(Caylo Seals / Getty Images)
Key Takeaways
Congress threatens Pentagon travel funds to force release of unedited strike video.
Hegseth rejects “kill everybody” narrative as politically motivated.
Republicans say video clears Pentagon, Democrats claim the opposite.
This is what Congress looks like when it’s less interested in national security and more obsessed with running PR stunts against Pete Hegseth. Democrats didn’t get the dramatic war-crime moment they hoped for, so now they’re holding the Pentagon’s travel budget hostage until Hegseth coughs up full video they can selectively leak and weaponize. Admiral Bradley already told Congress HE ordered the second strike—yet the media keeps insisting Hegseth personally screamed “kill everyone” like a cartoon villain. That’s the narrative they want, evidence be damned.
Meanwhile Trump has already said he’s fine releasing footage, and Republicans who actually watched it said it confirmed exactly what the Pentagon claimed. But Democrats smell blood and midterm headlines, so here we are—manufacturing scandal over narco-terrorists who were literally trying to flip their drug boat back over to keep fighting.
The only thing Democrats seem eager to defend these days is cartel morale.
From Western Journal:
Congress is using the Pentagon’s travel budget as leverage to force Secretary of War Pete Hegseth into giving lawmakers unedited video of strikes that destroyed narco terrorist boats.
A Sept. 2 incident has become controversial after a report in The Washington Post alleged Hegseth gave an order to kill everyone aboard, even after it was clear that some individuals survived the first strike. However, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley on Thursday reportedly told members of Congress during a closed-door briefing the second strike was justified and that he, not Hegseth, authorized it.
Language tucked into the Department of War’s budget bill would withhold a quarter of the Pentagon’s travel budget unless Hegseth does as lawmakers want, according to Politico.
The bill, which Politico said is expected to be approved as written, would require the unedited videos to be shared with members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Although Bradley and Joint Chiefs Chair Dan Caine last week showed top lawmakers the unedited video of the Sept. 2 incident, there was no consensus on what it showed. Many Republicans said it backed up what the Pentagon said; Democrats said it did not.
The budget language also demands that all overdue reports be delivered to Congress, including lessons learned from the Ukraine war, before the travel funds will be released.
Trump has said he has no problem with releasing the videos, but on Saturday, Hegseth was less supportive of the idea.
“We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” Hegseth said of potentially releasing the video, according to The New York Times.
Hegseth he wanted to protect the “sources and methods” by which the video was taken amid an “ongoing operation” in the Caribbean.
Hegseth on Saturday again denied the Post’s allegations
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