretty spectacular ones that everybody knows. The Apache helicopter video that Chelsea Manning revealed. So, in Iraq, uh, what happened was, we got... [00:10:21] There's video of it. Uh, one of our helicopters shoots at reporters, kills them. Now they say, well look, it was an honest mistake, we thought their cameras were, uh, RPGs or whatever. Okay, so I don't think that they thought that they were RPGs. I've seen the video, it seems like they wanted to murder those journalists. [00:10:38] But, that's not the conversation we're having. I'm not even talking about that. Then first responders show up in an ambulance and our guys murder them. I mean, that's clearly illegal, no question. Murder, homicide, war crime. [00:10:53] The only person that was punished was Chelsea Manning for revealing that crime. None of the people who committed that murder got punished. Uh, now over to Israel where they do this almost every day. There's of course the famous case of Hind Rajab that you all know about. Although, again, we've reported on dozens of these. [00:11:09] Israel does this all the time. So, Hind Rajab is a six-year-old, her entire car is shot up, everyone else in her family is dead. They never did anything wrong. Again, we're not talking about that Israel murders innocent civilians all the time. We're talking about double taps. They tell Israel, hey, there's a six-year-old in the car. [00:11:27] She's alive, we're gonna send an ambulance. Israel says, okay. Then when the ambulance arrives they murder everyone in the ambulance and they murder the six-year-old. That's clearly illegal, it's a war crime, we should have ended our funding of Israel that moment. But, there's never any consequences. [00:11:43] And so all of our entire government bowed down to Israel saying, murder anyone you like, commit any war crimes. Like, here's, here's another $31 billion, commit war, more war crimes. So Jordan, after I say all that, and all of that is abundantly clear and actually inarguable, we're left with a question of, [00:11:59] why in the world are Republican senators saying that there should be an investigation and we should find out if there was a crime committed here? That's the part that I'm absolutely puzzled by. Yeah. I, I, I mean, it seems like this invocation of Admiral Bradley today [00:12:18] by Caroline Leavitt- Looks like if there would be any repercussions, it's going to fall on him. I think that they've just chosen, like, this is our fall guy. Hegseth, you know, delegated his authority to this guy and this guy did it... [00:12:33] Well, he didn't do it, but if he did do it, he was, it was legal to do so. This kind of, like, tap dance routine they're doing in front of the press, now that it's impossible to deny, it's, it's horrific. I mean, we're talking about multiple boats, multiple strikes on multiple [00:12:50] boats with 80 killed and zero proof that there were ever drugs on these boats. And they're trying to claim this is self-defense. We'll get into that in the next block and how this might lead to an actual illegal war, but, uh, it's just, like, I'm, I don't think we'll see any consequences. [00:13:08] Cenk, I think talking about the Chelsea Manning situation is a perfect example. She's the only person that faced any consequences for that situation, for that attack, for that murder. Uh, th- it's a, it's a, it's a case of mixed priorities [00:13:24] or missed priorities here. Every, every single time it's, we're going after the leakers, every department. Something bad about our government is shown, they're going after the leakers, they're not going after the people who did it. Time and time again, it's the same story. Yeah, so I just want you guys to know, Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi, [00:13:41] who is a Republican, is criticizing what happened and saying it needs to be investigated. Senator Mike... I'm sorry, Representative Mike Rogers from Alabama, Representative Mike Turner from Ohio, these are all Republican congressmen and senators saying we should look further into this. Even Trump saying that he wouldn't have authorized a second strike. [00:14:00] That's unusual. I, I, I never see accountability in Washington. And from the same party? Nah, there's... It's weird. Like, like, if you're new to America over the last 20, 30 years, you have to be [00:14:16] thinking, "What do you mean it's weird?" If somebody commits a crime, doesn't... Aren't they held accountable in America? The answer is a resounding hell no they're not if they're among the powerful. They never ever get held accountable. So the fact that his own party's, some are, are asking for accountability is [00:14:31] what makes this story so strange, because war crimes, unfortunately, are committed by our government and our allies all the time, a- and usually celebrated, right? So this one is not being celebrated, uh, so maybe it just goes away in a couple of days and everybody just falls back in line and goes, "Oh, yeah. [00:14:48] Murder's great. Double taps are great. We should murder all prisoners of war. Either drop a bomb on them or shoot them in the head. Yay!" That would be normal. If it doesn't go back to that, we'll follow the story and, and see what happens here. Could it be that someone will be held accountable for [00:15:04] the first time in our lives? Less likely. Less likely. Especially for a war crime. Especially for murdering someone, uh, I was gonna say on a battlefield, but they're largely fishermen and they were on random boats in the water. So that's who Hegseth is murdering. By the way, Hegseth thinks that he's a tough guy and this is all, [00:15:23] like, a Fox News report or something. Like, "Oh, that I told them about everybody on the boat! Oh, I'm in a movie," right? "I'm the hero." No, first of all, if you're in a movie, you're the villain, you're not the hero. And second of all, this isn't a movie, brother. Those are real people. They have kids and you killed them. [00:15:41] That should be super serious. And no, you have absolutely no evidence that they were narco-terrorists. None. They've never presented any. And by the way, you should know, why are they doing the double tap? Because the last time they struck a boat and there were survivors and we brought them in, it turned out that they were completely [00:15:59] innocent and we had to let them go, so that was embarrassing to the White House, so they didn't want any evidence left over of their war crimes, so they said, "Don't embarrass us again. Make sure everyone on the boat, guilty or innocent, is murdered." And that's what they just did. [00:16:15] So, if you're okay with that, okay, you're that type of person. But Americans should not be okay with it, uh, and our politicians are, uh... You know, if they hold them accountable, I will give them a mountain of credit, a mountain. It'll be the first time it's ever happened in my lifetime and I'll be shocked. [00:16:33] I'll fall out of this chair. But I'm, I'm happy to see it. Cross your fingers. But there's no way in the world they're gonna hold anyone accountable for this, even though it is an in- indisputable war crime. 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