Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Video of Hegseth Telling Military Not to Follow ‘Illegal Orders’ Resurfaces
A video of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly saying there must be "consequences" for carrying out unlawful orders has resurfaced.
"If you're doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that," Hegseth said in the video from 2 2016
In 2016 video, Hegseth says US troops ‘won’t follow unlawful orders’ from the president
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/02/us/hegseth-illegal-orders-video-democrats-kfile-invs
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told an audience in a previously unreported 2016 video that the US military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief,” and described the refusal of illegal commands as a part of the military’s ethos and standards — a message he now condemns Democrats for spreading.
Hegseth’s Decadeslong Quest to Rewrite the Rules of Engagement
Former Army National Guard major and TV personality endeared himself to Trump by defending troops accused of war crimes
Pete Hegseth built a national profile defending troops accused of violating the laws of armed conflict, a trait that won over President Trump in his first term and put him atop the Pentagon in his second.
But the defense secretary who has complained about “stupid rules of engagement” is now at the center of a Washington debate about whether a September strike against a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean amounts to a war crime, testing Hegseth’s standing with lawmakers and his leadership of the military.
Trump said he was ‘sharper than I was 25 years ago.’ Then he spent an hour appearing to doze off – again
But over the next hour and a half, Trump struggled to embody the sharpness and vigor he had just laid claim to.
In fact, he seemed to wage a lengthy and often-losing battle with a midday nap. Even as his Cabinet was assembled to engage in one of his favorite activities – singing the praises of Trump – he repeatedly appeared to doze off.
It was the kind of scene, in fact, that Trump once upon a time ridiculed as evidence of a president’s lack of stamina and fitness for the job.
Despite loss, Democrats overperformed in bright red Tennessee House race
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/02/tennessee-aftyn-behn-matt-van-epps-democrats-00674118
Nevertheless, House Republicans privately bemoaned the results.
Speaker Mike Johnson leadership’s team was bracing for a tighter than comfortable race, and the single digit margin was a hard pill to swallow after national Republicans raced to rescue Van Epps in the final days.
“It was too close,” said one House GOP leadership aide.
A sickening moral slum of an administration
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/02/trump-hegseth-rubio-ukraine-venezuela-boats/
Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.
Rubio, whose well-known versatility of convictions is perhaps not infinite, told some of his alarmed former Senate colleagues that the plan was just an opening gambit from Russia — although Trump demanded that Ukraine accept it within days. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a precise and measured speaker, reported that, in a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators, Rubio said the plan was a Russian proposal: “He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.” Hours later, however, Rubio reversed himself, saying on social media that the United States “authored” the plan.
The glaring ‘hypocrisy’ behind Trump’s war on drugs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/02/trump-honduras-president-pardon-drug-boat-strikes/
For weeks, the Trump administration has demonstrated its zeal in taking on supposed “narcoterrorists” in the Western hemisphere. The United States bombed numerous boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that Trump officials claimed were transporting drugs to U.S. shores, while also rattling the saber at the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the White House has cast as both an illegitimate tyrant and a thuggish cartel boss. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump held a Cabinet meeting on potential U.S. plans for Venezuela, during which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hailed Trump for “taking the gloves off” and declared that “we’ve only just begun” sending drug traffickers to “the bottom of the ocean.”
According to Justice Department documents, Hernández once allegedly bragged to a drug kingpin that he was going to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” He caused “untold damage” and “unimaginable suffering” in the United States, U.S. prosecutors wrote in the government’s sentencing memo, recommending life in prison plus 30 years. “The defendant engaged in this egregious conduct while publicly posing as an ally of the United States in its efforts to combat the importation of narcotics that destroy countless lives in this country. But behind closed doors, the defendant protected the very traffickers he vowed to pursue.”
“It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade — it’s based on lies, it’s based on hypocrisy,” Mike Vigil, the former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations, told the Guardian. “He is giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after Nicolás Maduro. … It’s all hypocritical.”
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Top Jewish donors take stock of GOP infighting over Israel and antisemitism
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/01/jewish-donors-gop-israel-and-antisemitism-00670406
Top Republican Jewish donors are beginning to confront a growing antisemitism problem in their party, but have yet to find consensus on how to respond.
The discomfort among top pro-Israel donors, who steer the Republican Party’s fundraising apparatus, signals the complexity of this political moment for conservative U.S. Jews. Many of them feel the Democratic Party allowed antisemitism to seep into its mainstream in recent years. Now, they fear the same could happen to the GOP.
“Anti-Israel, antisemitic — that gets conflated. A lot of them hide behind anti-Israel, and it’s very hard to prove because you truly should be allowed to be critical of Israel. I’m Justice Potter on this: I know it when I see it. They’re not just anti-Israel,” the donor added. “I think they hide behind free speech, they hide behind isolationism. I think there’s a fair amount of just classic antisemitism going on.
America has become a rogue nation. U.S. allies are looking elsewhere.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/25/europe-canada-nato-trump
Europeans and Canadians are now talking about making their own security arrangements. What would a post-American NATO — or NATO 3.0 (NATO 2.0 was the post-Cold War alliance) — mean? It could ultimately lead countries such as Germany and Poland to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. It is likely to lead to greater levels of defense integration among some NATO members — notably the Nordic-Baltic Eight — than in the alliance as a whole. It is also likely to lead U.S. allies to buy weapons from each other, rather than from Washington. And it is already resulting in greater cooperation between NATO members and the like-minded democracies of Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia.
No wonder Trump is outraged by warnings about illegal orders
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/01/pete-hegseth-military-orders-boat-mark-kelly
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who headed the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, wrote online: “If the Post’s facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the ‘two men were blown apart in the water,’ as the Post put it.” A working group of former judge-advocates general also weighed in: “Orders to kill survivors of an attack at sea are ‘patently illegal,’ anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”
Fears grow inside military over illegal orders after Hegseth authorized follow-up boat strike
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5628685-service-members-boat-strikes-orders-hegseth
Service members’ uncertainty over whether they will be asked to carry out an illegal order or pressured to go against their training is likely to be exacerbated after The Washington Post and CNN late last week reported that Hegseth authorized a highly unusual strike to kill all survivors aboard a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea this fall.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that on Sept. 2, Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out a follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean; the strike reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel, having survived an initial strike.