Watching Donald Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth trying to dodge allegations of committing potential war crimes in the Caribbean is like watching a narcissist’s rulebook play out in real time at warp speed: That didn’t happen. Oh, it definitely didn’t happen. And if it did, I wasn’t there. And if I was, Obama did it first.
Last week, both men were insisting that they had no idea about a “double-tap” second strike by the U.S. military that killed two survivors clinging to the blazing wreckage of an alleged drug vessel. Hegseth called the initial report by The Washington Post “fabricated and inflammatory,” but when Congress launched a probe into the operation, he conveniently revised his story by claiming that he only witnessed the first strike, and then left to “attend other meetings,” during which the present commanders spent 41 minutes debating what to do about the survivors.
And now? President Trump has moved to phrase three of the tried and tested spin cycle, sharing a segment on Fox News where Marc Thiessen, quoting Obama’s former DIA chief, claims they did double-tap strikes “all the time” and that this was a “regular practice under the Obama administration.”
“War crime? Start with Barack Obama. Barack Obama had a drone campaign. He did fire 560 drone strikes, killed not just terrorists, but an American citizen,” Thiessen said. “I interviewed David Shed on my podcast, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama. He said, ‘We did double-tap strikes all the time. In fact, we usually had a 2nd predator in the sky waiting for the intelligence to clear to see if there were survivors so we could take them out.'”
The September 2 strike, which was the first in a series of strikes targeting alleged but unproven drug vessels in the Caribbean, initially killed 9 people, leaving 2 survivors clinging to the capsized wreckage. Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, who saw the classified video, called it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service” as two more missiles were fired to kill the survivors.
The administration’s justifications keep shifting. First, they claimed the survivors were radioing for backup, but then Admiral Bradley admitted that they had no communications devices. Now the military is arguing that they might have drifted to safety and resumed drug trafficking, because that’s exactly what two smugglers, bobbing in the middle of the ocean, are wont to do after witnessing the death of their companions in a lethal strike. The situation is so precarious that even the UK has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. military, refusing to be complicit in what could haunt the second Trump administration for years.
As for our president of peace, he’s decided to continue exchanging barbs with Nicolás Maduro and threatening land strikes inside Venezuela. That is, when he isn’t busy blaming the nasty Dems, invoking Obama/Biden as cover, or claiming total ignorance while assuring us this is all perfectly normal and legal.
Published: Dec 6, 2025 02:35 pm