Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United
States. The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him. I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Nov 28, 2025, 12:37 PM
********************************
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being “Politically Correct,” and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration. The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc…
Nov 27, 2025, 9:27 PM
***************************
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
…Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!
Nov 27, 2025, 9:26 PM
Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down ...
Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Sat Nov 29, 2025 2:28 am
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Mon Dec 01, 2025 9:20 pm
He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s. After the National Guard shooting, the US needs to reckon with how its legacy of global violence inevitably comes home. Stephen Miller wants to do anything but.
by Spencer Ackerman
zeteo
Nov 28, 2025
https://zeteo.com/p/national-guard-shoo ... ump-miller
[x]
Brigadier General Leland D. Blanchard II looks towards pictures of two National Guard members who were shot in Washington, DC, along with a picture of a suspect, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, at a press conference on Nov. 27, 2025. Nathan Howard/Reuters
Stephen Miller is not letting the nativist opportunity posed by the murder of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and the shooting of Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe allegedly by an Afghan refugee go to waste. “At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands,” the White House’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser tweeted in response to the conservative Wall Street Journal editorializing against the collective punishment of Afghans.
Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s nationwide raids and roundups of perceived migrants, is at the vanguard of the Trump administration’s response to this week’s shocking shootings of the West Virginia National Guardsmen, who were deployed to DC in support of Miller’s crackdown. President Donald Trump is pledging to “pause” all migration from so-called “Third World” countries; to deport not merely “illegal” but “disruptive populations”; and to “denaturalize migrants” who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
But the most sobering fact about Wednesday’s slayings is that the alleged killer, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was all too compatible with Western Civilization.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued an extraordinary statement revealing that the 29-year-old Lakanwal was a “member of a partner force in Kandahar.” While a knowledgeable source with deep experience in Afghanistan cautions that the US sponsored a variety of proxy forces in southern Afghanistan, much additional reporting has identified Lakanwal as a member of the Zero Units, death squads used by the CIA during the US’s longest overseas war.
In other words, contrary to Miller and Trump, Lakanwal’s shooting spree is not the result of importing Afghan culture to America. While much will surely be revealed in Lakanwal’s upcoming trial, it looks more like the result of importing American culture to Afghanistan. The realities of blowback – the violence America experiences as the unintended consequences of the violence of US foreign policy – are what the US needs to examine in the wake of this horrifying murder if it expects to prevent the next one.
Instead, in a manner befitting both nativism and a broader elite political culture that wishes to whitewash and then forget the imperial violence it embraces, the Trump administration is scapegoating the relatively few Afghans admitted to the US after the war’s final 2021 failure. Overwhelmingly, that population served the war effort, and now finds itself part of the long lineage of US allies to be discarded when it suits imperial prerogatives. Or, as the novelist Dur e Aziz Amna messaged me after seeing Miller’s “broken homeland” post, “Bitch, who broke the homeland!!?”
Again, it is important to remember that we do not yet have the full story of Lakanwal and his road to the Farragut West Metro stop, where he allegedly opened fire. FBI Director Kash Patel vowed not to “stop until we interview anyone and everyone associated with the subject, the house and every piece of his life.” But the New York Times reported that Lakanwal’s brother was the deputy commander of the Kandahar-based Zero Unit, known as 03. The first door the FBI should knock on is at CIA Headquarters. The second belongs to Rahmatullah Nabil, the former Afghan intelligence chief who oversaw the units.
Much of the CIA’s Afghan workforce remains shrouded in official secrecy. But what is known about them is their wanton brutality, licensed and materially supported by the United States. A 2019 Human Rights Watch report detailed “extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war” committed by the Zero Units. The single best piece of American journalism on them, Lynzy Billing’s 2022 expose for ProPublica, is a nonstop document of atrocity. “Far too often,” Billing wrote, “I found the Zero Unit soldiers acted on flawed intelligence and mowed down men, women and children, some as young as 2, who had no discernible connection to terrorist groups.”
The CIA, in its typical rejection of any form of accountability, calls such reporting a calumny and Taliban propaganda. It is understandable why the CIA does so. Lakanwal joined Langley’s proxies “nine years” before the 2021 fall of the US-backed government in Kabul, according to the BBC, which cited “a former military commander who served alongside” him. If true, Lakanwal was around 15 years old when the CIA put a gun in his hand. That would validate the longstanding rumor that the agency used child soldiers in Afghanistan.
There is bound to be immense psychological damage when making someone, particularly a teenager, into a member of a death squad. A childhood friend interviewed by the New York Times reflected that Lakanwal “would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure.” Shortly before the fall of Kabul, Lakanwal had been smoking marijuana – a common habit amongst US-backed Afghan soldiers – and divorced his wife days into their marriage. “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind,” the friend told the paper.
Imperial violence is often shaped by the violence the US inflicts on its own subordinate populations, and comes home just as often. Last month in Chicago, a Customs and Border Protection-led team of federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter in the middle of the night to assault an apartment complex and round up its tenants on the pretext that some of them belonged to a Venezuelan gang. Barnett Rubin, a longtime US adviser on the Afghanistan War and one of the Americans most knowledgeable about Afghanistan, immediately identified the assault as a night raid, a characteristic US special-operations tactic during the war – and one that often involved the US military and the CIA’s Afghan proxies.
It is characteristic of the US’s attitude toward its foreign misadventures to shift the blame for its failures onto the local population, and especially onto the local forces it sponsors. The US did so in Vietnam, it did so in Iraq, it did so in Afghanistan – think about how many indignant stories you have read about US-sponsored units that would not fight for Washington’s proxy governments – and it will do so in the future. It shifts this blame so it can continue its extractive, destabilizing imperial policies; preserve the myth of its innocence; and, in the ideological variant of American Exceptionalism that Miller subscribes to, treat the foreigners who must endure US occupation as inferior and unworthy of alleged American beneficence.
It avoids at all costs asking what it owes to the people whose doors the Americans kick in, whose relatives they kill in high-profile airstrikes, and whose children they recruit. In its neglect, it puts its own, now including Beckstrom and Wolfe, at similar risk – and, in this case, exploits one’s death and the other’s wounds to advance the mass deportation of precisely the people who arrived in America once America spent an entire generation making their country too dangerous for them to remain.
Spencer Ackerman is a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning reporter and the author of Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He is also the author of the FOREVER WARS newsletter on Ghost.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
by Spencer Ackerman
zeteo
Nov 28, 2025
https://zeteo.com/p/national-guard-shoo ... ump-miller
[x]
Brigadier General Leland D. Blanchard II looks towards pictures of two National Guard members who were shot in Washington, DC, along with a picture of a suspect, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, at a press conference on Nov. 27, 2025. Nathan Howard/Reuters
Stephen Miller is not letting the nativist opportunity posed by the murder of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and the shooting of Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe allegedly by an Afghan refugee go to waste. “At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands,” the White House’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser tweeted in response to the conservative Wall Street Journal editorializing against the collective punishment of Afghans.
Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s nationwide raids and roundups of perceived migrants, is at the vanguard of the Trump administration’s response to this week’s shocking shootings of the West Virginia National Guardsmen, who were deployed to DC in support of Miller’s crackdown. President Donald Trump is pledging to “pause” all migration from so-called “Third World” countries; to deport not merely “illegal” but “disruptive populations”; and to “denaturalize migrants” who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
But the most sobering fact about Wednesday’s slayings is that the alleged killer, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was all too compatible with Western Civilization.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued an extraordinary statement revealing that the 29-year-old Lakanwal was a “member of a partner force in Kandahar.” While a knowledgeable source with deep experience in Afghanistan cautions that the US sponsored a variety of proxy forces in southern Afghanistan, much additional reporting has identified Lakanwal as a member of the Zero Units, death squads used by the CIA during the US’s longest overseas war.
In other words, contrary to Miller and Trump, Lakanwal’s shooting spree is not the result of importing Afghan culture to America. While much will surely be revealed in Lakanwal’s upcoming trial, it looks more like the result of importing American culture to Afghanistan. The realities of blowback – the violence America experiences as the unintended consequences of the violence of US foreign policy – are what the US needs to examine in the wake of this horrifying murder if it expects to prevent the next one.
Instead, in a manner befitting both nativism and a broader elite political culture that wishes to whitewash and then forget the imperial violence it embraces, the Trump administration is scapegoating the relatively few Afghans admitted to the US after the war’s final 2021 failure. Overwhelmingly, that population served the war effort, and now finds itself part of the long lineage of US allies to be discarded when it suits imperial prerogatives. Or, as the novelist Dur e Aziz Amna messaged me after seeing Miller’s “broken homeland” post, “Bitch, who broke the homeland!!?”
Again, it is important to remember that we do not yet have the full story of Lakanwal and his road to the Farragut West Metro stop, where he allegedly opened fire. FBI Director Kash Patel vowed not to “stop until we interview anyone and everyone associated with the subject, the house and every piece of his life.” But the New York Times reported that Lakanwal’s brother was the deputy commander of the Kandahar-based Zero Unit, known as 03. The first door the FBI should knock on is at CIA Headquarters. The second belongs to Rahmatullah Nabil, the former Afghan intelligence chief who oversaw the units.
Much of the CIA’s Afghan workforce remains shrouded in official secrecy. But what is known about them is their wanton brutality, licensed and materially supported by the United States. A 2019 Human Rights Watch report detailed “extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law, or the laws of war” committed by the Zero Units. The single best piece of American journalism on them, Lynzy Billing’s 2022 expose for ProPublica, is a nonstop document of atrocity. “Far too often,” Billing wrote, “I found the Zero Unit soldiers acted on flawed intelligence and mowed down men, women and children, some as young as 2, who had no discernible connection to terrorist groups.”
The CIA, in its typical rejection of any form of accountability, calls such reporting a calumny and Taliban propaganda. It is understandable why the CIA does so. Lakanwal joined Langley’s proxies “nine years” before the 2021 fall of the US-backed government in Kabul, according to the BBC, which cited “a former military commander who served alongside” him. If true, Lakanwal was around 15 years old when the CIA put a gun in his hand. That would validate the longstanding rumor that the agency used child soldiers in Afghanistan.
There is bound to be immense psychological damage when making someone, particularly a teenager, into a member of a death squad. A childhood friend interviewed by the New York Times reflected that Lakanwal “would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure.” Shortly before the fall of Kabul, Lakanwal had been smoking marijuana – a common habit amongst US-backed Afghan soldiers – and divorced his wife days into their marriage. “When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind,” the friend told the paper.
Imperial violence is often shaped by the violence the US inflicts on its own subordinate populations, and comes home just as often. Last month in Chicago, a Customs and Border Protection-led team of federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter in the middle of the night to assault an apartment complex and round up its tenants on the pretext that some of them belonged to a Venezuelan gang. Barnett Rubin, a longtime US adviser on the Afghanistan War and one of the Americans most knowledgeable about Afghanistan, immediately identified the assault as a night raid, a characteristic US special-operations tactic during the war – and one that often involved the US military and the CIA’s Afghan proxies.
It is characteristic of the US’s attitude toward its foreign misadventures to shift the blame for its failures onto the local population, and especially onto the local forces it sponsors. The US did so in Vietnam, it did so in Iraq, it did so in Afghanistan – think about how many indignant stories you have read about US-sponsored units that would not fight for Washington’s proxy governments – and it will do so in the future. It shifts this blame so it can continue its extractive, destabilizing imperial policies; preserve the myth of its innocence; and, in the ideological variant of American Exceptionalism that Miller subscribes to, treat the foreigners who must endure US occupation as inferior and unworthy of alleged American beneficence.
It avoids at all costs asking what it owes to the people whose doors the Americans kick in, whose relatives they kill in high-profile airstrikes, and whose children they recruit. In its neglect, it puts its own, now including Beckstrom and Wolfe, at similar risk – and, in this case, exploits one’s death and the other’s wounds to advance the mass deportation of precisely the people who arrived in America once America spent an entire generation making their country too dangerous for them to remain.
Spencer Ackerman is a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning reporter and the author of Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He is also the author of the FOREVER WARS newsletter on Ghost.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Mon Dec 01, 2025 10:33 pm
The Legacy of The War on Terror Reaches South America. While Trump openly manufactures a war in Venezuela, Israel never stops attacking the Palestinians
by Spencer Ackerman
Edited by Sam Thielman
20 Oct 2025
https://www.forever-wars.com/the-legacy ... h-america/
[x]
U.S. Coast Guard troops aboard a civilian vessel off Acosta, Venezuela in June. Via the Coast Guard
I'D BEEN TRYING to find the words for the rapidly coalescing U.S. assault on Venezuela. President Trump has ordered the CIA to return to its core competency: overthrowing left-wing governments in the Western Hemisphere. Barely an afterthought, and certainly not an impediment, are innocent men like Chad Joseph, whose families are left to petition a disinterested administration for the slightest proof of their slain relative's claimed threat to U.S. national security. The administration has been openly manufacturing a war in a manner so blatant as to recall the Iraq buildup.
Last week, the U.S. Navy even briefly took prisoners. Their brief detention followed the sixth of the U.S.' blatantly illegal lethal strikes on boats full of people whom the Trump administration are attempting to portray as drug smugglers—as if that would justify this naked aggression—connected through manipulated intelligence to Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro. The Navy released its prisoners on Saturday, but during the captives’ time aboard ship, I couldn't help but think of a decade ago, when the U.S.S. Boxer spent weeks as a sea-based detention center for a man named Ahmed Abdelkadir Warsame, all beyond the reach of international law, or what remains of it.
The U.S. military is using Puerto Rico as a staging ground for… we currently know not what. What we do know is that the administration has ordered a substantial sea-air asset buildup, containing not only the expected destroyers but also heavy bombers, drones, F-35s, AC-130 gunship aircraft typically seen (along with A-10s) providing close air support to infantry, and even the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment. I'm struggling to think of a comparably large Western Hemisphere buildup during the past 25 years. Yet the intermittent and bloodless coverage the buildup has received suggests to me that the typical U.S. media indifference to Puerto Rico is in effect.
This entire coercive enterprise might be the beneficiary of several intersecting normalizations. The abrupt and unexplained departure of combatant commander Adm. Alvin Holsey during a military buildup like this would have occasioned sustained coverage in another era. Now it feels already forgotten. After a failed attempt earlier this month to stop the strikes—"unless authorized," in Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)'s ominous words—Congressional Democrats (and Rand Paul) are left lamenting process concerns and stonewalled requests for information instead of moving to block funding for the buildup. Adopting a stance of unqualified opposition seems out of the question. All Secretary Pete Hegseth has to say is that these fishermen are "the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere" and it seems like the opposition mumbles through its objections, even without anyone, as far as I can tell, believing what the administration says.
All that is to say I felt relieved to read Daniel Larison using words that I hadn't quite been able to find. Larison, a genuine antiwar conservative, wrote today about Trump training his ire on the Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a rare Colombian left-winger achieving state power:
Every word here could apply to the War on Terror. After nearly 25 years of the War on Terror, it should not be remotely surprising that an administration would reach for its authorizations and rhetoric. They work too well not to export. It doesn't ultimately matter that whatever the U.S. unleashes upon Venezuela, or now potentially Colombia, will not have a formal connection to the War on Terror. Its template is all the connection necessary, particularly if elite opposition reverts to type and rolls over. As for the GOP, no wonder Larison writes that "Perhaps the last time there was this much mindless support in the party for a Republican president’s aggressive foreign policy was in the darkest days of the Bush era."
Did we ever truly leave those days? If so, we never dismantled the structures built during that era, meaning that returning to them will always be an option.
PERHAPS THIS is a tangent, but seeing the heritage of the War on Terror in South America reminds me of the heritage of the 1980s Dirty Wars on the War on Terror. You can learn a lot of that from Empire's Workshop by the esteemed Greg Grandin; or, for that matter, the memoir Black Ops, penned by the Dirty Wars and War on Terror veteran CIA operator Ric Prado. Similarly, I have a ton of respect for the Pulitzer-winning journalist Tim Weiner—an OG who blurbed REIGN—and one of the cleverest things he does in his recent book The Mission is to connect architects of the CIA's War on Terror like Counterterrorism Center chief Jose Rodriguez to a pre-9/11 shootdown and coverup of a plane in Peru carrying not drugs but American missionaries. Rodriguez would later say that the heated internal investigation taught him "valuable lessons, which I used in the years following 9/11 to try to protect the people who worked for me." By, for example, destroying the evidence.
IF THERE WAS EVER a ceasefire, no one told Israel. Israel has killed at least 80 Palestinians since the announcement of last week's ceasefire, validating UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese's saw "You Cease, I Fire." When Trump claims, as he did yesterday, that the ceasefire is holding, he is permitting Israel to continue. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner might signal their dissatisfaction with Israel, but it means as little as when the Biden administration would do the same, particularly when the State Department is preemptively blaming Hamas for violating the ceasefire. Only now Hamas, having delivered its final living hostages in accordance with Witkoff and Kushner's interventions, has no more leverage over the Israelis.
Meanwhile, don't miss FOREVER WARS friend Jasper Nathaniel's harrowing eyewitness/first-hand account of settler violence in the West Bank. The IDF led Nathaniel into an ambush sprung by settlers to assault Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest.
SOME PALESTINIAN HOSTAGES returned to Gaza with accounts of sexual torture the Israelis inflicted upon them. Given the subject of my next book, this has concentrated my imagination. Wartime prisons where impunity reigns tend toward sexual violence. That should also guide our understanding of the sexual torture ICE is inflicting upon queer and trans people in its cages.
NOT THAT IT WOULD BE OK if ICE "only" captured undocumented migrants, but ProPublica tallies at least 170 U.S. citizens who have been detained by ICE.
I HAVEN’T HAD time to read this, to be honest, but I'm glad The New Yorker called attention to the extended ICE detention of Leqaa Kordia. I hope they called attention to the flagrant role in that detention played by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the billionaire heiress who appears to desire staying on under Zohran Mamdani.
