{"id":321380,"date":"2025-12-02T22:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321380\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T22:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:11:09","slug":"gop-senator-hegseth-is-either-lying-about-second-boat-strike-or-incompetent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321380\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP senator: Hegseth is either lying about second boat strike or incompetent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of either lying in his public response to news reports<\/a> that the US military carried out a follow-up strike on a suspected drug boat in September or being incompetent.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSecretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this, and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn\u2019t happen. And then the next day, from the podium at the White House are saying it did happen,\u201d Paul told reporters in the US Capitol. \u201cSo, either he was lying to us \u2026 or he\u2019s incompetent and didn\u2019t know it had happened.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cDo we think there\u2019s any chance that \u2026 the secretary of the defense did not know there had been a second strike? So as a country, we\u2019re just going to let people lie to us, to our face?\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n Asked by CNN which comments from Hegseth he was specifically referring to, Paul described a Friday X post<\/a> from the defense secretary. While Hegseth did not explicitly deny in the post that a follow-up strike had occurred, he dismissed the news reports as \u201cfabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting\u201d from the \u201cfake news.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Hegseth has appeared<\/a> to shift primary responsibility for the US strikes on alleged drug boats to Admiral Mitch Bradley, but said in a Monday X post that he stands by Bradley and the \u201ccombat decisions he has made\u201d in regard to the strikes.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Pentagon pointed to both X posts in response to a CNN request for comment.\n <\/p>\n

\n Hegseth\u2019s role in the so-called double-tap strike has received intense scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and military legal experts who have raised concerns over the legality of the strike and the potential of war crimes.\n <\/p>\n

\n President Donald Trump said Tuesday<\/a> neither he nor Hegseth knew about the follow-up strike. And Hegseth said that strikes<\/a> on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean have \u201conly just begun.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Paul, who has cosponsored resolutions to block unauthorized military action in the Caribbean and in Venezuela, added that it seemed like Hegseth is trying to \u201cpin the blame\u201d on Bradley.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI don\u2019t like to see political figures pointing their finger at military figures. Military people take orders. And there\u2019s a question about, you know, when they don\u2019t take orders, whether things are legal or not legal, but in this sense, it looks to me like they\u2019re trying to pin the blame on somebody else and not them,\u201d Paul said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal agreed. \u201cUltimately, Hegseth trying to shift the blame and make Admiral Bradley the fall guy ought to be reason to ask for his resignation or fire him. He should be gone,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly also expressed concern about the White House placing the blame on Bradley. \u201cHow about that for leadership?\u201d said Kelly. \u201cThrow the people underneath you under the bus.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n GOP Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN that whoever was responsible for ordering the second boat strike needs to be held accountable.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to have served in the military to understand that that was a violation of ethical, moral and legal code. And so, if the facts play out the way they\u2019re currently being reported, then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington,\u201d he said. \u201cWhoever that is, is the person who made the decision and we can be connived that it was isolated to that one person. Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Kelly said Bradley has a \u201cstellar reputation\u201d and argued any decision to carry out a \u201cdouble-tap\u201d strike stems from a culture fostered by Trump and Hegseth.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is the kind of thing that happens when you have a president who says we\u2019re going to go out and kill people. It\u2019s not what presidents normally say,\u201d said Kelly. \u201cAnd when you have an unqualified secretary of defense, a guy who has basically zero qualifications for this job that runs around on a stage you know, talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people, and we\u2019re going to hunt and kill people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey have set the environment for stuff like this to happen,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN previously reported<\/a> that, before the operation, Hegseth ordered the military to ensure the strike killed everyone on board, but it\u2019s not clear whether he knew there were survivors before the second strike, according to a source.\n <\/p>\n

\n Paul would not say if he has confidence in Hegseth\u2019s ability to serve as defense secretary, instead replying that he is \u201cvery concerned.\u201d He also noted that he believes the administration is purposefully not including him in briefings due to his opposition to their actions.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019ve been offered no briefings, and I think that\u2019s purposeful, because I\u2019ve been skeptical of this. So, no briefings have been offered to me. We are asking for them. We are supportive of the Armed Services Committee looking into this. But this has been very selective in briefings that have been given to people, primarily given to people who are already apologists for the administration,\u201d said Paul.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Tuesday, Paul and a group of Democratic senators said in a joint statement that if the US military strikes Venezuela, they will call up a War Powers resolution to block the use of US forces in hostilities against the country.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Kentucky Republican added that he thinks more Republicans are \u201ccoming around to being concerned,\u201d with the Pentagon\u2019s actions in the Caribbean, adding that the follow up strike is \u201cwhat unifies people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen you have Lindsey Graham, the Wall Street Journal and other Republicans saying that the second strike, bombing people who are shipwrecked or clinging to wreckage, that that would be illegal, in the words of people who are very supportive of what the president is doing, that\u2019s a whole new scenario,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I think we\u2019ve entered into uncharted territory here. I think there\u2019s a broad consensus that it\u2019s illegal to kill people who are clinging to wreckage.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that lawmakers need more information.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe have to make a judgment whether this operation is legal \u2013 not just the individual strikes, but the whole operation. And then of course the attention is now being focused on one of the strikes and the possibility of criminal activity,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Dana Bash.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m very suspicious that they\u2019ve never shared that tape with us and that they are consciously trying to cover up what took place,\u201d he added Tuesday on \u201cInside Politics.\u201d \u201cI think there are serious issues of legality.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Paul also said that he received a letter back from the Coast Guard on Tuesday saying that 21% of boarded boats don\u2019t have drugs on them, and he argued that it undercuts the motivation for striking the boats at all. Paul later posted the full letter<\/a> from the Coast Guard on X.\n <\/p>\n

\n GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno disagreed, arguing that the administration is well within their rights to order a follow-up strike. \u201cThis is wartime,\u201d he said, though there has been no declaration of war or authorization for use of military force.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think what happened is this is framed as some sort of street drug dealer. These are people that are purposely and intentionally sending poison to kill American citizens, and finally, we\u2019re fighting back,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of either lying in his public response…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-321380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}