Since September of this year, the United States military has been blowing up boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the Caribbean.
Whether these attacks are legal is hotly debated. Congress hasn’t declared war or even authorized the use of force against “narco-terrorists” or against Venezuela, the apparent real target of a massive U.S. military build-up off its coast.
The Trump administration has simply unilaterally designated various — alleged — drug traffickers as “terrorists” or members of “terrorist organizations,” and then waged war upon them. The administration’s internal legal finding supporting all of this hasn’t been publicly released. But whatever their case in private is, it was sufficiently weak that the British government announced in early November it would no longer share intelligence with the U.S. relevant to the Caribbean operation over concerns about its lawfulness.
On Friday, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell report about the first of these operations back in September. During the strike, the Navy not only took out a suspected drug-trafficking boat — as had been reported previously — but when survivors were spotted clinging to the wreckage, the special operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second strike on the survivors, in order to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to kill everyone involved.
“Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation,” the Post reported. “ ‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said.”
Whatever you think about the broader Caribbean operation, it is a simple fact that shooting survivors at sea is war crime, under American and international law. Of course, as some suggest, since this operation is not a legal war, maybe it’s not a war crime, just a crime-crime.
Later Friday, in a lengthy social media post, Hegseth attacked the Washington Post’s report as an instance of the “fake news … delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.”
What Hegseth didn’t do was directly deny the report. Instead, he insisted that “we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ ”
Declaring your intent was to kill everybody on the first try isn’t a legal excuse to finish off unarmed survivors.
Hegseth offered follow-up posts that were boastful or childish, but did not deny the charge.
With even Republican members of Congress expressing grave concerns, the official story changed from “fake news” to an actual denial. Trump said that Hegseth told the president that he did not give any such illegal order, “and I believe him, 100%,” adding that he “wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike.”
So it now appears the White House has confirmed there was a second strike on the survivors, and conceded that it would at least be against the president’s policy. Whether the White House will concede the strike was unlawful remains to be seen. Indeed, exactly what happened remains murky. It surely seems like someone gave an order for a second strike. And if it wasn’t Hegseth, whoever that person was could be looking at a court-martial — or given who the commander-in-chief is, a pardon.
But I don’t want to get ahead of the news.
Instead, I’ll make a few points.
First, a minor gripe: This administration and its defenders need to be more selective in their use of the term “fake news.” I have no problem calling a false story “fake news.” But if you know that a story isn’t false, calling it “fake news” just sets you up to look like even more of a liar or hypocrite down the road when you end up admitting the truth and defending actions you once pretended were slanderous.
More importantly, the whole Caribbean strategy is constitutionally and legally dubious. As a matter of foreign policy, it looks more and more like a pretext for some kind of regime change gambit in Venezuela. If the administration has evidence that justifies its actions, they should share it with Congress and ask for permission to wage war.
Even more important: illegal orders cannot be justified. When a half-dozen Democratic members of Congress released a video saying that the military shouldn’t follow “illegal orders,” the president and many of his defenders became hysterical. Trump lamented that America has become so “soft” that such “seditious behavior” isn’t punished by death anymore.
More sober critics of the Democrats complained that the video sowed confusion in the ranks and hurt morale. I’m actually sympathetic to that argument.
But you know what else sows confusion and hurts morale? Issuing illegal orders – or even appearing to do so.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.