"CHAT AND I are really close lately,” is a cursed sentence about ChatGPT spoken by Army Maj. Gen. William "Hank" Taylor, the acting commander of U.S. Forces-Korea. DefenseScoop reports that Taylor is "personally leaning on existing and emerging AI capabilities to help influence and shape how he operates as a leader." At least there isn't any international flashpoint on the Korean peninsula where self-entrancement by a U.S. military commander could have tragic repercussions.
JOHN BOLTON NEVER THOUGHT the leopards of the Espionage Act would eat his face when he called for Edward Snowden to "swing from a tall oak tree." Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent had what I considered a powerful and well-calibrated response to Bolton's bullshit indictment last week:
WHO KNEW FINISHING a book was hard? While asking for your indulgence, this is very likely the final FOREVER WARS edition of October. [All this means is that Spencer won’t tell me he’s writing for you until he messages me to say he's filed.—Sam] I am on the cusp of completing my manuscript for my second book. But I'm not there, and if I'm going to reach my goal of wrapping this one by Halloween—and then using the remainder of my pre-deadline time for revisions—I need to step away from this newsletter. I know I always say this and then end up writing more. I may very well do that this time. But rather than making scheduling declarations that I inevitably break, let's say that until THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN is fully drafted, FOREVER WARS will publish on an Augustinian schedule, aiming for abstinence even if we won't truly reach it. [You people are the pear tree in this metaphor.—Sam] Thank you for your continued support.
by Spencer Ackerman
Edited by Sam Thielman
20 Oct 2025
https://www.forever-wars.com/the-legacy ... h-america/
[x]
U.S. Coast Guard troops aboard a civilian vessel off Acosta, Venezuela in June. Via the Coast Guard
I'D BEEN TRYING to find the words for the rapidly coalescing U.S. assault on Venezuela. President Trump has ordered the CIA to return to its core competency: overthrowing left-wing governments in the Western Hemisphere. Barely an afterthought, and certainly not an impediment, are innocent men like Chad Joseph, whose families are left to petition a disinterested administration for the slightest proof of their slain relative's claimed threat to U.S. national security. The administration has been openly manufacturing a war in a manner so blatant as to recall the Iraq buildup.
Last week, the U.S. Navy even briefly took prisoners. Their brief detention followed the sixth of the U.S.' blatantly illegal lethal strikes on boats full of people whom the Trump administration are attempting to portray as drug smugglers—as if that would justify this naked aggression—connected through manipulated intelligence to Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro. The Navy released its prisoners on Saturday, but during the captives’ time aboard ship, I couldn't help but think of a decade ago, when the U.S.S. Boxer spent weeks as a sea-based detention center for a man named Ahmed Abdelkadir Warsame, all beyond the reach of international law, or what remains of it.
The U.S. military is using Puerto Rico as a staging ground for… we currently know not what. What we do know is that the administration has ordered a substantial sea-air asset buildup, containing not only the expected destroyers but also heavy bombers, drones, F-35s, AC-130 gunship aircraft typically seen (along with A-10s) providing close air support to infantry, and even the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment. I'm struggling to think of a comparably large Western Hemisphere buildup during the past 25 years. Yet the intermittent and bloodless coverage the buildup has received suggests to me that the typical U.S. media indifference to Puerto Rico is in effect.
This entire coercive enterprise might be the beneficiary of several intersecting normalizations. The abrupt and unexplained departure of combatant commander Adm. Alvin Holsey during a military buildup like this would have occasioned sustained coverage in another era. Now it feels already forgotten. After a failed attempt earlier this month to stop the strikes—"unless authorized," in Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)'s ominous words—Congressional Democrats (and Rand Paul) are left lamenting process concerns and stonewalled requests for information instead of moving to block funding for the buildup. Adopting a stance of unqualified opposition seems out of the question. All Secretary Pete Hegseth has to say is that these fishermen are "the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere" and it seems like the opposition mumbles through its objections, even without anyone, as far as I can tell, believing what the administration says.
All that is to say I felt relieved to read Daniel Larison using words that I hadn't quite been able to find. Larison, a genuine antiwar conservative, wrote today about Trump training his ire on the Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a rare Colombian left-winger achieving state power:
The so-called conflict that the president has invented out of thin air is not restricted to any particular place, nor does it focus on any one particular group. As far as the administration is concerned, they can attack anyone they choose no matter where they are. The administration recognizes no limits on its actions.
Every word here could apply to the War on Terror. After nearly 25 years of the War on Terror, it should not be remotely surprising that an administration would reach for its authorizations and rhetoric. They work too well not to export. It doesn't ultimately matter that whatever the U.S. unleashes upon Venezuela, or now potentially Colombia, will not have a formal connection to the War on Terror. Its template is all the connection necessary, particularly if elite opposition reverts to type and rolls over. As for the GOP, no wonder Larison writes that "Perhaps the last time there was this much mindless support in the party for a Republican president’s aggressive foreign policy was in the darkest days of the Bush era."
Did we ever truly leave those days? If so, we never dismantled the structures built during that era, meaning that returning to them will always be an option.
PERHAPS THIS is a tangent, but seeing the heritage of the War on Terror in South America reminds me of the heritage of the 1980s Dirty Wars on the War on Terror. You can learn a lot of that from Empire's Workshop by the esteemed Greg Grandin; or, for that matter, the memoir Black Ops, penned by the Dirty Wars and War on Terror veteran CIA operator Ric Prado. Similarly, I have a ton of respect for the Pulitzer-winning journalist Tim Weiner—an OG who blurbed REIGN—and one of the cleverest things he does in his recent book The Mission is to connect architects of the CIA's War on Terror like Counterterrorism Center chief Jose Rodriguez to a pre-9/11 shootdown and coverup of a plane in Peru carrying not drugs but American missionaries. Rodriguez would later say that the heated internal investigation taught him "valuable lessons, which I used in the years following 9/11 to try to protect the people who worked for me." By, for example, destroying the evidence.
IF THERE WAS EVER a ceasefire, no one told Israel. Israel has killed at least 80 Palestinians since the announcement of last week's ceasefire, validating UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese's saw "You Cease, I Fire." When Trump claims, as he did yesterday, that the ceasefire is holding, he is permitting Israel to continue. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner might signal their dissatisfaction with Israel, but it means as little as when the Biden administration would do the same, particularly when the State Department is preemptively blaming Hamas for violating the ceasefire. Only now Hamas, having delivered its final living hostages in accordance with Witkoff and Kushner's interventions, has no more leverage over the Israelis.
Meanwhile, don't miss FOREVER WARS friend Jasper Nathaniel's harrowing eyewitness/first-hand account of settler violence in the West Bank. The IDF led Nathaniel into an ambush sprung by settlers to assault Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest.
SOME PALESTINIAN HOSTAGES returned to Gaza with accounts of sexual torture the Israelis inflicted upon them. Given the subject of my next book, this has concentrated my imagination. Wartime prisons where impunity reigns tend toward sexual violence. That should also guide our understanding of the sexual torture ICE is inflicting upon queer and trans people in its cages.
NOT THAT IT WOULD BE OK if ICE "only" captured undocumented migrants, but ProPublica tallies at least 170 U.S. citizens who have been detained by ICE.
I HAVEN’T HAD time to read this, to be honest, but I'm glad The New Yorker called attention to the extended ICE detention of Leqaa Kordia. I hope they called attention to the flagrant role in that detention played by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the billionaire heiress who appears to desire staying on under Zohran Mamdani.
"CHAT AND I are really close lately,” is a cursed sentence about ChatGPT spoken by Army Maj. Gen. William "Hank" Taylor, the acting commander of U.S. Forces-Korea. DefenseScoop reports that Taylor is "personally leaning on existing and emerging AI capabilities to help influence and shape how he operates as a leader." At least there isn't any international flashpoint on the Korean peninsula where self-entrancement by a U.S. military commander could have tragic repercussions.
JOHN BOLTON NEVER THOUGHT the leopards of the Espionage Act would eat his face when he called for Edward Snowden to "swing from a tall oak tree." Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent had what I considered a powerful and well-calibrated response to Bolton's bullshit indictment last week:
John Bolton is an unrepentant war criminal and one of most odious national security hawks in Washington. As part of his antipathy for press freedom, whistleblowers, and anyone who challenges the national security state, he called for both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden to be executed for exposing abuses of power by our government. Similarly, he called for journalist Julian Assange to get “at least 176 years in jail” for publishing truthful information about U.S. war crimes. Now, Bolton, like Manning, Snowden, and Assange has been indicted under the Espionage Act.
We at Defending Rights & Dissent were one of the leading voices in Washington in support of Manning, Snowden, and Assange. And we remain the leading voice on reforming the Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to prosecute courageous whistleblowers and journalists.
As part of our reform proposal, we advocated the Espionage Act be amended to require the government to prove a defendant intended to harm the national security of the US. Nothing in the indictment of Bolton indicates the government believes Bolton had that level of intent. As a result, we do not believe Bolton should be indicted under the Espionage Act. This is the same position we took regarding Donald Trump, who himself has been responsible for abusing the Espionage Act to silence journalists and whistleblowers.
The Espionage Act is an overly broad, archaic law. As a result, it is ripe for selective, politically motivated enforcement. It is for these reasons that Bolton championed it as a tool for political persecutions against whistleblowers and journalists. And it is for this reason the Trump administration has chosen it as a tool for their petty retaliation against a national security hawk who shares much of their views on the use of the Espionage Act.
Enough is enough. It is well past time to reform the Espionage Act once and for all.
WHO KNEW FINISHING a book was hard? While asking for your indulgence, this is very likely the final FOREVER WARS edition of October. [All this means is that Spencer won’t tell me he’s writing for you until he messages me to say he's filed.—Sam] I am on the cusp of completing my manuscript for my second book. But I'm not there, and if I'm going to reach my goal of wrapping this one by Halloween—and then using the remainder of my pre-deadline time for revisions—I need to step away from this newsletter. I know I always say this and then end up writing more. I may very well do that this time. But rather than making scheduling declarations that I inevitably break, let's say that until THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN is fully drafted, FOREVER WARS will publish on an Augustinian schedule, aiming for abstinence even if we won't truly reach it. [You people are the pear tree in this metaphor.—Sam] Thank you for your continued support.
WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! Bulletproof is also selling signed copies of my IRON MAN run with Julius Ohta, so if you want those, buy them from Flatbush's finest! IRON MAN VOL. 1: THE STARK-ROXXON WAR, the first five issues, is now collected in trade paperback! Signed copies of that are at Bulletproof, too!
No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
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Trump Meddles in Honduran Election & Vows to Pardon Ex-President Jailed in U.S. for Drug Trafficking
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 01, 2025
Lhttps://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1 ... transcript
President Trump has announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. In 2024, Hernández was convicted in New York of drug trafficking and weapons charges. “The evidence from the Southern District of New York was overwhelming,” says Dana Frank, professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a longtime observer of Honduran politics.
Trump’s announcement came on Friday, and he also threatened to cut off funding if Hondurans did not elect his chosen conservative candidate as they went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president. “He’s almost threatening Honduras that if we don’t do what he is demanding … he will wreak vengeance against Honduras,” says Rodolfo Pastor, former secretary of the presidency under Xiomara Castro in Honduras.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
President Trump has announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Last year, Hernández was convicted in New York of drug trafficking and weapons charges. He once bragged, quote, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses,” unquote. A trial prosecutor showed how Hernández ran Honduras as a narco-state from 2014 until 2022, accepting millions of dollars in bribes from cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection, including deploying the Honduran National Police to safeguard cocaine loads as they were transported through Honduras. One unnamed Drug Enforcement Administration agent who worked on the case described Trump’s move as, quote, “lunacy.”
Trump’s announcement came on Friday, two days before Hondurans went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president. Ahead of the vote, Trump also endorsed the conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa. He’s a member of the right-wing National Party, the same party as Juan Orlando Hernández. Asfura has a slim lead in early election results.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, “If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive. If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.” Trump continued, “Additionally, I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” unquote.
This all comes as the Trump administration has been bombing drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and has called for the closing of all airspace over Venezuela, saying that Venezuela is involved with drug trafficking.
For more on the possible pardon and the Honduran elections, we’re joined by two guests. Dana Frank is professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, author of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup. She attended the trial of Juan Orlando Hernández last year here in New York. And in Honduras, Rodolfo Pastor is with us, the former secretary of the presidency under the current president, Xiomara Castro. He’s also a LIBRE party candidate for city council in San Pedro Sula, where we’re speaking to him right now.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Rodolfo Pastor in Honduras. Can you talk about the pardoning? Well, it looks like the imminent pardoning of Juan Orlando Hernández, often called JOH, J-O-H, in prison for 45 years for drug trafficking and other charges. The significance of this?
RODOLFO PASTOR: Of course, Amy. Good to be here. Thank you so much for paying attention to Honduras.
We’re waking up to results that are shocking the nation and are, in a degree, at least, a reflection of what President Trump stated a few days before the elections happened. For us, it’s shocking. It’s a blow to Honduran dignity and democracy that a foreign president would, first of all, state publicly what his preferences were. He actually suggested that Hondurans should vote for a specific candidate. And he went even further as to suggest that he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernández.
I think it exposes a very stark contradiction between what he is trying to portray as a justification for what’s happening in the Caribbean Sea and against Venezuela, and at the same time what is going on here in Honduras. I mean, this is, as you very clearly stated, a man who conspired to traffic tons and tons of cocaine and weapons between Honduras and the United States.
He is someone who has been sentenced and convicted for his crimes committed against the United States, but someone who has not been held accountable by Honduran justice. Hondurans are — were, at a first moment, very hopeful that because of what the U.S. had been able to do, what the Southern District of New York and the attorneys there had been able to do, what the court system in the United States had done, was just a partial justice for Honduras, because here in Honduras, there has been no process against Juan Orlando Hernández.
So, for President Trump to be so brazen in intervening, intervening in a sovereign process right before the elections, and also to be so hostile and aggressive in his stance, you know, he’s almost threatening Honduras that if we don’t do what he is demanding that we do, then that he will wreak vengeance against Honduras by sending back someone who’s done so much damage here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who the three candidates are? And again, the significance of Trump saying, if he, Asfura, doesn’t win, that the U.S. would be withholding money to Honduras?
RODOLFO PASTOR: Exactly. He’s basically threatening Honduras if we go ahead and make a sovereign decision, right before our elections, right?
And the three candidates, the main party candidates, were, number one, Rixi Moncada, who is the candidate for the official party and who represents, you know, the continuation of what Xiomara Castro, as president, has started, which is a third alternative party that was born from the resistance to the coup back in 2009 and reshaped the electoral and political party system here in Honduras against two traditional, historic parties that had alternated in power for the last century. So, this was a very progressive, reform-oriented project, that has been, as results are coming in, devastatingly defeated.
On the second place, in second place, it would be Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who represents the National Party, which is the same party, as you also stated, that Juan Orlando comes from, and who is surrounded by most of the people who surrounded Juan Orlando during his government.
And in the third place, it would be Nasralla, who is this TV broadcaster who portrayed himself as an outsider, who represents the very traditional, the most historic political party in Honduras, the Liberal Party, and who was perceived as the most probable winner of the elections until Trump came in with his statement.
So, the result that Tito Asfura is now leading the polls, that LIBRE has been sent to a very distant third place in the results, is in many ways a reflection of this very hostile attitude by President Trump, who basically discarded Nasralla as having any possibilities. He accused him of being a socialist in disguise, of having aided Xiomara, because, of course, at one point, we all joined forces to be able to oust Juan Orlando and his very corrupt, very authoritarian, very repressive regime, and for siding with Tito Asfura.
So, basically, President Trump is saying, “We’re going to double — we’re going to bet down on the National Party on being our closest partner, and we do not care if they have very deep, deep links with organized crime and drug trafficking.” So, when you contrast that against what’s going on in Venezuela, it’s just so much hypocrisy on behalf of Trump.
AMY GOODMAN: Rodolfo Pastor, I remember interviewing your dad, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, when I was in Tegucigalpa, flying in with the former president, the ousted president, Mel Zelaya, and his wife, Xiomara Castro, who is president of Honduras now, when they flew back into Honduras after being ousted in a U.S.-backed coup. That was back in what? 2009. And it was under Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. So, this intervention is not new, and that led to the rise of JOH — right? — of Juan Orlando Hernández.
RODOLFO PASTOR: U.S. intervention is nothing new for Honduras, Amy. You know, we are the emblematic banana republic. We’ve been, in so many ways, shaped by U.S. intervention for the last century in our country. And the coup back in 2009 was a shocking reminder of the fact that we’re still subjected to that kind of empire.
What happened after 2009 as a result of the coup was that Juan Orlando was able to make it to power and not only be there for what the constitution allowed him to be president for, a four-year term, he got reelected against the constitution that prohibits that reelection from happening, and with the backing again of the United States. And so, you know, from the beginning, from the get-go, what we started learning was that if the United States knew and understood the links that Juan Orlando had to drug trafficking, the corruption that he was responsible for here, the crimes that he was responsible for here, and would stand for him to be reelected against the constitutional prohibitions, you know, we knew that there was not a lot to do.
We went to elections in 2013, saw him get elected for the first time. We actually — the LIBRE party won those elections. But, you know, through the fraud and through the advantage that drug money gave Juan Orlando Hernández and public money that had been grafted gave Juan Orlando Hernández, we were defeated. We again went to the polls in 2017. We won again in that occasion with Salvador Nasralla as the candidate of the opposition. And yet we were again defeated through fraud and were repressed when we protested against that fraud.
And it was, finally, in 2021 that Xiomara Castro was finally elected as the first woman president of Honduras, and a transition period had started. It’s been a very, very difficult four years for Xiomara Castro. We were confronted with a country that had been destroyed, in so many ways, by the Juan Orlando administration, which, you know, stole enormous amounts of public money, which stopped investing in health, in education, in energy. And so, we were rebuilding the country.
