I recently came across an amusing meme: President Donald Trump, dressed as a magician, lifts his wand and declares, “For my next trick, I’ll make Democrats support the drug cartels.” And indeed, he has.
Over the past 10 months, Trump has forced Democrats into defending some of the most indefensible, anti-American positions imaginable: fierce opposition to a comprehensive audit of the federal government, resistance to the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, and allowing biological males to compete in female sports — to name a few.
But perhaps the most egregious example is the Democrats’ sudden sympathy for two narco-terrorists — crew members on a drug boat who were being paid eye-watering sums to ferry deadly drugs into the U.S.
CAN WE PLEASE STOP IT WITH THE ‘SOURCES SAY’ REPORTING?
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that, according to two people with direct knowledge of the first military strike on a drug boat in the Caribbean Sea, War Secretary Pete Hegseth “gave a spoken directive. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
CNN correspondent Natasha Bertrand, known for playing fast and loose with the truth, piled on. She reported, “The U.S. military was aware there were survivors in the water following the first strike on September 2 and carried out another to both sink the vessel and kill the remaining crew, the sources said.”
Clearly, it would be relatively easy to find a senior Pentagon official willing, even eager, to trash Hegseth as long as they could do so anonymously. Hegseth’s shake-up of the status quo has made him many enemies within the Department of Defense and left the old guard itching for a chance to throw him under the bus.
Suddenly, every Democratic politician and journalist who had done a quick Geneva Convention search on ChatGPT proclaimed that Hegseth was a war criminal. They said live drone footage allegedly showed two men clinging to the remains of their burning boat right before the second strike snuffed them out.
They had not seen the footage, of course, because it’s classified. But they took the word of their anonymous sources, because the story was simply too irresistible to pass up.
Who would have guessed that the New York Times would emerge as the voice of reason? Without explicitly calling the Washington Post story a lie, it effectively called the story a lie.
On Monday, the New York Times reported, “The Post article did not provide context on when Mr. Hegseth gave what its sources described as a spoken order to kill everyone.”
Five officials separately told the New York Times, “Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things.” The officials were clear that Hegseth’s “order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.”
A Wednesday night report from ABC News went even further in exonerating Hegseth. According to a source:
The two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike. They were believed to be in communication with others in the vicinity and were salvaging some of the drugs that were the boat’s cargo, the source said, and because of these actions, they were determined to be “still in the fight” and considered to be valid targets.
Once the pressure on Hegseth eased, the Left pivoted to a fresh line of attack: the alleged “illegality” of the strikes. Its claim now is that Trump has no right to target the narco-terrorists who are bringing lethal loads of drugs into the United States.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) went so far as to tell MS NOW’s Katy Tur, “There’s no such thing as a narco terrorist. There are very, very bad narcotics people, cartels, etc.”
“They’re desperate to make this look like it’s ISIS or Al Qaeda,” he said, “because that’s the very thin line on which their illegal use of the United States military to take these people out resides.”
Since 1999, drug overdoses have taken more than 1.25 million American lives, and these “very, very bad narcotics people” are responsible. Unlike previous U.S. presidents, Trump has the courage to confront this enemy head-on.
(For some perspective, the U.S. lost 58,220 troops over a decade of war in Vietnam.)
Each U.S. strike that wipes out a drug-laden vessel prevents American deaths. Moreover, the repeated strikes on these boats over the past three months have had a powerful deterrent effect, as noted by Trump during his Tuesday Cabinet meeting.
The crew members on these drug boats know exactly what they are signing up for. They understand that a U.S. missile could appear without warning and blow them to smithereens. They also know the drugs they are trafficking will ultimately kill countless Americans. But the lure of a massive payday from a single run makes it a risk worth taking.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the pilots of these vessels can earn up to $100,000 from a successful run. One low-level crew member told the outlet he earned $10,000 for a recent run.
In an appearance on MS NOW, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said, “In many ways, the uniformed military may help save us from this president and his lame people like Hegseth because I think their commitment is to the Constitution and obviously not to Trump.” Was he suggesting a military coup?
This latest manufactured outrage — from the bizarre video of six Democratic lawmakers instructing service members to defy unlawful orders to their push to drive Hegseth from power — follows the same unmistakable pattern as the countless hoaxes they have staged before.
TRUMP AND HEGSETH’S FRAUGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LAW OF WAR
The troubling reality is that opposing Trump takes precedence over confronting the cartels flooding our country with poison. Their eagerness to elevate anonymous whispers over verifiable facts is matched only by their indifference to the Americans dying as a result of this crisis.
They will always choose the narrative that damages Trump — even if it means siding with the very traffickers killing Americans. When forced to choose between the safety of their citizens and the cartels fueling America’s deadly overdose epidemic, they chose the cartels. That truth needs to be driven home every day between now and the midterm elections.