Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough has accused Pete Hegseth of “making up s–t” as he goes along to defend a second airstrike that killed survivors on a supposed Venezuelan drug boat.
The MS Now host was discussing the ongoing fury surrounding the embattled defense secretary, while referencing a New York Times report that the military may have considered the two survivors’ radioing for help after their boat was hit in the initial strike a “hostile act” worthy of a so-called “double tap.”
“They’re scrambling around and trying to protect themselves. There’s no protecting themselves from the truth,” Scarborough said Thursday morning.
“And then there’s the ‘oh, well, they had a radio, and they were radioing.’ Does that mean the new sort of rules of warfare are: if you have a prisoner and they’re defenseless and they have a radio, you can shoot them in the head? That’s now the new Hegseth policy—if they have a radio, you can shoot them in the head,” Scarborough added.
“Forget the war crimes. Forget what the U.S. Army manual says. Forget what the DoD manual says. They’re making s–t up as they go along every day, and the inconsistency of it all, again, looks very bad.”
Hegseth is facing mounting pressure after The Washington Post reported that he gave an order to “kill everybody” in September on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean, including two survivors from the initial strike who were seen holding onto the burning wreckage.
The second strike has faced accusations of amounting to a war crime against civilians who were not a direct threat to the U.S. Questions have been raised about who exactly was responsible for the second strike and how involved Hegseth was.
On Wednesday, the Times reported that before the Trump administration began targeting alleged drug boats in its self-proclaimed war on “narco terrorists,” Hegseth had approved contingency plans for scenarios involving survivors of an attack.
The report, citing unnamed officials, said the military would attempt to rescue survivors deemed no longer a threat, but would attempt to kill them again if they appeared to be carrying out a “hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members.”
Officials claim that one of the survivors clinging to the destroyed drug boat had radioed for help, and that this could be considered a hostile act, as another vessel could have been dispatched to receive the pair and the cocaine the first boat was allegedly smuggling.
Navy Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, who oversaw operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, allegedly gave the order to launch the second strike under Hegseth’s authority. Bradley is expected to tell Congress on Thursday that the attack was justified because the two survivors were “attempting to continue their drug run,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed defense officials.
“Wait, wait, wait—how could they continue their drug run when their boat is practically incinerated?” Scarborough said. “Pete Hegseth himself said, ‘Hey, this ain’t no AI, I was there, and I saw it. Kaboom. We blew it up.’
“Sorry, Pete, none of these stories stack up. You were so sure that it was destroyed and incapacitated that you left the room. That’s your story. So are you so stupid that you don’t know when a boat’s destroyed and when a boat’s not destroyed? Pete, you can’t have it both ways.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for comment.
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