And for this to come to a halt in such a brutal way, as in such an abrupt way again, and also as a result of U.S. intervention — or, should I say, directly as a Trump intervention, because he did so in a very personal way. He did so on his own social media. And I have not seen, as of yet, Amy, any kind of statement coming out of the State Department or the White House or the Department of Justice, that was such an important ally to bring Juan Orlando to justice.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Dana Frank into this discussion, University of California, Santa Cruz, professor of history emerita. You’ve written a book on Honduras, deeply involved with covering what’s going on there. And I last spoke to you when you were going every day to Juan Orlando Hernández’s trial here in New York. This is astounding. Our top news headline is Venezuela has condemned President Trump’s unilateral declaration that all airspace surrounding Venezuela is closed. Trump said the U.S. is poised to launch attacks inside Venezuela itself, because, he says, the president of Venezuela is a drug trafficker. And here he says he’s going to pardon a leading drug trafficker, someone convicted of drug trafficking. By the way, that’s in addition to his brother, Tony Hernández, who’s serving a life sentence here for drug trafficking. Can you talk about the significance of this moment?
DANA FRANK: Well, you know, obviously, this contradiction between Trump’s — Trump’s criminal acts, attacking people of Venezuela, Colombia and other parts of — and Ecuador in the name of fighting drug trafficking, and that, you know, that is a front for regime change in Venezuela and wanting Venezuelan oil. So, all of this is about his rhetoric and really dangerous military acts against against Venezuela in the name of drug — fighting drug trafficking. And at the same time, he pardons one of the — you know, this famous drug trafficker. And, you know, I want to underscore that the evidence from the Southern District of New York was overwhelming, and Juan Orlando has been — Hernández has been sentenced to 45 years in U.S. federal prison.
But, you know, one of the things that’s missing here is that this is not just contradiction in terms of drug war. It’s an outrageous subversion of rule of law in the United States. For the president to just, you know, tweet out on — tweet out or send out on social media that he’s going to pardon a major former president of another country convicted of drug trafficking and other crimes, and just throw the Justice Department conviction of Juan Orlando and all their years and years of many people working on this case impeccably, and to just throw that out the window, is also terrifying for the people of the United States. So, what he’s doing is a threat to democracy in Honduras, outrageously, but also in the United States.
And, of course, we’re used to saying it’s outrageous, but here he is showing criminal — he’s showing overt sympathy to a criminal and saying, “Well, he” — you know, he’s obviously bonding with a criminal, another president who’s a criminal, and, you know, supporting Asfura, who worked closely with Juan Orlando. And, you know, Asfura, the candidate that Trump supports, worked — has himself been charged with stealing a huge amount of public money that was destined for a light rail system in Tegucigalpa.
And Nasralla, the other right-wing candidate, you know, supports, like Asfura, Bukele and Milei and Trump. You know, it’s this authoritarian-right project that Trump is supporting at the point of a gun here. You know, this is a really terrifying act of intervention into the — as Rodolfo pointed out, into another country. It’s not news, but it’s — to so baldly intervene in an election, it’s like blackmail. If you don’t support Asfura, we’re going to — you know, who knows? The gunboats could be out there attacking Honduras if Rixi wins. And I think people know that in Honduras.
And you want to remember about the question of the immigrants in here, because a third or a quarter of the Honduran economy runs on remittances, and Trump is already attacking Honduran immigrants in really dangerous and terrifying ways, and deportations.
AMY GOODMAN: Dana Frank —
DANA FRANK: So, you know, I think we want to be alarmed about all this.
AMY GOODMAN: What surprised you most? I mean, you’ve covered Honduras for decades. You’ve taught about it. You’ve written about it. When you sat in that trial, the extent of Juan Orlando Hernández’s involvement with drug trafficking, with cocaine into the United States, the man who Trump says he’s about to pardon?
DANA FRANK: Well, you know, it was breathtaking. And the evidence was not just — not just about Juan Orlando, about his minister of security, that the U.S. worked with for many years, about his right-hand man, Ebal Díaz, you know, on and on, all sorts of people in his regime and in his party, with which Asfura, the National Party candidate, is affiliated.
And, you know, the other thing in this that, you know, I think people may not be aware is, you know, not only did Obama and Trump and Biden all support Juan Orlando and look the other way at his many crimes, but his crimes, as Rodolfo underscored, are not just about drug trafficking. He supported the coup when he was on a — when he was on a congressional committee. He led the so-called technical coup that overthrew the Supreme Court in 2012 when he was president of Congress. You know, he turned the military and the troops on peaceful protesters in 2017, when he ran, completely illegally, for reelection.
But, you know, I think something people are not aware of is also that the Biden administration did not want Trump to be — excuse me, did not want Hernández to be extradited. You know, two weeks after Xiomara was inaugurated and Juan Orlando was out of office, you know, the Biden administration finally allowed Juan Orlando Hernández to be extradited to the United States. But the Southern District of New York had been working on that for five years and, in the year before, had been trying to indict Juan Orlando, and Biden would not allow it. So, there’s this long history of U.S. military support for Juan Orlando and for his regime and for his many crimes, and so it’s not like even Biden acted heroically. This is a long history of the U.S. supporting Juan Orlando, and Trump is just one more link in that chain.
But, you know, it is shocking, if you saw the amount of evidence in that trial and how impeccable those prosecutors are. It was extremely impressive to watch their work and how careful they are. And to see that thrown out, you feel that in your gut about what happened to the rule of law in the United States in this, as well as the subversion of the rule of law in Honduras.
And why was Juan Orlando not prosecuted in Honduras? Because the U.S. supported the coup and the post-coup regimes, which destroyed the rule of law, and on many fronts. And that’s why the gangs moved into that gap. And that’s why there’s so much mass poverty and why people have had to flee to the United States.
***
“Kill Everybody”: Could Hegseth Face War Crimes Probe for Killing Survivors of U.S. Boat Strike?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 202
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1/ ... transcript
Democracy Now! speaks with journalist Spencer Ackerman about the Trump administration’s deadly, ongoing attacks on alleged “drug boats” amid reports President Trump is preparing to attack Venezuela, with all airspace surrounding Venezuela now closed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are “turning the military into a criminal operation,” says Ackerman. “This shows the moral degeneracy that the 'war on terror' has left as a legacy in the U.S. military.”
Democracy Now! speaks with journalist Spencer Ackerman about the Trump administration’s deadly, ongoing attacks on alleged “drug boats” amid reports President Trump is preparing to attack Venezuela, with all airspace surrounding Venezuela now closed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are “turning the military into a criminal operation,” says Ackerman. “This shows the moral degeneracy that the 'war on terror' has left as a legacy in the U.S. military.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to historian Dana Frank, we’re joined by Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning reporter, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump and author of the Forever Wars newsletter. You wrote a very interesting piece, Spencer, “The Legacy of The War on Terror Reaches South America.” As we talked to Rodolfo Pastor and Dana Frank, can you talk about this moment, where President Trump has said he’s going to pardon a major convicted drug trafficker, who was supposed to spend the rest of his life in jail, and the bombing of supposed drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and the closing of the airspace over Venezuela, saying he’s about to attack it for drug trafficking, he claims?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, Amy.
I think we’re at a really dangerous point in American history right now. Naturally, I don’t need to tell you or your guests the legacy of the American dirty wars in Latin America of the 1980s on the “war on terror.” But now we’ve got the war on terror reflected in the way that the Trump administration is targeting Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras — I’m sorry, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras and beyond.
We learned over the weekend that the initial strike on these fishermen boats back in September was a double-tap strike ordered by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth himself and executed, with the full approval of the, at the time, Joint Special Operations Command commander, Admiral Mitch Bradley, who is now the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. This was beyond even many of the illegal actions taken of the war on terror. However, this shows the moral degeneracy that the war on terror has left as a legacy in the U.S. military, not just the tactic of a drone strike, but the willingness to kill civilians.
The double-tap strike, the strike means that that’s a second strike on a target already struck, to ensure no survivors. If those were in fact people with whom the United States is at war with, as the Trump administration claims, then the second strike is a blatant violation of the law of armed conflict. You are supposed to leave survivors and not give no quarter. If we are not in fact at war, as for other purposes the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel says when it’s trying to avoid congressional authorization of these sorts of strikes, then this is simply, like every other strike, that has killed now over 80 people, simply a criminal act of murder.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have now Republican-led committees in both the House and the Senate saying they’re going to hold oversight hearings to investigate the Pentagon’s attacks on the boats, particularly that one September 2nd, where two men survived, were hanging onto the boat, and they struck it again. You have President Trump trying to defend Hegseth, who, sources say, was the one who ordered the second strike. And what did he do last night? That’s Secretary of Defense Hegseth. He tweeted out or put on social media a meme of the children’s cartoon character Franklin the Turtle opening fire from a helicopter on boats below. Both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, like Senators Reed and Wicker, calling for an investigation into war crimes here. And this goes together with the senators and — the senator and — Senator Kelly in Arizona and the other congressmembers, former military and intelligence, saying, “Do not follow illegal orders. It doesn’t matter if you are ordered from a superior. You will not be protected if you engage in war crimes.”
SPENCER ACKERMAN: This is a make-or-break moment for American democracy. We need Hegseth impeached. We need Bradley impeached. Obviously, there’s a separate question about Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this. But these men must not be permitted to remain in their jobs. They are turning the military into a criminal operation.
We can have a great historical debate about all of the steps necessary to produce that point, and previous examples of military commanders following illegal orders. But this is unambiguous. This is as bright line a violation as it gets. This turns the military into something that I think even those Republicans on those committees, who have been willing to put up with and have been complicit in so much — as, frankly, have the Democratic members — this is a step too far. But if there is no accountability for this moment, we should expect it to repeat.
AMY GOODMAN: And you also have at this point, in addition to Republicans and Democrats calling for investigation, the top Pentagon lawyers, the military lawyers, who would say to Hegseth, “This is illegal,” he fired them many months ago.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: As well as he fired the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman simply for being Black. This is someone who never should have been anywhere close to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful offices in the world.
I want to — I want to point out a really important forthcoming date. That’s December 12th. Reportedly, December 12th is the final day that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the SOUTHCOM commander who apparently quit to refuse these criminal orders, is out of his job and out of the military. It’s going to be crucial to bring Holsey in front of congressional hearings to talk about exactly what he did ahead of his decision to quit, what Hegseth ordered him to do, what others inside the secretary of defense’s office ordered him to do, that apparently he was not willing to do. This is going to be a crucial moment of investigation, if we are to recapture any semblance of lawfulness over the U.S. military.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, founder of the Forever Wars newsletter, I want to thank you for being with us and ask you to stay with us, because we want to ask you at the end of the show about a piece you just wrote, “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” We want to ask you about that. But I also want to thank Dana Frank for joining us, professor of history emerita at UC Santa Cruz, speaking to us from California, and Rodolfo Pastor, Honduran politician, former secretary of the presidency under President Xiomara Castro, speaking to us from Honduras.
***
Trump Vows to Pause Migration from “Third World Countries” After Fatal National Guard Shooting
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1/ ... c_shooting
We look at President Trump’s call to pause all asylum decisions after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, shooting two National Guard members, killing one. Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their work with the U.S. and the former U.S.-backed government.
Trump has since said that he will “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” Afghan refugees have “been stuck in limbo in the United States, and now they’re being targeted by President Trump’s political stunts,” says Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac. Laila Ayub, executive director of Project ANAR, says the Trump administration is using the tragedy to “scapegoat and collectively punish an entire community.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at President Trump’s call to pause all asylum decisions after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, shooting two National Guard members, killing one. Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly killed West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom — she was 20 years old — and critically wounded Andrew Wolfe, who is 24.
On Thursday, Trump posted on social media, quote, “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions … Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!” Trump wrote.
Lakanwal is charged with first-degree murder, will likely face terrorism charges. He previously worked in a CIA-backed Afghan Army unit known as Zero Unit, often called a “death squad” by human rights groups. He entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their support of the U.S. occupation. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted refugee status last April under the second Trump administration.
Still with us, Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. We’re also joined in Washington, D.C., by Laila Ayub, the executive director of Project ANAR. And in San Diego, California, we’re going to start with Shawn VanDiver, president and board chair of #AfghanEvac.
Shawn VanDiver, this horror that took place in Washington, the shooting of the two National Guardsmen, one of them now dead, an you talk about Trump’s response?
SHAWN VANDIVER: Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on this morning.
Look, there’s just no question: This is an absolute tragedy. No family should have to deal with the epidemic of gun violence in our country. And it’s awful that we’ve lost one of these National Guardsmen, Miss [Beckstrom], and that Mr. — and that another one is fighting for his life in D.C.
President Trump’s reaction, though, and Kash Patel’s reaction and Kristi Noem’s and Marco Rubio’s is — and JD Vance’s, is all over the place. It’s off base. They shouldn’t be ascribing — they shouldn’t be leveraging this absolute tragedy as a political cudgel to do whatever they were going to do anyways with our immigration regarding our wartime allies and other refugees and asylum seekers from around the world. It’s an unconscionable tragedy that they would leverage the awful experience, the awful incident that occurred there.
And these folks served with us for 20 years. I can’t — I was on BBC last night, and I called them liars, all of them. They’re lying about that he was — whether or not he was vetted. They’re lying about the fact that they approved his entry. This is a case of a tragic breakdown in our mental health system, not a case of messed-up vetting or anything other than that.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who the people are, who you’ve been working on to get into this country, you yourself from the military.
SHAWN VANDIVER: Sure. So, I didn’t serve in Afghanistan. I served all over the world, but not in Afghanistan.
As we go around the world and we fight our wars, the U.S. military and our diplomats and other frontline civilians need support from local people who believe in our mission. And in Afghanistan, over our longest war, over the course of 20 years, hundreds of thousands of people stood up for the idea of democracy, believed in our mission and believed us when we told them, “If you stand with us, we’ll stand with you. If you work with us, you can come become an American. You can have your shot at the American dream.” The Trump administration, the Biden administration, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, everybody has let these folks down.
For the very first time in our country’s history, back in 2021, we, the civil society, stood up with the Biden administration. We dragged them to the right place. We got them to build something called Enduring Welcome, which is the safest, most secure immigration policy in our country’s history. And it represents the very first time that our country was actually answering the call for our wartime allies. It was too slow, but it was working. We were getting 5,000 wartime allies and their families out every month from Afghanistan to a third country. They undergo even more security vetting and then come to the United States of America and start their American dream in a durable pathway.
Before we built Enduring Welcome, Operation Allies Welcome brought about 77,000 Afghans here, but they most — many came on a nondurable status. They came as parolees, or they came as they were awaiting an immigration status, like SIV. Many had to apply for asylum once they got here. And it’s that population that’s been really — everybody’s been stuck in limbo, but this population has been stuck in limbo in the United States. And now they’re being targeted by President Trump’s political stunts at immigration court, and, you know, they’re snatching teachers out of the classrooms. These folks have done nothing but believe us and believe in the idea of America, and we’ve really let them down.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Laila Ayub into this conversation, executive director of Project ANAR. If you can talk specifically about women who have come to this country, who have left Afghanistan, and your concerns about President Trump halting all evaluations of people applying for political asylum in the United States, after the 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and now the Taliban in charge?
LAILA AYUB: Yes. So, this decision to halt or pause all asylum adjudications with USCIS, it is really clearly an extension of this existing agenda that the administration has had towards abandoning the U.S.’s obligations under international and domestic law to offer protection to people. We have been seeing advancements in other countries, particularly for women, for gender-based asylum claims, and earlier this summer, we saw the administration target those kinds of claims.
Now we’re seeing — earlier last week, we saw a directive to reevaluate all of the refugee admissions from under the Biden administration. Now we’re seeing this administration weaponize last week’s tragedy to scapegoat and collectively punish an entire community. First, they made announcements about policies targeting Afghans, including restricting and pausing indefinitely the processing of all immigration applications with USCIS. And then we saw a number of statements that really went beyond that and targeted the 19 countries on the travel ban list, as well as these undefined terms, like “Third World countries,” and broader categories, such as people who are not a net asset to the U.S.
It’s really dehumanizing. It is also illogical and irrational for many reasons, including because refugees and immigrants contribute to this country in so many ways. So, this is an extremely concerning effort to punish all Afghans, all immigrants and people who came here oftentimes as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy and didn’t have really much of a choice left other than to flee their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Lakanwal has a wife and five children. They’re based in Bellingham, Washington. The suggestion is that they would be deported. Where to, do you think, Laila?
LAILA AYUB: Well, we’re seeing that this administration has been — there’s been a pattern of removing people to Third World — to third countries, not to that undefined term of “Third World,” but to third countries. And there’s also deportations to Afghanistan. So, we don’t know what their plan is with this particular family, but what we do know is that in order to accomplish these efforts of large-scale targeting of not just that family, which is not something that, you know, I am particularly aware of, but the Afghan community in general, the immigrant community in general, it requires surveillance and increased militarism, increased policing. And none of these things really keep us safer in our communities here. They just harm more of our neighbors and more of our loved ones.
***
“Imperial Blowback”: Suspect in D.C. Shooting Was Part of CIA Death Squad in Afghanistan
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2025
journalist and author focused on U.S. military and foreign policy.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man who authorities say shot two National Guardsmen outside the White House, had previously worked in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan, often called “death squads” by human rights groups. “The United States made this person into a child soldier, and now is experiencing what I think is one of the most horrifically bright-line cases of imperial blowback that we’ve seen throughout the 'war on terror,'” says Spencer Ackerman, journalist and author focused on U.S. military and foreign policy.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Spencer Ackerman into this conversation. You have a new piece in Zeteo headlined “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” Can you elaborate?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes. Your guests have spoken very eloquently about the betrayal and the dishonor that the collective guilt of Afghan refugees ascribed by the Trump administration for this horrific murder is having.
What we’re focusing on less is that the person — what we’re focusing on less is that the person who committed, allegedly, these crimes, Lakanwal, had a gun put in his hand when he was a child by the CIA. Apparently, when he was 14 or 15, he was brought into the Zero Unit number 03 around Kandahar. Apparently his brother told The New York Times — apparently his brother, The New York Times reported, was a deputy commander of this unit. This unit was a death squad. The United States made this person into a child soldier, and now is experiencing what I think is one of the most horrifically bright-line cases of imperial blowback that we’ve seen throughout the “war on terror.”
