You know what screams guilt? Calling something fake news, then admitting it happened, then claiming you weren’t there when it happened, then saying actually, you totally support it and would do it again. In fact, if this weren’t 2025 and politics hadn’t turned into a circus where the person who screams the loudest comes out on top, we’d be inclined to just call this textbook behavior for someone workshopping different versions of a story to find one that doesn’t sound like a confession.
With the walls closing in and GOP support diminishing by the day, Pete Hegseth is growing frantic and constantly changing his account of the September 2 attack. Making an appearance at the Reagan National Defense Forum, he delivered a speech that sounded very much like a victory lap for someone who hasn’t actually won anything yet, and then went on to defend the decision to destroy the alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean.
“From what I understood then and what I understand now, I fully support that strike,” Hegseth said. “I would have made the same call myself. Those who were involved in 20 years of conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan, or elsewhere, know that reattacks and restrikes of combatants on the battlefield happen often.”
The DefSec’s initial reaction to the Washington Post story was to call it “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” but when Congress launched a bipartisan probe into the problematic double-tap attack that killed the two survivors clinging to the wreckage of the alleged narcotics boat sailing in the Caribbean, Hegseth changed his story and claimed that he’d left the room before the second strike.
He’s now offering another version of events, saying that he was told “there had to be a reattack, because there were a couple folks who could still be in the fight.” And just to be clear, by “still in the fight,” Hegseth is referring to two wounded survivors clinging to debris in the middle of the ocean.
It gets worse, because Hegseth’s story about the survivors having access to radio and being in the vicinity of “a linkup point with another potential boat” directly contradicts what Admiral Frank Bradley, who commanded the operation, told Congress a few days ago.
When asked if the Department of Defense would release the classified footage of the attack, Hegseth dodged around and gave a non-answer.
“We’re reviewing it [the video] right now to make sure sources, methods, I mean it’s an ongoing operation. We’ve got operators out there doing this right now. So whatever we were to decide to release we’d have to be very responsible about, so we’re reviewing that right now.”
So, there you have it. At least three different versions of the same story in two weeks, and a death toll sitting at 86. Hegseth isn’t even trying to make sense anymore; he’s just trying to make it to tomorrow. And with Trump as president, I fear that might actually be enough.
Published: Dec 7, 2025 03:28 pm