If the United States wants to find out whose culture is responsible for this horrific crime, it needs to start by knocking on doors at Langley and, as well, the Afghans who ran the U.S.-backed Afghan intelligence service known as the NDS. It was this culture of violence, of impunity, of murder for political reasons that had a specific role — we’ll find out more at trial — of shaping Lakanwal and his circumstances.
To blame the Afghans who came here as refugees, desperate, overwhelmingly, as your guests said, who worked with the United States, who served the U.S. war effort, is perverse. And it is ultimately a cover for allowing the U.S. to continue to create death squads, to outsource its most murderous and its most despicable wartime actions to locals, who then it can blame them for.
AMY GOODMAN: I was thinking about Timothy McVeigh, who was on the Highway of Death in Iraq.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: He comes back from there. He blows up the Oklahoma City building. He kills what? Something like 169 people. No one said then that all white Christian men should be imprisoned, let alone deported. But your thoughts on those kind of comparisons?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: I think what we are really seeing is the horrific consequences of a violent, exploitative and extractive U.S. foreign policy once again — not for the first time, but once again — coming home. If the United States actually cherishes the lives of these West Virginia National Guardsmen, who should not have been in D.C. in the first place to backstop ICE — that’s its own issue — but if the United States values their lives and values the lives of other service members and other Americans, then it has an obligation to, in the first instance, stop creating these death squads, to stop creating the conditions that are warping the people who serve in them to the point where they would commit horrific murders like these. That’s a cherishing of human life that we never see from the United States in its foreign policy missions around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’ll link to your piece, “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” And we want to thank Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, and Laila Ayub, executive director of Project ANAR.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 01, 2025
Lhttps://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1 ... transcript
President Trump has announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. In 2024, Hernández was convicted in New York of drug trafficking and weapons charges. “The evidence from the Southern District of New York was overwhelming,” says Dana Frank, professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a longtime observer of Honduran politics.
Trump’s announcement came on Friday, and he also threatened to cut off funding if Hondurans did not elect his chosen conservative candidate as they went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president. “He’s almost threatening Honduras that if we don’t do what he is demanding … he will wreak vengeance against Honduras,” says Rodolfo Pastor, former secretary of the presidency under Xiomara Castro in Honduras.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
President Trump has announced plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Last year, Hernández was convicted in New York of drug trafficking and weapons charges. He once bragged, quote, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses,” unquote. A trial prosecutor showed how Hernández ran Honduras as a narco-state from 2014 until 2022, accepting millions of dollars in bribes from cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection, including deploying the Honduran National Police to safeguard cocaine loads as they were transported through Honduras. One unnamed Drug Enforcement Administration agent who worked on the case described Trump’s move as, quote, “lunacy.”
Trump’s announcement came on Friday, two days before Hondurans went to the polls Sunday to pick a new president. Ahead of the vote, Trump also endorsed the conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa. He’s a member of the right-wing National Party, the same party as Juan Orlando Hernández. Asfura has a slim lead in early election results.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, “If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive. If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.” Trump continued, “Additionally, I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” unquote.
This all comes as the Trump administration has been bombing drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and has called for the closing of all airspace over Venezuela, saying that Venezuela is involved with drug trafficking.
For more on the possible pardon and the Honduran elections, we’re joined by two guests. Dana Frank is professor of history emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, author of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup. She attended the trial of Juan Orlando Hernández last year here in New York. And in Honduras, Rodolfo Pastor is with us, the former secretary of the presidency under the current president, Xiomara Castro. He’s also a LIBRE party candidate for city council in San Pedro Sula, where we’re speaking to him right now.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Rodolfo Pastor in Honduras. Can you talk about the pardoning? Well, it looks like the imminent pardoning of Juan Orlando Hernández, often called JOH, J-O-H, in prison for 45 years for drug trafficking and other charges. The significance of this?
RODOLFO PASTOR: Of course, Amy. Good to be here. Thank you so much for paying attention to Honduras.
We’re waking up to results that are shocking the nation and are, in a degree, at least, a reflection of what President Trump stated a few days before the elections happened. For us, it’s shocking. It’s a blow to Honduran dignity and democracy that a foreign president would, first of all, state publicly what his preferences were. He actually suggested that Hondurans should vote for a specific candidate. And he went even further as to suggest that he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernández.
I think it exposes a very stark contradiction between what he is trying to portray as a justification for what’s happening in the Caribbean Sea and against Venezuela, and at the same time what is going on here in Honduras. I mean, this is, as you very clearly stated, a man who conspired to traffic tons and tons of cocaine and weapons between Honduras and the United States.
He is someone who has been sentenced and convicted for his crimes committed against the United States, but someone who has not been held accountable by Honduran justice. Hondurans are — were, at a first moment, very hopeful that because of what the U.S. had been able to do, what the Southern District of New York and the attorneys there had been able to do, what the court system in the United States had done, was just a partial justice for Honduras, because here in Honduras, there has been no process against Juan Orlando Hernández.
So, for President Trump to be so brazen in intervening, intervening in a sovereign process right before the elections, and also to be so hostile and aggressive in his stance, you know, he’s almost threatening Honduras that if we don’t do what he is demanding that we do, then that he will wreak vengeance against Honduras by sending back someone who’s done so much damage here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who the three candidates are? And again, the significance of Trump saying, if he, Asfura, doesn’t win, that the U.S. would be withholding money to Honduras?
RODOLFO PASTOR: Exactly. He’s basically threatening Honduras if we go ahead and make a sovereign decision, right before our elections, right?
And the three candidates, the main party candidates, were, number one, Rixi Moncada, who is the candidate for the official party and who represents, you know, the continuation of what Xiomara Castro, as president, has started, which is a third alternative party that was born from the resistance to the coup back in 2009 and reshaped the electoral and political party system here in Honduras against two traditional, historic parties that had alternated in power for the last century. So, this was a very progressive, reform-oriented project, that has been, as results are coming in, devastatingly defeated.
On the second place, in second place, it would be Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who represents the National Party, which is the same party, as you also stated, that Juan Orlando comes from, and who is surrounded by most of the people who surrounded Juan Orlando during his government.
And in the third place, it would be Nasralla, who is this TV broadcaster who portrayed himself as an outsider, who represents the very traditional, the most historic political party in Honduras, the Liberal Party, and who was perceived as the most probable winner of the elections until Trump came in with his statement.
So, the result that Tito Asfura is now leading the polls, that LIBRE has been sent to a very distant third place in the results, is in many ways a reflection of this very hostile attitude by President Trump, who basically discarded Nasralla as having any possibilities. He accused him of being a socialist in disguise, of having aided Xiomara, because, of course, at one point, we all joined forces to be able to oust Juan Orlando and his very corrupt, very authoritarian, very repressive regime, and for siding with Tito Asfura.
So, basically, President Trump is saying, “We’re going to double — we’re going to bet down on the National Party on being our closest partner, and we do not care if they have very deep, deep links with organized crime and drug trafficking.” So, when you contrast that against what’s going on in Venezuela, it’s just so much hypocrisy on behalf of Trump.
AMY GOODMAN: Rodolfo Pastor, I remember interviewing your dad, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, when I was in Tegucigalpa, flying in with the former president, the ousted president, Mel Zelaya, and his wife, Xiomara Castro, who is president of Honduras now, when they flew back into Honduras after being ousted in a U.S.-backed coup. That was back in what? 2009. And it was under Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. So, this intervention is not new, and that led to the rise of JOH — right? — of Juan Orlando Hernández.
RODOLFO PASTOR: U.S. intervention is nothing new for Honduras, Amy. You know, we are the emblematic banana republic. We’ve been, in so many ways, shaped by U.S. intervention for the last century in our country. And the coup back in 2009 was a shocking reminder of the fact that we’re still subjected to that kind of empire.
What happened after 2009 as a result of the coup was that Juan Orlando was able to make it to power and not only be there for what the constitution allowed him to be president for, a four-year term, he got reelected against the constitution that prohibits that reelection from happening, and with the backing again of the United States. And so, you know, from the beginning, from the get-go, what we started learning was that if the United States knew and understood the links that Juan Orlando had to drug trafficking, the corruption that he was responsible for here, the crimes that he was responsible for here, and would stand for him to be reelected against the constitutional prohibitions, you know, we knew that there was not a lot to do.
We went to elections in 2013, saw him get elected for the first time. We actually — the LIBRE party won those elections. But, you know, through the fraud and through the advantage that drug money gave Juan Orlando Hernández and public money that had been grafted gave Juan Orlando Hernández, we were defeated. We again went to the polls in 2017. We won again in that occasion with Salvador Nasralla as the candidate of the opposition. And yet we were again defeated through fraud and were repressed when we protested against that fraud.
And it was, finally, in 2021 that Xiomara Castro was finally elected as the first woman president of Honduras, and a transition period had started. It’s been a very, very difficult four years for Xiomara Castro. We were confronted with a country that had been destroyed, in so many ways, by the Juan Orlando administration, which, you know, stole enormous amounts of public money, which stopped investing in health, in education, in energy. And so, we were rebuilding the country.
And for this to come to a halt in such a brutal way, as in such an abrupt way again, and also as a result of U.S. intervention — or, should I say, directly as a Trump intervention, because he did so in a very personal way. He did so on his own social media. And I have not seen, as of yet, Amy, any kind of statement coming out of the State Department or the White House or the Department of Justice, that was such an important ally to bring Juan Orlando to justice.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Dana Frank into this discussion, University of California, Santa Cruz, professor of history emerita. You’ve written a book on Honduras, deeply involved with covering what’s going on there. And I last spoke to you when you were going every day to Juan Orlando Hernández’s trial here in New York. This is astounding. Our top news headline is Venezuela has condemned President Trump’s unilateral declaration that all airspace surrounding Venezuela is closed. Trump said the U.S. is poised to launch attacks inside Venezuela itself, because, he says, the president of Venezuela is a drug trafficker. And here he says he’s going to pardon a leading drug trafficker, someone convicted of drug trafficking. By the way, that’s in addition to his brother, Tony Hernández, who’s serving a life sentence here for drug trafficking. Can you talk about the significance of this moment?
DANA FRANK: Well, you know, obviously, this contradiction between Trump’s — Trump’s criminal acts, attacking people of Venezuela, Colombia and other parts of — and Ecuador in the name of fighting drug trafficking, and that, you know, that is a front for regime change in Venezuela and wanting Venezuelan oil. So, all of this is about his rhetoric and really dangerous military acts against against Venezuela in the name of drug — fighting drug trafficking. And at the same time, he pardons one of the — you know, this famous drug trafficker. And, you know, I want to underscore that the evidence from the Southern District of New York was overwhelming, and Juan Orlando has been — Hernández has been sentenced to 45 years in U.S. federal prison.
But, you know, one of the things that’s missing here is that this is not just contradiction in terms of drug war. It’s an outrageous subversion of rule of law in the United States. For the president to just, you know, tweet out on — tweet out or send out on social media that he’s going to pardon a major former president of another country convicted of drug trafficking and other crimes, and just throw the Justice Department conviction of Juan Orlando and all their years and years of many people working on this case impeccably, and to just throw that out the window, is also terrifying for the people of the United States. So, what he’s doing is a threat to democracy in Honduras, outrageously, but also in the United States.
And, of course, we’re used to saying it’s outrageous, but here he is showing criminal — he’s showing overt sympathy to a criminal and saying, “Well, he” — you know, he’s obviously bonding with a criminal, another president who’s a criminal, and, you know, supporting Asfura, who worked closely with Juan Orlando. And, you know, Asfura, the candidate that Trump supports, worked — has himself been charged with stealing a huge amount of public money that was destined for a light rail system in Tegucigalpa.
And Nasralla, the other right-wing candidate, you know, supports, like Asfura, Bukele and Milei and Trump. You know, it’s this authoritarian-right project that Trump is supporting at the point of a gun here. You know, this is a really terrifying act of intervention into the — as Rodolfo pointed out, into another country. It’s not news, but it’s — to so baldly intervene in an election, it’s like blackmail. If you don’t support Asfura, we’re going to — you know, who knows? The gunboats could be out there attacking Honduras if Rixi wins. And I think people know that in Honduras.
And you want to remember about the question of the immigrants in here, because a third or a quarter of the Honduran economy runs on remittances, and Trump is already attacking Honduran immigrants in really dangerous and terrifying ways, and deportations.
AMY GOODMAN: Dana Frank —
DANA FRANK: So, you know, I think we want to be alarmed about all this.
AMY GOODMAN: What surprised you most? I mean, you’ve covered Honduras for decades. You’ve taught about it. You’ve written about it. When you sat in that trial, the extent of Juan Orlando Hernández’s involvement with drug trafficking, with cocaine into the United States, the man who Trump says he’s about to pardon?
DANA FRANK: Well, you know, it was breathtaking. And the evidence was not just — not just about Juan Orlando, about his minister of security, that the U.S. worked with for many years, about his right-hand man, Ebal Díaz, you know, on and on, all sorts of people in his regime and in his party, with which Asfura, the National Party candidate, is affiliated.
And, you know, the other thing in this that, you know, I think people may not be aware is, you know, not only did Obama and Trump and Biden all support Juan Orlando and look the other way at his many crimes, but his crimes, as Rodolfo underscored, are not just about drug trafficking. He supported the coup when he was on a — when he was on a congressional committee. He led the so-called technical coup that overthrew the Supreme Court in 2012 when he was president of Congress. You know, he turned the military and the troops on peaceful protesters in 2017, when he ran, completely illegally, for reelection.
But, you know, I think something people are not aware of is also that the Biden administration did not want Trump to be — excuse me, did not want Hernández to be extradited. You know, two weeks after Xiomara was inaugurated and Juan Orlando was out of office, you know, the Biden administration finally allowed Juan Orlando Hernández to be extradited to the United States. But the Southern District of New York had been working on that for five years and, in the year before, had been trying to indict Juan Orlando, and Biden would not allow it. So, there’s this long history of U.S. military support for Juan Orlando and for his regime and for his many crimes, and so it’s not like even Biden acted heroically. This is a long history of the U.S. supporting Juan Orlando, and Trump is just one more link in that chain.
But, you know, it is shocking, if you saw the amount of evidence in that trial and how impeccable those prosecutors are. It was extremely impressive to watch their work and how careful they are. And to see that thrown out, you feel that in your gut about what happened to the rule of law in the United States in this, as well as the subversion of the rule of law in Honduras.
And why was Juan Orlando not prosecuted in Honduras? Because the U.S. supported the coup and the post-coup regimes, which destroyed the rule of law, and on many fronts. And that’s why the gangs moved into that gap. And that’s why there’s so much mass poverty and why people have had to flee to the United States.
***
“Kill Everybody”: Could Hegseth Face War Crimes Probe for Killing Survivors of U.S. Boat Strike?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 202
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1/ ... transcript
Democracy Now! speaks with journalist Spencer Ackerman about the Trump administration’s deadly, ongoing attacks on alleged “drug boats” amid reports President Trump is preparing to attack Venezuela, with all airspace surrounding Venezuela now closed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are “turning the military into a criminal operation,” says Ackerman. “This shows the moral degeneracy that the 'war on terror' has left as a legacy in the U.S. military.”
Democracy Now! speaks with journalist Spencer Ackerman about the Trump administration’s deadly, ongoing attacks on alleged “drug boats” amid reports President Trump is preparing to attack Venezuela, with all airspace surrounding Venezuela now closed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are “turning the military into a criminal operation,” says Ackerman. “This shows the moral degeneracy that the 'war on terror' has left as a legacy in the U.S. military.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to historian Dana Frank, we’re joined by Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning reporter, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump and author of the Forever Wars newsletter. You wrote a very interesting piece, Spencer, “The Legacy of The War on Terror Reaches South America.” As we talked to Rodolfo Pastor and Dana Frank, can you talk about this moment, where President Trump has said he’s going to pardon a major convicted drug trafficker, who was supposed to spend the rest of his life in jail, and the bombing of supposed drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and the closing of the airspace over Venezuela, saying he’s about to attack it for drug trafficking, he claims?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, Amy.
I think we’re at a really dangerous point in American history right now. Naturally, I don’t need to tell you or your guests the legacy of the American dirty wars in Latin America of the 1980s on the “war on terror.” But now we’ve got the war on terror reflected in the way that the Trump administration is targeting Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras — I’m sorry, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras and beyond.
We learned over the weekend that the initial strike on these fishermen boats back in September was a double-tap strike ordered by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth himself and executed, with the full approval of the, at the time, Joint Special Operations Command commander, Admiral Mitch Bradley, who is now the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. This was beyond even many of the illegal actions taken of the war on terror. However, this shows the moral degeneracy that the war on terror has left as a legacy in the U.S. military, not just the tactic of a drone strike, but the willingness to kill civilians.
The double-tap strike, the strike means that that’s a second strike on a target already struck, to ensure no survivors. If those were in fact people with whom the United States is at war with, as the Trump administration claims, then the second strike is a blatant violation of the law of armed conflict. You are supposed to leave survivors and not give no quarter. If we are not in fact at war, as for other purposes the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel says when it’s trying to avoid congressional authorization of these sorts of strikes, then this is simply, like every other strike, that has killed now over 80 people, simply a criminal act of murder.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have now Republican-led committees in both the House and the Senate saying they’re going to hold oversight hearings to investigate the Pentagon’s attacks on the boats, particularly that one September 2nd, where two men survived, were hanging onto the boat, and they struck it again. You have President Trump trying to defend Hegseth, who, sources say, was the one who ordered the second strike. And what did he do last night? That’s Secretary of Defense Hegseth. He tweeted out or put on social media a meme of the children’s cartoon character Franklin the Turtle opening fire from a helicopter on boats below. Both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, like Senators Reed and Wicker, calling for an investigation into war crimes here. And this goes together with the senators and — the senator and — Senator Kelly in Arizona and the other congressmembers, former military and intelligence, saying, “Do not follow illegal orders. It doesn’t matter if you are ordered from a superior. You will not be protected if you engage in war crimes.”
SPENCER ACKERMAN: This is a make-or-break moment for American democracy. We need Hegseth impeached. We need Bradley impeached. Obviously, there’s a separate question about Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this. But these men must not be permitted to remain in their jobs. They are turning the military into a criminal operation.
We can have a great historical debate about all of the steps necessary to produce that point, and previous examples of military commanders following illegal orders. But this is unambiguous. This is as bright line a violation as it gets. This turns the military into something that I think even those Republicans on those committees, who have been willing to put up with and have been complicit in so much — as, frankly, have the Democratic members — this is a step too far. But if there is no accountability for this moment, we should expect it to repeat.
AMY GOODMAN: And you also have at this point, in addition to Republicans and Democrats calling for investigation, the top Pentagon lawyers, the military lawyers, who would say to Hegseth, “This is illegal,” he fired them many months ago.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: As well as he fired the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman simply for being Black. This is someone who never should have been anywhere close to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful offices in the world.
I want to — I want to point out a really important forthcoming date. That’s December 12th. Reportedly, December 12th is the final day that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the SOUTHCOM commander who apparently quit to refuse these criminal orders, is out of his job and out of the military. It’s going to be crucial to bring Holsey in front of congressional hearings to talk about exactly what he did ahead of his decision to quit, what Hegseth ordered him to do, what others inside the secretary of defense’s office ordered him to do, that apparently he was not willing to do. This is going to be a crucial moment of investigation, if we are to recapture any semblance of lawfulness over the U.S. military.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, founder of the Forever Wars newsletter, I want to thank you for being with us and ask you to stay with us, because we want to ask you at the end of the show about a piece you just wrote, “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” We want to ask you about that. But I also want to thank Dana Frank for joining us, professor of history emerita at UC Santa Cruz, speaking to us from California, and Rodolfo Pastor, Honduran politician, former secretary of the presidency under President Xiomara Castro, speaking to us from Honduras.
***
Trump Vows to Pause Migration from “Third World Countries” After Fatal National Guard Shooting
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/1/ ... c_shooting
We look at President Trump’s call to pause all asylum decisions after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, shooting two National Guard members, killing one. Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their work with the U.S. and the former U.S.-backed government.
Trump has since said that he will “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” Afghan refugees have “been stuck in limbo in the United States, and now they’re being targeted by President Trump’s political stunts,” says Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac. Laila Ayub, executive director of Project ANAR, says the Trump administration is using the tragedy to “scapegoat and collectively punish an entire community.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at President Trump’s call to pause all asylum decisions after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, shooting two National Guard members, killing one. Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly killed West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom — she was 20 years old — and critically wounded Andrew Wolfe, who is 24.
On Thursday, Trump posted on social media, quote, “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions … Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!” Trump wrote.
Lakanwal is charged with first-degree murder, will likely face terrorism charges. He previously worked in a CIA-backed Afghan Army unit known as Zero Unit, often called a “death squad” by human rights groups. He entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their support of the U.S. occupation. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted refugee status last April under the second Trump administration.
Still with us, Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. We’re also joined in Washington, D.C., by Laila Ayub, the executive director of Project ANAR. And in San Diego, California, we’re going to start with Shawn VanDiver, president and board chair of #AfghanEvac.
Shawn VanDiver, this horror that took place in Washington, the shooting of the two National Guardsmen, one of them now dead, an you talk about Trump’s response?
SHAWN VANDIVER: Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on this morning.
Look, there’s just no question: This is an absolute tragedy. No family should have to deal with the epidemic of gun violence in our country. And it’s awful that we’ve lost one of these National Guardsmen, Miss [Beckstrom], and that Mr. — and that another one is fighting for his life in D.C.
President Trump’s reaction, though, and Kash Patel’s reaction and Kristi Noem’s and Marco Rubio’s is — and JD Vance’s, is all over the place. It’s off base. They shouldn’t be ascribing — they shouldn’t be leveraging this absolute tragedy as a political cudgel to do whatever they were going to do anyways with our immigration regarding our wartime allies and other refugees and asylum seekers from around the world. It’s an unconscionable tragedy that they would leverage the awful experience, the awful incident that occurred there.
And these folks served with us for 20 years. I can’t — I was on BBC last night, and I called them liars, all of them. They’re lying about that he was — whether or not he was vetted. They’re lying about the fact that they approved his entry. This is a case of a tragic breakdown in our mental health system, not a case of messed-up vetting or anything other than that.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who the people are, who you’ve been working on to get into this country, you yourself from the military.
SHAWN VANDIVER: Sure. So, I didn’t serve in Afghanistan. I served all over the world, but not in Afghanistan.
As we go around the world and we fight our wars, the U.S. military and our diplomats and other frontline civilians need support from local people who believe in our mission. And in Afghanistan, over our longest war, over the course of 20 years, hundreds of thousands of people stood up for the idea of democracy, believed in our mission and believed us when we told them, “If you stand with us, we’ll stand with you. If you work with us, you can come become an American. You can have your shot at the American dream.” The Trump administration, the Biden administration, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, everybody has let these folks down.
For the very first time in our country’s history, back in 2021, we, the civil society, stood up with the Biden administration. We dragged them to the right place. We got them to build something called Enduring Welcome, which is the safest, most secure immigration policy in our country’s history. And it represents the very first time that our country was actually answering the call for our wartime allies. It was too slow, but it was working. We were getting 5,000 wartime allies and their families out every month from Afghanistan to a third country. They undergo even more security vetting and then come to the United States of America and start their American dream in a durable pathway.
Before we built Enduring Welcome, Operation Allies Welcome brought about 77,000 Afghans here, but they most — many came on a nondurable status. They came as parolees, or they came as they were awaiting an immigration status, like SIV. Many had to apply for asylum once they got here. And it’s that population that’s been really — everybody’s been stuck in limbo, but this population has been stuck in limbo in the United States. And now they’re being targeted by President Trump’s political stunts at immigration court, and, you know, they’re snatching teachers out of the classrooms. These folks have done nothing but believe us and believe in the idea of America, and we’ve really let them down.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Laila Ayub into this conversation, executive director of Project ANAR. If you can talk specifically about women who have come to this country, who have left Afghanistan, and your concerns about President Trump halting all evaluations of people applying for political asylum in the United States, after the 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and now the Taliban in charge?
LAILA AYUB: Yes. So, this decision to halt or pause all asylum adjudications with USCIS, it is really clearly an extension of this existing agenda that the administration has had towards abandoning the U.S.’s obligations under international and domestic law to offer protection to people. We have been seeing advancements in other countries, particularly for women, for gender-based asylum claims, and earlier this summer, we saw the administration target those kinds of claims.
Now we’re seeing — earlier last week, we saw a directive to reevaluate all of the refugee admissions from under the Biden administration. Now we’re seeing this administration weaponize last week’s tragedy to scapegoat and collectively punish an entire community. First, they made announcements about policies targeting Afghans, including restricting and pausing indefinitely the processing of all immigration applications with USCIS. And then we saw a number of statements that really went beyond that and targeted the 19 countries on the travel ban list, as well as these undefined terms, like “Third World countries,” and broader categories, such as people who are not a net asset to the U.S.
It’s really dehumanizing. It is also illogical and irrational for many reasons, including because refugees and immigrants contribute to this country in so many ways. So, this is an extremely concerning effort to punish all Afghans, all immigrants and people who came here oftentimes as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy and didn’t have really much of a choice left other than to flee their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Lakanwal has a wife and five children. They’re based in Bellingham, Washington. The suggestion is that they would be deported. Where to, do you think, Laila?
LAILA AYUB: Well, we’re seeing that this administration has been — there’s been a pattern of removing people to Third World — to third countries, not to that undefined term of “Third World,” but to third countries. And there’s also deportations to Afghanistan. So, we don’t know what their plan is with this particular family, but what we do know is that in order to accomplish these efforts of large-scale targeting of not just that family, which is not something that, you know, I am particularly aware of, but the Afghan community in general, the immigrant community in general, it requires surveillance and increased militarism, increased policing. And none of these things really keep us safer in our communities here. They just harm more of our neighbors and more of our loved ones.
***
“Imperial Blowback”: Suspect in D.C. Shooting Was Part of CIA Death Squad in Afghanistan
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2025
journalist and author focused on U.S. military and foreign policy.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man who authorities say shot two National Guardsmen outside the White House, had previously worked in a CIA-backed “Zero Unit” in Afghanistan, often called “death squads” by human rights groups. “The United States made this person into a child soldier, and now is experiencing what I think is one of the most horrifically bright-line cases of imperial blowback that we’ve seen throughout the 'war on terror,'” says Spencer Ackerman, journalist and author focused on U.S. military and foreign policy.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Spencer Ackerman into this conversation. You have a new piece in Zeteo headlined “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” Can you elaborate?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes. Your guests have spoken very eloquently about the betrayal and the dishonor that the collective guilt of Afghan refugees ascribed by the Trump administration for this horrific murder is having.
What we’re focusing on less is that the person — what we’re focusing on less is that the person who committed, allegedly, these crimes, Lakanwal, had a gun put in his hand when he was a child by the CIA. Apparently, when he was 14 or 15, he was brought into the Zero Unit number 03 around Kandahar. Apparently his brother told The New York Times — apparently his brother, The New York Times reported, was a deputy commander of this unit. This unit was a death squad. The United States made this person into a child soldier, and now is experiencing what I think is one of the most horrifically bright-line cases of imperial blowback that we’ve seen throughout the “war on terror.”
If the United States wants to find out whose culture is responsible for this horrific crime, it needs to start by knocking on doors at Langley and, as well, the Afghans who ran the U.S.-backed Afghan intelligence service known as the NDS. It was this culture of violence, of impunity, of murder for political reasons that had a specific role — we’ll find out more at trial — of shaping Lakanwal and his circumstances.
To blame the Afghans who came here as refugees, desperate, overwhelmingly, as your guests said, who worked with the United States, who served the U.S. war effort, is perverse. And it is ultimately a cover for allowing the U.S. to continue to create death squads, to outsource its most murderous and its most despicable wartime actions to locals, who then it can blame them for.
AMY GOODMAN: I was thinking about Timothy McVeigh, who was on the Highway of Death in Iraq.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: He comes back from there. He blows up the Oklahoma City building. He kills what? Something like 169 people. No one said then that all white Christian men should be imprisoned, let alone deported. But your thoughts on those kind of comparisons?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: I think what we are really seeing is the horrific consequences of a violent, exploitative and extractive U.S. foreign policy once again — not for the first time, but once again — coming home. If the United States actually cherishes the lives of these West Virginia National Guardsmen, who should not have been in D.C. in the first place to backstop ICE — that’s its own issue — but if the United States values their lives and values the lives of other service members and other Americans, then it has an obligation to, in the first instance, stop creating these death squads, to stop creating the conditions that are warping the people who serve in them to the point where they would commit horrific murders like these. That’s a cherishing of human life that we never see from the United States in its foreign policy missions around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’ll link to your piece, “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” And we want to thank Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, and Laila Ayub, executive director of Project ANAR.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Tue Dec 02, 2025 7:05 pm
Trump Threatens “Hell To Pay” for Honduras After Election Results. Donald Trump is pissed the election hasn’t gone the way he wanted after he intervened.
by Malcolm Ferguson
newrepublic.com
December 2, 2025/9:12 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/203832/tru ... on-results
[x]
Donald Trump speaks while sitting in the Oval Office. Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Trump is making baseless claims of fraud in the Honduran election as he continues to publicly meddle in an incredibly close race between his choice—the conservative Tito Asfura—and liberal Salvador Nasralla.
“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” President Trump said Monday night with zero evidence to back it up. “The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!”
In reality, this is a very slim election that will take the National Electoral Council, or CNE, an extended period of time to count. Preliminary results on Monday had Asfura ahead of Nasralla by just 515 points.
“Faced with this technical tie, we must remain calm, be patient, and wait for the CNE to finish counting,” said CNE head Ana Paola Hall. “Subsequently, the special counting process will be carried out in order to finalise the general count.”
Trump has already promised to cut off aid to Honduras if Asfura doesn’t win. Now he is further undermining the country’s electoral sovereignty by trying to lie his way into a favorable result. It’s obvious that Trump has his own agenda for Honduras, especially given his pardon of prolific drug trafficker and conservative former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug-trafficking and weapons charges. The game plan is almost identical to Argentina—meddle in elections, promise funding to guarantee your preferred candidate’s victory, and reap the benefits.
by Malcolm Ferguson
newrepublic.com
December 2, 2025/9:12 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/203832/tru ... on-results
[x]
Donald Trump speaks while sitting in the Oval Office. Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Trump is making baseless claims of fraud in the Honduran election as he continues to publicly meddle in an incredibly close race between his choice—the conservative Tito Asfura—and liberal Salvador Nasralla.
“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” President Trump said Monday night with zero evidence to back it up. “The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!”
In reality, this is a very slim election that will take the National Electoral Council, or CNE, an extended period of time to count. Preliminary results on Monday had Asfura ahead of Nasralla by just 515 points.
“Faced with this technical tie, we must remain calm, be patient, and wait for the CNE to finish counting,” said CNE head Ana Paola Hall. “Subsequently, the special counting process will be carried out in order to finalise the general count.”
Trump has already promised to cut off aid to Honduras if Asfura doesn’t win. Now he is further undermining the country’s electoral sovereignty by trying to lie his way into a favorable result. It’s obvious that Trump has his own agenda for Honduras, especially given his pardon of prolific drug trafficker and conservative former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug-trafficking and weapons charges. The game plan is almost identical to Argentina—meddle in elections, promise funding to guarantee your preferred candidate’s victory, and reap the benefits.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Wed Dec 03, 2025 12:29 am
Top military lawyer raised legal concerns about boat strikes. The lawyer at U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the operations against alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela, disagreed that the strikes are legal and was overruled, according to six sources.
by Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce
NBC News
Nov. 19, 2025
https://archive.ph/JW7e9#selection-1409.0-1409.201
[x]
A boat carrying Venezuelan migrants who gave up on reaching the United States departs Jaqué as it moves south along Panama's Pacific coast on Sept. 19. Matias Delacroix / AP file
WASHINGTON — The senior military lawyer for the combatant command overseeing lethal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela disagreed with the Trump administration’s position that the operations are lawful — and his views were sidelined, according to six sources with knowledge of the legal advice.
The lawyer, who serves as the senior judge advocate general, or JAG in military parlance, at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, raised his legal concerns in August before the strikes began in September, according to two senior U.S. officials, two senior congressional aides and two former senior U.S. officials.
His opinion was ultimately overruled by more senior government officials, including officials at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the six sources said. Other JAGs and military lawyers at various levels of seniority weighed in on the boat strikes, as well. It’s unclear what each of their opinions were, but some of the military lawyers, including civilians and those in uniform, also expressed concerns to senior officials in their commands and at the Defense Department about the legality of the strikes, the two senior congressional aides and one of the senior former U.S. officials said.
The JAG at Southern Command specifically expressed concern that strikes against people on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, whom administration officials call “narco-terrorists,” could amount to extrajudicial killings, the six sources said, and therefore legally expose service members involved in the operations.
The opinion of the top lawyer for the command overseeing a military operation is typically critical to whether or not the operation moves forward. While higher officials can overrule such lawyers, it is rare for operations to move forward without incorporating their advice.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement: “The War Department categorically denies that any Pentagon lawyers, including SOUTHCOM lawyers, with knowledge of these operations have raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far because they are aware we are on firm legal ground. Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in complete compliance with the law of armed conflict.”
A spokesperson for Southern Command referred questions to the Defense Department, which the Trump administration calls the War Department. A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The JAG is Marine Col. Paul Meagher, according to three people familiar with the matter. Attempts to reach Meagher for comment were unsuccessful.
The strikes on alleged drug boats have drawn support from Republicans, as well as criticism from members of both parties, NBC News has reported.
The opinion of the Southern Command JAG, which has not been previously reported, adds a new dimension to concerns that lawmakers, retired military officers and legal experts have raised about the administration’s legal justification for striking alleged drug boats.
Those concerns have centered on questions about whether the strikes violate international and U.S. law.
Since Sept. 2, it says, the administration has killed 82 people in 21 strikes on small vessels it says were transporting drugs bound for the United States.
Administration officials have not put forward any specific evidence backing up their claims.
The administration has told members of Congress that President Donald Trump determined the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartel members, NBC News has reported. The administration designated some drug cartels in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations this year.
Trump has argued that drugs from the region pose a significant threat to American citizens. He has linked the boats to fentanyl to argue that the military strikes have saved tens of thousands of American lives, although fentanyl is typically smuggled into the United States by land across the Mexican border. Cocaine, which is most often moved via sea, is considered far less lethal than fentanyl.
JAGs' opinions on possible military operations are usually shared with higher authorities, including the Defense Department’s general counsel, Justice Department officials and ultimately the White House, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the process.
JAGs typically play an integral role in defining the legal parameters of any military operation, and often their collective advice would be the primary guiding principle as political leaders decide whether to take such action, according to the current and former U.S. officials familiar with the process.
In the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged drug boats, politically appointed lawyers at senior levels have often defined the legalities of the operations with minimal lower-level legal input, according to the two senior congressional aides and one of the former senior U.S. officials.
There have been other signs of disagreement within the administration over the strikes. The head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, plans to step down after less than a year in a job that typically lasts about three years.
Holsey announced in October that he will depart next month.
In addition to concerns about the legality of the strikes, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have complained that the administration has not provided them enough information about the legal rationale or the intelligence used to target the vessels and people the administration purports are bringing drugs into the United States.
“There is no world where this is legal,” said a current JAG, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
Congress has not declared war or authorized the use of military force against the drug traffickers, and U.S. law allows the president to take military action without lawmakers’ approval only if there is a national emergency due to an attack on the country or American forces.
Dan Maurer, an associate professor of law at Ohio Northern University and a former Army JAG, argued that the drug cartels’ narcotics smuggling and other actions are crimes but do not qualify as an armed attack on the United States as defined by U.S. and international law.
“These drug cartels may be violent, they may be aggressive, they may be transnational,” Maurer said in an interview. “They may be doing terrible things within their own countries; they may be importing terrible things into our country that have bad consequences. But all of those are crimes, and none of which meets the traditional meanings of an attack or invasion.”
Maurer and other former military lawyers and experts believe the Trump administration’s legal rationale for the strikes is so tenuous it could put commanders and troops in legal peril after Trump leaves office in 2029.
Trump administration officials have defended the legality of the strikes and argued that they have shared ample information about them with members of Congress.
The legal debate about the strikes is likely to intensify if Trump decides to hit targets inside Venezuela, as he has threatened to do. The current legal rationale for strikes on vessels does not apply to any strikes on land, a senior administration official told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing last week, according to two additional congressional aides.
Some of the military’s strikes on boats have killed people who critics of the operations say may be noncombatants or even immigrants who are hitching rides on the vessels and have nothing to do with the drug trade. Two survivors of a strike were captured and repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador rather than taken into U.S. custody, a decision that one of the congressional aides said raises questions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them for a crime.
The internal differences over the legality of the boat strikes echo a similar debate more than 20 years ago. During President George W. Bush's administration, senior military lawyers for the Army, the Air Force and the Marines raised objections over proposed “enhanced” interrogation techniques in 2003 and later testified to Congress about their concerns. They warned that U.S. courts could find those techniques amounted to torture and were illegal.
John Yoo, the controversial legal architect of Bush’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, now argues the Trump administration’s boat strikes risk crossing the line between “crime fighting and war.”
“Americans have died in car wrecks at an annual rate of about 40,000 in recent years; the nation does not wage war on auto companies,” he wrote recently in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “American law instead relies upon the criminal justice or civil tort systems to respond to broad, persistent social harms.”
Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for NBC News.
by Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce
NBC News
Nov. 19, 2025
https://archive.ph/JW7e9#selection-1409.0-1409.201
[x]
A boat carrying Venezuelan migrants who gave up on reaching the United States departs Jaqué as it moves south along Panama's Pacific coast on Sept. 19. Matias Delacroix / AP file
WASHINGTON — The senior military lawyer for the combatant command overseeing lethal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela disagreed with the Trump administration’s position that the operations are lawful — and his views were sidelined, according to six sources with knowledge of the legal advice.
The lawyer, who serves as the senior judge advocate general, or JAG in military parlance, at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, raised his legal concerns in August before the strikes began in September, according to two senior U.S. officials, two senior congressional aides and two former senior U.S. officials.
His opinion was ultimately overruled by more senior government officials, including officials at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the six sources said. Other JAGs and military lawyers at various levels of seniority weighed in on the boat strikes, as well. It’s unclear what each of their opinions were, but some of the military lawyers, including civilians and those in uniform, also expressed concerns to senior officials in their commands and at the Defense Department about the legality of the strikes, the two senior congressional aides and one of the senior former U.S. officials said.
The JAG at Southern Command specifically expressed concern that strikes against people on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, whom administration officials call “narco-terrorists,” could amount to extrajudicial killings, the six sources said, and therefore legally expose service members involved in the operations.
The opinion of the top lawyer for the command overseeing a military operation is typically critical to whether or not the operation moves forward. While higher officials can overrule such lawyers, it is rare for operations to move forward without incorporating their advice.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement: “The War Department categorically denies that any Pentagon lawyers, including SOUTHCOM lawyers, with knowledge of these operations have raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far because they are aware we are on firm legal ground. Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in complete compliance with the law of armed conflict.”
A spokesperson for Southern Command referred questions to the Defense Department, which the Trump administration calls the War Department. A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The JAG is Marine Col. Paul Meagher, according to three people familiar with the matter. Attempts to reach Meagher for comment were unsuccessful.
The strikes on alleged drug boats have drawn support from Republicans, as well as criticism from members of both parties, NBC News has reported.
The opinion of the Southern Command JAG, which has not been previously reported, adds a new dimension to concerns that lawmakers, retired military officers and legal experts have raised about the administration’s legal justification for striking alleged drug boats.
Those concerns have centered on questions about whether the strikes violate international and U.S. law.
Since Sept. 2, it says, the administration has killed 82 people in 21 strikes on small vessels it says were transporting drugs bound for the United States.
Administration officials have not put forward any specific evidence backing up their claims.
The administration has told members of Congress that President Donald Trump determined the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartel members, NBC News has reported. The administration designated some drug cartels in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations this year.
Trump has argued that drugs from the region pose a significant threat to American citizens. He has linked the boats to fentanyl to argue that the military strikes have saved tens of thousands of American lives, although fentanyl is typically smuggled into the United States by land across the Mexican border. Cocaine, which is most often moved via sea, is considered far less lethal than fentanyl.
JAGs' opinions on possible military operations are usually shared with higher authorities, including the Defense Department’s general counsel, Justice Department officials and ultimately the White House, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the process.
JAGs typically play an integral role in defining the legal parameters of any military operation, and often their collective advice would be the primary guiding principle as political leaders decide whether to take such action, according to the current and former U.S. officials familiar with the process.
In the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged drug boats, politically appointed lawyers at senior levels have often defined the legalities of the operations with minimal lower-level legal input, according to the two senior congressional aides and one of the former senior U.S. officials.
There have been other signs of disagreement within the administration over the strikes. The head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, plans to step down after less than a year in a job that typically lasts about three years.
Holsey announced in October that he will depart next month.
In addition to concerns about the legality of the strikes, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have complained that the administration has not provided them enough information about the legal rationale or the intelligence used to target the vessels and people the administration purports are bringing drugs into the United States.
“There is no world where this is legal,” said a current JAG, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
Congress has not declared war or authorized the use of military force against the drug traffickers, and U.S. law allows the president to take military action without lawmakers’ approval only if there is a national emergency due to an attack on the country or American forces.
Dan Maurer, an associate professor of law at Ohio Northern University and a former Army JAG, argued that the drug cartels’ narcotics smuggling and other actions are crimes but do not qualify as an armed attack on the United States as defined by U.S. and international law.
“These drug cartels may be violent, they may be aggressive, they may be transnational,” Maurer said in an interview. “They may be doing terrible things within their own countries; they may be importing terrible things into our country that have bad consequences. But all of those are crimes, and none of which meets the traditional meanings of an attack or invasion.”
Maurer and other former military lawyers and experts believe the Trump administration’s legal rationale for the strikes is so tenuous it could put commanders and troops in legal peril after Trump leaves office in 2029.
Trump administration officials have defended the legality of the strikes and argued that they have shared ample information about them with members of Congress.
The legal debate about the strikes is likely to intensify if Trump decides to hit targets inside Venezuela, as he has threatened to do. The current legal rationale for strikes on vessels does not apply to any strikes on land, a senior administration official told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing last week, according to two additional congressional aides.
Some of the military’s strikes on boats have killed people who critics of the operations say may be noncombatants or even immigrants who are hitching rides on the vessels and have nothing to do with the drug trade. Two survivors of a strike were captured and repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador rather than taken into U.S. custody, a decision that one of the congressional aides said raises questions about whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them for a crime.
The internal differences over the legality of the boat strikes echo a similar debate more than 20 years ago. During President George W. Bush's administration, senior military lawyers for the Army, the Air Force and the Marines raised objections over proposed “enhanced” interrogation techniques in 2003 and later testified to Congress about their concerns. They warned that U.S. courts could find those techniques amounted to torture and were illegal.
John Yoo, the controversial legal architect of Bush’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, now argues the Trump administration’s boat strikes risk crossing the line between “crime fighting and war.”
“Americans have died in car wrecks at an annual rate of about 40,000 in recent years; the nation does not wage war on auto companies,” he wrote recently in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “American law instead relies upon the criminal justice or civil tort systems to respond to broad, persistent social harms.”
Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for NBC News.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Wed Dec 03, 2025 12:52 am
Trump slapped with massive lawsuit alleging 'Epstein-identical' trafficking operation
by Alexander Willis
RawStory
December 2, 2025 10:19AM ET445
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2674362253/
[x]
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during travel to Washington, D.C., from Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S., November 30, 2025. REUTERS/Anna Rose Layden
President Donald Trump has been slapped with a $310 million lawsuit alleging that the president engaged in a “trafficking venture” that was “identical in every material respect” to the sex-trafficking operation allegedly spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein.
Filed on Nov. 24 in Palm Beach County, the lawsuit names Trump in both his individual and official capacity as president, alongside Tesla founder and Trump ally Elon Musk and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, both of whom have spent time inside Epstein’s home, according to reports and, in Musk’s case, his own admission.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, whose names have been redacted, accuse Trump and others of operating an “eight-year trafficking and exploitation venture that began in 2018 [that] has continued and escalated under the current Trump administration,” according to an uncertified copy of the lawsuit, published and reported on Tuesday by the hyper-local news outlet BOCA News Now.
Specifically, the plaintiffs accuse Trump of “grooming” the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit – an unnamed minor on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed – starting in 1998, “the exact year [the] plaintiff was born.” They accuse Trump of using Gates’ Gates Foundation as the primary “cover and silencing mechanism” to continue the operation, as well as facilitating “coordinated sexual assaults.”
The plaintiffs also allege that the minor plaintiff's “infant daughter” was taken from her “as punishment for filing lawsuits,” which they argue was “identical to Epstein’s use of custody threats against mothers who sued.”
Additionally, the plaintiffs accuse Trump and the other named defendants of having "attempted to murder" the lead plaintiff "no fewer than [on] five separate occasions" between 2023 and November of this year, including by way of "poisoning, vehicular assaults and orchestrated physical attacks designed to appear accidental."
Trump is not facing any active criminal charges, and has and continues to deny any wrong-doing as it relates to Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking at least $310 million in compensatory damages, more than $134 million in attorneys’ fees, and injunctive relief that would include the “immediate return of full legal and physical custody” of the lead plaintiff’s daughter. They also asked the court that the trial be expedited so that a trial by jury is held by Dec. 20.
by Alexander Willis
RawStory
December 2, 2025 10:19AM ET445
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2674362253/
[x]
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during travel to Washington, D.C., from Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S., November 30, 2025. REUTERS/Anna Rose Layden
President Donald Trump has been slapped with a $310 million lawsuit alleging that the president engaged in a “trafficking venture” that was “identical in every material respect” to the sex-trafficking operation allegedly spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein.
Filed on Nov. 24 in Palm Beach County, the lawsuit names Trump in both his individual and official capacity as president, alongside Tesla founder and Trump ally Elon Musk and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, both of whom have spent time inside Epstein’s home, according to reports and, in Musk’s case, his own admission.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, whose names have been redacted, accuse Trump and others of operating an “eight-year trafficking and exploitation venture that began in 2018 [that] has continued and escalated under the current Trump administration,” according to an uncertified copy of the lawsuit, published and reported on Tuesday by the hyper-local news outlet BOCA News Now.
Specifically, the plaintiffs accuse Trump of “grooming” the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit – an unnamed minor on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed – starting in 1998, “the exact year [the] plaintiff was born.” They accuse Trump of using Gates’ Gates Foundation as the primary “cover and silencing mechanism” to continue the operation, as well as facilitating “coordinated sexual assaults.”
The plaintiffs also allege that the minor plaintiff's “infant daughter” was taken from her “as punishment for filing lawsuits,” which they argue was “identical to Epstein’s use of custody threats against mothers who sued.”
Additionally, the plaintiffs accuse Trump and the other named defendants of having "attempted to murder" the lead plaintiff "no fewer than [on] five separate occasions" between 2023 and November of this year, including by way of "poisoning, vehicular assaults and orchestrated physical attacks designed to appear accidental."
Trump is not facing any active criminal charges, and has and continues to deny any wrong-doing as it relates to Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking at least $310 million in compensatory damages, more than $134 million in attorneys’ fees, and injunctive relief that would include the “immediate return of full legal and physical custody” of the lead plaintiff’s daughter. They also asked the court that the trial be expedited so that a trial by jury is held by Dec. 20.
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Thu Dec 04, 2025 1:30 am
Mark Kelly Claps Back At Trump Amid ‘Death Threats’ Over US Army Remark: ‘I’m Not Gonna Be Silenced’
Hook Global
Dec 2, 2025 UNITED STATES
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly on Monday (December 1) said death threats against him had increased as he renewed his critique of President Trump amid threats by the White House to recall Kelly to active Navy duty to prosecute him under military law for urging troops to disobey illegal orders.
Transcript
Good afternoon everybody. Seems like most of you guys are here.
Um and thank you for taking the time. Uh let me get started. So throughout his
entire career in business, reality TV, and politics, Donald Trump has had one
and only one play, bullying his opponents into silence.
He did it as a failed casino owner who bankrupted his properties and screwed
over his contractors. He did it as a reality TV host known for
firing people. And he's done it as as president who
tries every day to intimidate people with no regards for the rights or
well-being of the American people. I'll say this for the guy.
While he's never seemed to do much else right for most of Donald Trump's career,
bullying people has worked out for him. But not now
because I won't let it happen.
The American people won't let it happen. President Trump is trying to silence me,
threatening to kill me for saying what is true.
And he sent his secretary of defense after me. And it's not going to work.
Here's how we got here. A week and a half ago, Senator Slaken
and I along with others who also served in the military and the intelligence communities, we released a video with a
simple message to service members that they must refuse illegal orders.
Nothing was controversial about that.
Everyone must follow the law. No one may break the law. This is pretty
basic stuff. Seeing that video,
here's how any other president would have responded.
They would have said two words, of course.
But that's not how this president responded. We become so accustomed to Donald
Trump's behavior that it is worth emphasizing.
The president of the United States said that two US senators and four members of
the House of Representatives should be arrested, hanged, executed
for something we said, for something that is true.
My family knows the cost of political violence. My wife Gabby was shot in the
head and nearly died while speaking with her constituents.
The president should understand this too. He has been the target of political
violence himself. The speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman, and
her husband were murdered in their home this year. The governor of Pennsylvania, Josh
Shapiro, had his house firebombed this year. Then Charlie Kirk was assassinated
at Utah Valley University, a place I visited just a few weeks ago with Republican Senator John Curtis.
Faced with a wave like this, every other president we have ever had in the
history of this nation would have tried to heal the country.
But we all know Donald Trump. He uses every single opportunity to
divide us and that's dangerous.
The president's words carry tremendous weight. People listen to him
and he knows that. And that's exactly why he does what he
does. He makes these threats to silence
people. And if that doesn't work, he abuses his power to intimidate people.
And with the consent of Republicans in the United States Senate, he has surrounded himself with people like the
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsath, who will do whatever he says, with no
question, no matter what. Trump and Hegsth, they care more about
publicity than they do about the rule of law. That's how I ended up finding out via a
tweet that the Secretary of Defense was ordering an investigation into me.
The same Secretary of Defense who has from the moment he was nominated has
been historically unqualified for this position.
the same secretary of defense who is reported to have ordered a second strike to kill
shipwreck survivors in the Caribbean. If there is anyone who needs to answer
questions in public and under oath, it is Pete Hgsath.
It's a dangerous moment for the United States of America when the president and his loyalists use every lever of power
to silence United States senators for speaking up. But we all know that this isn't about me
and it's not about the others in that video. They're trying to send a message
to retired service members, to government employees, to members of the military, to elected
officials, and to all Americans who are thinking about speaking up.
You better keep your mouth shut or else.
This has been a singular focus of President Trump's second term.
Not addressing costs, not creating jobs, intimidating people, and going after the
people he views as his political opponents. He's done it to companies.
You better write a check to build my ballroom or I might not approve your merger.
He's done it with universities. You better fire your president or I'll pull your research funding.
He's even done it to late night hosts. You better not make jokes that I do not
like or I'll get you taken off the air and I'm going to take your company's
broadcast license. And he does it every week with Republicans in the House and the Senate.
You better tow the party line or I'll make sure you never get reelected.
Folks, this comes at a cost. And not only to American companies,
colleges, and comedians. It damages every American's freedom of speech and
the balance of powers that form the foundation of our democracy.
Because when Republicans in Congress are too afraid to dis disagree with this president, it means that his bad ideas
go unchallenged. He has slapped reckless tariffs on
countries across the globe, skyrocketing the cost of everything from groceries to school supplies.
Republicans historically, well, at least a year ago, they hated terrorists.
But when it comes to voting to undo them, they are too afraid of Donald Trump.
So Americans pay more for just about everything because of spineless
politicians. It's the same with health care costs.
There are Republicans in the House and the Senate who really want to do something to prevent these health care
premiums from spiking for millions of Americans. The solutions are simple,
but President Trump says he doesn't want to, so nothing happens. Nothing except a
government shutdown. It goes on and on.
The president has gone too far. Everybody needs to wake up.
The occupant of the Oval Office is ignorant to the Constitution
and has no regard for the rule of law. Trying to silence me in proposing to
court marshall me in threatening to kill me for fighting back when our democracy
demands that we must fight back. President Trump has crossed the line.
And this time it's not going to work. I will not be intimidated by this
president. I am not going to be silenced by this president or the people around
him because I've given too much in service to this country to back down to
this guy. In 1991, when Donald Trump was driving the Taj
Mahal casino into bankruptcy, I was getting shot at over Iraq and
Kuwait. In 2001, after Donald Trump said that the
collapse of the Twin Towers meant he now owned the tallest skyscraper in
Manhattan. I was carrying flags honoring 9/11
victims into space on a rocket ship. In 2003,
when Donald Trump was writing birthday greetings to the monster Jeffrey Epstein,
I was the first on the scene to recover the bodies of my fellow astronauts who died when Space Shuttle Colombia
exploded during re-entry in 2011.
When Trump was hosting a reality show and pedalling conspiracy theories
against President Barack Obama, I was sitting next to my wife's hospital bed
as she recovered from a gunshot wound to the head.
My point is this. I've been through a lot worse in service to my country. The president and Pete
Hegsath are not going to silence me. They aren't going to keep me from
speaking out and they're not going to keep me from doing my job.
Enough of the bullying, enough of the intimidation, enough of the threats,
enough of your nonsense doesn't help anyone in our country
afford their groceries or pay their medical bills. and it erodess the rights
of every American. My job is to fight for them, to stand up
for the Constitution, and nothing nothing is going to stop me from doing
my job. Thank you. And I'll take some questions.
Hold on a second. Give me give me give me that that folder
there. Just sit this down here. Can you I know it's Manu from CNN, but
for everybody just starting with you, just say who you are. You know what? Uh
what station? Um uh the White House said today that Admiral Bradley gave the
order for that second strike on the Venezuelan boat. They also said this was a lawful strike yesterday. You said the
second strike could be a war crime. Do you think that Bradley committed a war?
Let me let me just start Manu by saying that there needs to be an investigation.
We need to pull some of these members of DoD and the military into the armed
services committees in the in the House and the Senate. You know, that's what the what the White House is saying. I
hope what has been reported is not accurate. I have such I rever members of
the United States Navy, especially special operators, Navy Seals. These are the most highly trained, you know,
individuals in our military. I have deep deep respect for them. So I hope what we are hearing uh is not not accurate. I
will say though, you know, as somebody who has sunk two ships myself, that um
folks in the military need to understand, you know, the law of the sea, the Geneva Conventions, what the
law says. And I'm concerned that uh if there were in fact as
reported, you know, survivors clinging to a damaged vessel
that that could be, you know, over a line. I hope it's not the case. I truly
do. Should Admiral Brad have resisted that order? Again, I am, you know, not sure of all
the facts yet. Uh, I don't want to prejudge before we have all the
information. I think it's important for there to be an investigation. The inspector general, inspectors general of
DoD needs to investigate this. Unfortunately, an unqualified secretary of defense fired a bunch of them and got
rid of a bunch of lawyers. I mean, Pete Heg, do I have a lot of confidence in DoD? Well, hopefully we have, you know,
inspectors general there that will be doing an impartial investigation and I think we should wait for the results of
those investigations. Regarding your this press conference,
the investigation into your actions, have you spoken with um or DOJ or
anyone? Have there been any conversations, any interviews yet? You know, like I said in my remarks, I was
notified of a potential court marshal through a tweet by the Secretary of
Defense. I mean, think about that for a second. How ludicrous is that? That's the only notification that we have
received to date. And I think that says a lot about who Pete Sec Pete Heg is and
what he cares about. He doesn't care about the law. He doesn't care about process.
He he doesn't care about accountability. He cares about views
on his Twitter account. And that's a big problem. I mean, I want to ask you guys
this question. Have you ever in the history of our country seen a less
qualified or less professional Secretary of Defense? I cannot think of one.
Senator Kelly Nathaniel Scripts News. Um, are are you concerned about threats on your life? Have you stepped up your
personal security and of course the security of your wife? Hey, I'm no stranger. You know, Gabby
and I are no stranger to political violence. We get a lot of threats already. She continues to get threats. She gets threats on her life
more so today because what Donald Trump said about me 10 days ago that I should be hanged, that I should be executed,
the threats on us have obviously gone up. I'm not going to get into details about my personal security. We take
these threats very seriously and I take, you know, the threats from this
president seriously. How many times in our country's history have you heard a
president of the United States say that members of the Senate and the House
should be hanged and executed? I mean, I can't think of one.
Those words carry a lot of weight. The number of calls we threatening calls that we get into our office have
skyrocketed and they're very graphic. I mean, some of them were put not from my office, but
another member put them put them out there for people to hear. Ones we get are worse than that.
So, I take this seriously. But again, you know, that's why he does these
things because he thinks he can shut me up. I have first amendment rights. I'm a
United States senator. I am doing my job. I'm on the on the armed service of the intelligence committee. He ain't
going to shut me up. I mean, he he intimidates other people. I'm not intimidated by Donald Trump or
Pete Hexath or anybody else. Thank you, Senator Nicole Kelly with CBS
News. Are you aware just back on Venezuel are you aware of whether or not the secretary has had and secretary hex
is if he's had any conversations with any members of the armed services committee and in terms of these calls to
investigate do you believe the secretary and admiral Bradley should appear before
they absolutely should appear you know I've talked to the chairman of our services about it and the ranking member
they should absolutely appear I'm not so confident they will this is not an admin administration that tends to follow any
norms. Um, but we need to get to the bottom of
this of what happened. And um, we are not Russia and Iraq. I'm really
concerned if the reporting is correct. Again, I hope the reporting about this
incident is not accurate. What the White House said today actually indicated it
might be, but we're going to have to see. Going back to the Dut matter, are you
considering any legal action for the threats of being court marshaled or any of the threats of investigations?
You mean like me suing Donald Trump for what he said? I think what he said about us is dangerous.
It's ridiculous. It is a violation of our constitutional rights as Americans
and our rights as senators to do our job. And he's trying to intimidate us. But I have not considered that not not
at this point. Yeah. Thank you. Secretary,
do you see this as fundamentally first amendment issue for you that you want to
highlight against the president who's trying to silence you and how do you see
the whole process playing out? Well, again, this isn't really about me
and that's why I think people are kind of got this a little bit off here. It's not about
me. It's not about the other five members in the video. It's not about Alyssa Slacken,
Chris Duzio, Chrissy Hulahan, Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander. It's not
about us. This is about a president who doesn't want anybody to say anything
that he does not like. I don't think he understands the Constitution.
I'm serious about this. I think he is ignorant to the constitution and the rule of law and he just wants to silence
us and it starts with us and that's one of the reasons people say well why wouldn't you like just you know back off
because this isn't about me this is about what he will do next who's he going to go after next which service
member you know which government employee which citizen who decides to
say something that this president doesn't like and then he goes goes after
them. In my case with the Secretary of Defense, who knows what's next with the attorney general. I mean, this DOJ has
been just, you know, attacking people for all kinds of stuff. And what's next?
Our first amendment rights ain't happening.
Yeah. No, the Washington Post. Um, can you tell us anything more about the FBI
involvement in the inquiry that you and the other lawmakers appear in video schedule with them?
We haven't heard all that much. We've got we got notified. I think I think the better question is what is their
motivation? Like did this come from the FBI? Did the do you do you guys think the FBI they went into their like you
know meeting that morning and said of all the stuff that's going on in the country right now we got to get right on
top of this these guys said something the president didn't like and now we've
got to do something about it or do you think it's possible but the president told his FBI director to tell the FBI
agents to reach out to these guys so I think this is a good question for you
all of you in here should asking the FBI those questions. I don't have the answers to them. Yeah.
Can you tell us anything more about the the Senate Armed Services Committee's inquiry into the the September 2nd
strike, the nature of the request for information submitted, what information has been sent back from DoD so far in
your conversations with the chairman? Well, we had a brief on the first three strikes. Um,
and and I have said this, you know, before 10 days ago that the, you know,
they're tying themselves in knots trying to explain why this entire operation is legal. And I imagine eventually,
I hope you have an opportunity to see the legal argument that they made
to do this. It's important for the American people to see it.
um we have to get folks before the committee and you know that process
might take a little while. Um but I ultimately think we're going to get to the bottom of this and again if what
seems to happen actually happened I'm I'm really worried about our service members. I I I I was I was talking about
this from the beginning of this operation that the thing that I am most concerned about
is the very difficult situations that this secretary of defense is going to
put service members into. And it's because this guy is so unqualified for
the job. I mean, think about this. He runs around on a stage talking about
lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. We
have the most competent, capable military this planet has ever seen by
far. That's not the message that needs to
come from the Secretary of Defense. The message should be about what's our
what's our mission and accountability and the rule of law and training and let
me make sure you're equipped to do really hard jobs. Let me give you all the tools you need to do something that
often is an impossible mission. And instead he runs around on a stage like
he's a 12-year-old playing an army. And it is ridiculous. It is embarrassing
and I I I can't imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this
job. One of the most important jobs in our country in my view after the
president of the United States. It is the next most important job. He is in
the National Command Authority for nuclear weapons. And last night he's
putting out on the internet turtles with rocket propelled grenades killing.
I mean, have you seen this? This is the Secretary of Defense. This is not a serious person. He should have been
fired after Signalgate and then every single day after that.
ABC News. Just to put a finer point on it, because you were quite vocal about the sort of flimsy legality that was
being offered during the briefings, were these sort of strikes that are now in the news, what you were making reference
to when you posted that video telling members of the military that they needed to feel okay just obeying orders that
they felt based on who this president is and who the secretary of defense is is and
specifically things that the president has said in the past and things he was
talking about doing in the future. Let me give you an example. 2016, he's talking about something on a debate
stage that was clearly illegal and he was reminded by Brett Bearer from Fox News that that would be an illegal
order. Military won't do that. You know what the president's response was to that? The military will not refuse my
orders. Implying that even if they are illegal, they will not refuse them. He's also
talked about shooting protesters in the legs. Then he's talking about deploying more troops to American cities and using
those cities as training grounds. Do you know what that means? That means using
the American people for the military to train on. So we were looking forward to
try to head something off at the pass that could have been really, really bad.
So it wasn't about this specific thing. Yeah.
Jennifer with newsroom. The NDAA conference report is set to come out later this week over the weekend early
next week. In addition to that, you all have not yet conferenced out the defense appropriations bill for the current
fiscal year. Do you see either of those as options for you and other lawmakers concerned about the defense department,
the actions in Venezuela, and other situations to address those legislatively? the NBA or defense
program. Well, I think it could be if we could get bipartisan support to do something like that. Sure. That's sometimes
challenging because, you know, remember my Republican colleagues, not all of
them, but most of them are fearful of this president. They do not want to cross him. I mean, they see what just
happened to me. I said something that he did not like and he said I will be
hanged, executed, prosecuted. He doesn't even have the order right.
Yeah. Senator Michael with MS. Now, you mentioned earlier that the video was
meant to tell service members something that's already law that they're not required to obey to to act on legal
orders. Since it already is the law and presumably service members are aware of the law, why didn't the six of you guys
feel it was necessary to make the video? Well, I think it's good for people to get a reminder and we wanted to show
that we had their back and we understood the situation they were in. Pretty simple. And we said something that is in
the uniform code of military justice according to the law of armed combat.
Um, you know, we stated something pretty simple. every every service member doesn't hear these reminders as
frequently as other service members. So it was we felt it was important to say under the circumstances.
Uh right here I'll come to you next. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Senator Joe with the Associated Press. When you participated
in the video, did you expect that the president would respond? Is that part of your expectation?
We did a video before that he did not respond to. I I was really surprised
that he responded at all. And I thought if he was going to respond
to what I just said when I gave my remarks, I thought he would have said, "Of course, members of the military
shouldn't follow illegal orders." So when he said, you I was sitting in the
skiff next to Alyssa Slacken, by the way, when somebody comes in with a little piece piece of paper and it says,
I could see what it said on it as it was handed to her. President just called for your execution.
She leaves the room. Five minutes later, she comes back. She says to me, "He's called for your execution, too." That
was not the response we expected. Senator Lisa from PBS. Two questions. As
you say, you're still gathering the facts. Still not clear exactly what happened here, but if the Secretary of
Defense did issue an order to kill people after on a second strike like
this, um, is that an impeachable offense? taking apart the numbers in the house but in theory is that a
potentially individual offense to you and then second a shift healthare short
time here to figure out what's going to happen in healthcare just what's your involvement right now in talks where
does that stand well you know on the on on the first question I think that's a question for
attorneys I am not an attorney I don't pretend to be one um
but only senators and members that is true I of course I I do not know
the specifics, you know, on that part, you know, of the law about impeachment.
And again, let me remind folks that we're in the early days of this and I think it's important to get all the
facts for we'd understand exactly what happened. Again, I hope what is being
reported is not the case. Uh, but there needs to be an investigation and we are
a country of laws. You know, despite the apparent situation we're in with a
president of the United States who, in my opinion, does not respect the law. We're a country of laws. We got to hold
people accountable on the healthc care, you know, situation. We've got we've got some time. Uh I'd like to see a
bipartisan solution because millions of my constituents, the people I represent in Arizona and millions of more people
across the country are not going to be able to afford their healthcare. and they're one accident or illness away
from bankruptcy. People lose their health care, they die. We can fix this. We have time to fix
this. We know what to do. But again, doesn't seem the president of the United States wants to do anything on this. If
he wants to help the American people, he should engage with the United States Congress on fixing this spiking of
premiums, fixing this issue. Yeah. Have you
public media. Have you received messages of support, public or private, from your
Republican colleagues? Yes. And some of it's public. Can you tell us a bit about
Well, I mean there some people put out statements. Um, and I got some private
calls which I will not get into, but there are some, you know, you could
Google it. There are some, you know, positive, but
we're in an unfortunate period here where we have a president that does not like to be crossed.
Uh, and he I mean, if he's going to say to a US senator that you should be
executed for what you say, that sends a very chilling message, not
only through the United States Senate and the House, to Republicans, but across the entire nation.
Thank you, Senator Ryan of Fox News Radio. I wanted to see whether it's the FBI or the Department of War. You know,
a lot of them are requesting hearings or investigations with you. Are you planning to cooperate if that is the
case? I will follow the law. Yeah. Senator Jim with Boston. You mentioned
that some of your Republican colleagues have been bullied by president. with regards to the folks rights in the
Caribbean. What's your level of confidence that this investigation in the Senate Armed Services Committee will
go forward? I have confidence, tremendous confidence in the chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, Roger Wicker, Senator from Mississippi, and the ranking member Jack Reid. And I I've spoken to him about
this, and I know he's going to try to do a thorough job. Where I don't have a lot of confidence is in the secretary of
defense and what he has done to this department, firing JAG officers, firing inspectors
general. He's decimated it. Uh I mean firing people in the leadership of DoD
just because of the color of their skin or if they were a woman. So I have I
have I have about zero confidence in the Secretary of Defense. I have tremendous confidence in the chairman of the armed
services committee. Yeah.
[Music] Senator Shots tweeted this afternoon said PsF needs to testify in the month
of December before we pass a defense authorization. And I'm just curious as a member of armed services, do you agree
with that approach? Should Democrats be open to potentially, you know, holding up NDA to leverage
information process. I spent 25 years in the United United States Navy. I understand the importance
of the defense bill and the programs that we authorize and the changes we make the policy through that piece of
legislation. I I've talked to Senator Shots and we'll
continue to talk about this, but I in general my view, you know, on this is
we've got to be very thoughtful about how we handle the process of the defense
bill. Yes. Yeah. Just to clarify, you were not brief on
the double tap of the first strike. another group included that if he will
not testify will you call on of South K to come in and testify and then lastly
on Venezuela should the United States inside Venezuelan territory do you think
that so I'm going to have a conversation with the chairman and the ranking member about who specifically you know we bring
in to testify whether we do it in public or not I would generally prefer public
hearing we should probably do both, you know, one in a classified setting, one publicly so the American people could
see I'm still trying to figure out the justification that Donald Trump has uh
if he was to, you know, conduct kinetic strikes into Venezuela. What's the goal?
Why hasn't he communicated this to the American people? That's the job of the president, to lay out a case before we
go to war. And if it is about removing
uh Maduro, I mean, how do you square that with pardoning Juan Hernandez who
is basically the same guy from a different country who got sentenced to 45 years in prison and he's barely been
there. He's probably hasn't even gotten settled in yet and the president's going to release him. Doesn't make any sense.
And I'll tell you what, regime change as a policy of the United States generally
in our history has not worked out well. Think of South Vietnam. Think of the Bay of Pigs, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
It results in the deaths of US service members without the intended outcome.
And in this case, I don't even think we know the intended outcome. president needs to make a case to the
American people when he is about to put thousands of American men and women in
harm's way. This is not the way to manage the US military. Hey, I want to thank all of you for spending the time
here today. I'm sorry the room is so warm in here, but we'll uh we'll cool it down next time. Thank you. Appreciate
[Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
Hook Global
Dec 2, 2025 UNITED STATES
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly on Monday (December 1) said death threats against him had increased as he renewed his critique of President Trump amid threats by the White House to recall Kelly to active Navy duty to prosecute him under military law for urging troops to disobey illegal orders.
Transcript
Good afternoon everybody. Seems like most of you guys are here.
Um and thank you for taking the time. Uh let me get started. So throughout his
entire career in business, reality TV, and politics, Donald Trump has had one
and only one play, bullying his opponents into silence.
He did it as a failed casino owner who bankrupted his properties and screwed
over his contractors. He did it as a reality TV host known for
firing people. And he's done it as as president who
tries every day to intimidate people with no regards for the rights or
well-being of the American people. I'll say this for the guy.
While he's never seemed to do much else right for most of Donald Trump's career,
bullying people has worked out for him. But not now
because I won't let it happen.
The American people won't let it happen. President Trump is trying to silence me,
threatening to kill me for saying what is true.
And he sent his secretary of defense after me. And it's not going to work.
Here's how we got here. A week and a half ago, Senator Slaken
and I along with others who also served in the military and the intelligence communities, we released a video with a
simple message to service members that they must refuse illegal orders.
Nothing was controversial about that.
Everyone must follow the law. No one may break the law. This is pretty
basic stuff. Seeing that video,
here's how any other president would have responded.
They would have said two words, of course.
But that's not how this president responded. We become so accustomed to Donald
Trump's behavior that it is worth emphasizing.
The president of the United States said that two US senators and four members of
the House of Representatives should be arrested, hanged, executed
for something we said, for something that is true.
My family knows the cost of political violence. My wife Gabby was shot in the
head and nearly died while speaking with her constituents.
The president should understand this too. He has been the target of political
violence himself. The speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman, and
her husband were murdered in their home this year. The governor of Pennsylvania, Josh
Shapiro, had his house firebombed this year. Then Charlie Kirk was assassinated
at Utah Valley University, a place I visited just a few weeks ago with Republican Senator John Curtis.
Faced with a wave like this, every other president we have ever had in the
history of this nation would have tried to heal the country.
But we all know Donald Trump. He uses every single opportunity to
divide us and that's dangerous.
The president's words carry tremendous weight. People listen to him
and he knows that. And that's exactly why he does what he
does. He makes these threats to silence
people. And if that doesn't work, he abuses his power to intimidate people.
And with the consent of Republicans in the United States Senate, he has surrounded himself with people like the
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsath, who will do whatever he says, with no
question, no matter what. Trump and Hegsth, they care more about
publicity than they do about the rule of law. That's how I ended up finding out via a
tweet that the Secretary of Defense was ordering an investigation into me.
The same Secretary of Defense who has from the moment he was nominated has
been historically unqualified for this position.
the same secretary of defense who is reported to have ordered a second strike to kill
shipwreck survivors in the Caribbean. If there is anyone who needs to answer
questions in public and under oath, it is Pete Hgsath.
It's a dangerous moment for the United States of America when the president and his loyalists use every lever of power
to silence United States senators for speaking up. But we all know that this isn't about me
and it's not about the others in that video. They're trying to send a message
to retired service members, to government employees, to members of the military, to elected
officials, and to all Americans who are thinking about speaking up.
You better keep your mouth shut or else.
This has been a singular focus of President Trump's second term.
Not addressing costs, not creating jobs, intimidating people, and going after the
people he views as his political opponents. He's done it to companies.
You better write a check to build my ballroom or I might not approve your merger.
He's done it with universities. You better fire your president or I'll pull your research funding.
He's even done it to late night hosts. You better not make jokes that I do not
like or I'll get you taken off the air and I'm going to take your company's
broadcast license. And he does it every week with Republicans in the House and the Senate.
You better tow the party line or I'll make sure you never get reelected.
Folks, this comes at a cost. And not only to American companies,
colleges, and comedians. It damages every American's freedom of speech and
the balance of powers that form the foundation of our democracy.
Because when Republicans in Congress are too afraid to dis disagree with this president, it means that his bad ideas
go unchallenged. He has slapped reckless tariffs on
countries across the globe, skyrocketing the cost of everything from groceries to school supplies.
Republicans historically, well, at least a year ago, they hated terrorists.
But when it comes to voting to undo them, they are too afraid of Donald Trump.
So Americans pay more for just about everything because of spineless
politicians. It's the same with health care costs.
There are Republicans in the House and the Senate who really want to do something to prevent these health care
premiums from spiking for millions of Americans. The solutions are simple,
but President Trump says he doesn't want to, so nothing happens. Nothing except a
government shutdown. It goes on and on.
The president has gone too far. Everybody needs to wake up.
The occupant of the Oval Office is ignorant to the Constitution
and has no regard for the rule of law. Trying to silence me in proposing to
court marshall me in threatening to kill me for fighting back when our democracy
demands that we must fight back. President Trump has crossed the line.
And this time it's not going to work. I will not be intimidated by this
president. I am not going to be silenced by this president or the people around
him because I've given too much in service to this country to back down to
this guy. In 1991, when Donald Trump was driving the Taj
Mahal casino into bankruptcy, I was getting shot at over Iraq and
Kuwait. In 2001, after Donald Trump said that the
collapse of the Twin Towers meant he now owned the tallest skyscraper in
Manhattan. I was carrying flags honoring 9/11
victims into space on a rocket ship. In 2003,
when Donald Trump was writing birthday greetings to the monster Jeffrey Epstein,
I was the first on the scene to recover the bodies of my fellow astronauts who died when Space Shuttle Colombia
exploded during re-entry in 2011.
When Trump was hosting a reality show and pedalling conspiracy theories
against President Barack Obama, I was sitting next to my wife's hospital bed
as she recovered from a gunshot wound to the head.
My point is this. I've been through a lot worse in service to my country. The president and Pete
Hegsath are not going to silence me. They aren't going to keep me from
speaking out and they're not going to keep me from doing my job.
Enough of the bullying, enough of the intimidation, enough of the threats,
enough of your nonsense doesn't help anyone in our country
afford their groceries or pay their medical bills. and it erodess the rights
of every American. My job is to fight for them, to stand up
for the Constitution, and nothing nothing is going to stop me from doing
my job. Thank you. And I'll take some questions.
Hold on a second. Give me give me give me that that folder
there. Just sit this down here. Can you I know it's Manu from CNN, but
for everybody just starting with you, just say who you are. You know what? Uh
what station? Um uh the White House said today that Admiral Bradley gave the
order for that second strike on the Venezuelan boat. They also said this was a lawful strike yesterday. You said the
second strike could be a war crime. Do you think that Bradley committed a war?
Let me let me just start Manu by saying that there needs to be an investigation.
We need to pull some of these members of DoD and the military into the armed
services committees in the in the House and the Senate. You know, that's what the what the White House is saying. I
hope what has been reported is not accurate. I have such I rever members of
the United States Navy, especially special operators, Navy Seals. These are the most highly trained, you know,
individuals in our military. I have deep deep respect for them. So I hope what we are hearing uh is not not accurate. I
will say though, you know, as somebody who has sunk two ships myself, that um
folks in the military need to understand, you know, the law of the sea, the Geneva Conventions, what the
law says. And I'm concerned that uh if there were in fact as
reported, you know, survivors clinging to a damaged vessel
that that could be, you know, over a line. I hope it's not the case. I truly
do. Should Admiral Brad have resisted that order? Again, I am, you know, not sure of all
the facts yet. Uh, I don't want to prejudge before we have all the
information. I think it's important for there to be an investigation. The inspector general, inspectors general of
DoD needs to investigate this. Unfortunately, an unqualified secretary of defense fired a bunch of them and got
rid of a bunch of lawyers. I mean, Pete Heg, do I have a lot of confidence in DoD? Well, hopefully we have, you know,
inspectors general there that will be doing an impartial investigation and I think we should wait for the results of
those investigations. Regarding your this press conference,
the investigation into your actions, have you spoken with um or DOJ or
anyone? Have there been any conversations, any interviews yet? You know, like I said in my remarks, I was
notified of a potential court marshal through a tweet by the Secretary of
Defense. I mean, think about that for a second. How ludicrous is that? That's the only notification that we have
received to date. And I think that says a lot about who Pete Sec Pete Heg is and
what he cares about. He doesn't care about the law. He doesn't care about process.
He he doesn't care about accountability. He cares about views
on his Twitter account. And that's a big problem. I mean, I want to ask you guys
this question. Have you ever in the history of our country seen a less
qualified or less professional Secretary of Defense? I cannot think of one.
Senator Kelly Nathaniel Scripts News. Um, are are you concerned about threats on your life? Have you stepped up your
personal security and of course the security of your wife? Hey, I'm no stranger. You know, Gabby
and I are no stranger to political violence. We get a lot of threats already. She continues to get threats. She gets threats on her life
more so today because what Donald Trump said about me 10 days ago that I should be hanged, that I should be executed,
the threats on us have obviously gone up. I'm not going to get into details about my personal security. We take
these threats very seriously and I take, you know, the threats from this
president seriously. How many times in our country's history have you heard a
president of the United States say that members of the Senate and the House
should be hanged and executed? I mean, I can't think of one.
Those words carry a lot of weight. The number of calls we threatening calls that we get into our office have
skyrocketed and they're very graphic. I mean, some of them were put not from my office, but
another member put them put them out there for people to hear. Ones we get are worse than that.
So, I take this seriously. But again, you know, that's why he does these
things because he thinks he can shut me up. I have first amendment rights. I'm a
United States senator. I am doing my job. I'm on the on the armed service of the intelligence committee. He ain't
going to shut me up. I mean, he he intimidates other people. I'm not intimidated by Donald Trump or
Pete Hexath or anybody else. Thank you, Senator Nicole Kelly with CBS
News. Are you aware just back on Venezuel are you aware of whether or not the secretary has had and secretary hex
is if he's had any conversations with any members of the armed services committee and in terms of these calls to
investigate do you believe the secretary and admiral Bradley should appear before
they absolutely should appear you know I've talked to the chairman of our services about it and the ranking member
they should absolutely appear I'm not so confident they will this is not an admin administration that tends to follow any
norms. Um, but we need to get to the bottom of
this of what happened. And um, we are not Russia and Iraq. I'm really
concerned if the reporting is correct. Again, I hope the reporting about this
incident is not accurate. What the White House said today actually indicated it
might be, but we're going to have to see. Going back to the Dut matter, are you
considering any legal action for the threats of being court marshaled or any of the threats of investigations?
You mean like me suing Donald Trump for what he said? I think what he said about us is dangerous.
It's ridiculous. It is a violation of our constitutional rights as Americans
and our rights as senators to do our job. And he's trying to intimidate us. But I have not considered that not not
at this point. Yeah. Thank you. Secretary,
do you see this as fundamentally first amendment issue for you that you want to
highlight against the president who's trying to silence you and how do you see
the whole process playing out? Well, again, this isn't really about me
and that's why I think people are kind of got this a little bit off here. It's not about
me. It's not about the other five members in the video. It's not about Alyssa Slacken,
Chris Duzio, Chrissy Hulahan, Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander. It's not
about us. This is about a president who doesn't want anybody to say anything
that he does not like. I don't think he understands the Constitution.
I'm serious about this. I think he is ignorant to the constitution and the rule of law and he just wants to silence
us and it starts with us and that's one of the reasons people say well why wouldn't you like just you know back off
because this isn't about me this is about what he will do next who's he going to go after next which service
member you know which government employee which citizen who decides to
say something that this president doesn't like and then he goes goes after
them. In my case with the Secretary of Defense, who knows what's next with the attorney general. I mean, this DOJ has
been just, you know, attacking people for all kinds of stuff. And what's next?
Our first amendment rights ain't happening.
Yeah. No, the Washington Post. Um, can you tell us anything more about the FBI
involvement in the inquiry that you and the other lawmakers appear in video schedule with them?
We haven't heard all that much. We've got we got notified. I think I think the better question is what is their
motivation? Like did this come from the FBI? Did the do you do you guys think the FBI they went into their like you
know meeting that morning and said of all the stuff that's going on in the country right now we got to get right on
top of this these guys said something the president didn't like and now we've
got to do something about it or do you think it's possible but the president told his FBI director to tell the FBI
agents to reach out to these guys so I think this is a good question for you
all of you in here should asking the FBI those questions. I don't have the answers to them. Yeah.
Can you tell us anything more about the the Senate Armed Services Committee's inquiry into the the September 2nd
strike, the nature of the request for information submitted, what information has been sent back from DoD so far in
your conversations with the chairman? Well, we had a brief on the first three strikes. Um,
and and I have said this, you know, before 10 days ago that the, you know,
they're tying themselves in knots trying to explain why this entire operation is legal. And I imagine eventually,
I hope you have an opportunity to see the legal argument that they made
to do this. It's important for the American people to see it.
um we have to get folks before the committee and you know that process
might take a little while. Um but I ultimately think we're going to get to the bottom of this and again if what
seems to happen actually happened I'm I'm really worried about our service members. I I I I was I was talking about
this from the beginning of this operation that the thing that I am most concerned about
is the very difficult situations that this secretary of defense is going to
put service members into. And it's because this guy is so unqualified for
the job. I mean, think about this. He runs around on a stage talking about
lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. We
have the most competent, capable military this planet has ever seen by
far. That's not the message that needs to
come from the Secretary of Defense. The message should be about what's our
what's our mission and accountability and the rule of law and training and let
me make sure you're equipped to do really hard jobs. Let me give you all the tools you need to do something that
often is an impossible mission. And instead he runs around on a stage like
he's a 12-year-old playing an army. And it is ridiculous. It is embarrassing
and I I I can't imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this
job. One of the most important jobs in our country in my view after the
president of the United States. It is the next most important job. He is in
the National Command Authority for nuclear weapons. And last night he's
putting out on the internet turtles with rocket propelled grenades killing.
I mean, have you seen this? This is the Secretary of Defense. This is not a serious person. He should have been
fired after Signalgate and then every single day after that.
ABC News. Just to put a finer point on it, because you were quite vocal about the sort of flimsy legality that was
being offered during the briefings, were these sort of strikes that are now in the news, what you were making reference
to when you posted that video telling members of the military that they needed to feel okay just obeying orders that
they felt based on who this president is and who the secretary of defense is is and
specifically things that the president has said in the past and things he was
talking about doing in the future. Let me give you an example. 2016, he's talking about something on a debate
stage that was clearly illegal and he was reminded by Brett Bearer from Fox News that that would be an illegal
order. Military won't do that. You know what the president's response was to that? The military will not refuse my
orders. Implying that even if they are illegal, they will not refuse them. He's also
talked about shooting protesters in the legs. Then he's talking about deploying more troops to American cities and using
those cities as training grounds. Do you know what that means? That means using
the American people for the military to train on. So we were looking forward to
try to head something off at the pass that could have been really, really bad.
So it wasn't about this specific thing. Yeah.
Jennifer with newsroom. The NDAA conference report is set to come out later this week over the weekend early
next week. In addition to that, you all have not yet conferenced out the defense appropriations bill for the current
fiscal year. Do you see either of those as options for you and other lawmakers concerned about the defense department,
the actions in Venezuela, and other situations to address those legislatively? the NBA or defense
program. Well, I think it could be if we could get bipartisan support to do something like that. Sure. That's sometimes
challenging because, you know, remember my Republican colleagues, not all of
them, but most of them are fearful of this president. They do not want to cross him. I mean, they see what just
happened to me. I said something that he did not like and he said I will be
hanged, executed, prosecuted. He doesn't even have the order right.
Yeah. Senator Michael with MS. Now, you mentioned earlier that the video was
meant to tell service members something that's already law that they're not required to obey to to act on legal
orders. Since it already is the law and presumably service members are aware of the law, why didn't the six of you guys
feel it was necessary to make the video? Well, I think it's good for people to get a reminder and we wanted to show
that we had their back and we understood the situation they were in. Pretty simple. And we said something that is in
the uniform code of military justice according to the law of armed combat.
Um, you know, we stated something pretty simple. every every service member doesn't hear these reminders as
frequently as other service members. So it was we felt it was important to say under the circumstances.
Uh right here I'll come to you next. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Senator Joe with the Associated Press. When you participated
in the video, did you expect that the president would respond? Is that part of your expectation?
We did a video before that he did not respond to. I I was really surprised
that he responded at all. And I thought if he was going to respond
to what I just said when I gave my remarks, I thought he would have said, "Of course, members of the military
shouldn't follow illegal orders." So when he said, you I was sitting in the
skiff next to Alyssa Slacken, by the way, when somebody comes in with a little piece piece of paper and it says,
I could see what it said on it as it was handed to her. President just called for your execution.
She leaves the room. Five minutes later, she comes back. She says to me, "He's called for your execution, too." That
was not the response we expected. Senator Lisa from PBS. Two questions. As
you say, you're still gathering the facts. Still not clear exactly what happened here, but if the Secretary of
Defense did issue an order to kill people after on a second strike like
this, um, is that an impeachable offense? taking apart the numbers in the house but in theory is that a
potentially individual offense to you and then second a shift healthare short
time here to figure out what's going to happen in healthcare just what's your involvement right now in talks where
does that stand well you know on the on on the first question I think that's a question for
attorneys I am not an attorney I don't pretend to be one um
but only senators and members that is true I of course I I do not know
the specifics, you know, on that part, you know, of the law about impeachment.
And again, let me remind folks that we're in the early days of this and I think it's important to get all the
facts for we'd understand exactly what happened. Again, I hope what is being
reported is not the case. Uh, but there needs to be an investigation and we are
a country of laws. You know, despite the apparent situation we're in with a
president of the United States who, in my opinion, does not respect the law. We're a country of laws. We got to hold
people accountable on the healthc care, you know, situation. We've got we've got some time. Uh I'd like to see a
bipartisan solution because millions of my constituents, the people I represent in Arizona and millions of more people
across the country are not going to be able to afford their healthcare. and they're one accident or illness away
from bankruptcy. People lose their health care, they die. We can fix this. We have time to fix
this. We know what to do. But again, doesn't seem the president of the United States wants to do anything on this. If
he wants to help the American people, he should engage with the United States Congress on fixing this spiking of
premiums, fixing this issue. Yeah. Have you
public media. Have you received messages of support, public or private, from your
Republican colleagues? Yes. And some of it's public. Can you tell us a bit about
Well, I mean there some people put out statements. Um, and I got some private
calls which I will not get into, but there are some, you know, you could
Google it. There are some, you know, positive, but
we're in an unfortunate period here where we have a president that does not like to be crossed.
Uh, and he I mean, if he's going to say to a US senator that you should be
executed for what you say, that sends a very chilling message, not
only through the United States Senate and the House, to Republicans, but across the entire nation.
Thank you, Senator Ryan of Fox News Radio. I wanted to see whether it's the FBI or the Department of War. You know,
a lot of them are requesting hearings or investigations with you. Are you planning to cooperate if that is the
case? I will follow the law. Yeah. Senator Jim with Boston. You mentioned
that some of your Republican colleagues have been bullied by president. with regards to the folks rights in the
Caribbean. What's your level of confidence that this investigation in the Senate Armed Services Committee will
go forward? I have confidence, tremendous confidence in the chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, Roger Wicker, Senator from Mississippi, and the ranking member Jack Reid. And I I've spoken to him about
this, and I know he's going to try to do a thorough job. Where I don't have a lot of confidence is in the secretary of
defense and what he has done to this department, firing JAG officers, firing inspectors
general. He's decimated it. Uh I mean firing people in the leadership of DoD
just because of the color of their skin or if they were a woman. So I have I
have I have about zero confidence in the Secretary of Defense. I have tremendous confidence in the chairman of the armed
services committee. Yeah.
[Music] Senator Shots tweeted this afternoon said PsF needs to testify in the month
of December before we pass a defense authorization. And I'm just curious as a member of armed services, do you agree
with that approach? Should Democrats be open to potentially, you know, holding up NDA to leverage
information process. I spent 25 years in the United United States Navy. I understand the importance
of the defense bill and the programs that we authorize and the changes we make the policy through that piece of
legislation. I I've talked to Senator Shots and we'll
continue to talk about this, but I in general my view, you know, on this is
we've got to be very thoughtful about how we handle the process of the defense
bill. Yes. Yeah. Just to clarify, you were not brief on
the double tap of the first strike. another group included that if he will
not testify will you call on of South K to come in and testify and then lastly
on Venezuela should the United States inside Venezuelan territory do you think
that so I'm going to have a conversation with the chairman and the ranking member about who specifically you know we bring
in to testify whether we do it in public or not I would generally prefer public
hearing we should probably do both, you know, one in a classified setting, one publicly so the American people could
see I'm still trying to figure out the justification that Donald Trump has uh
if he was to, you know, conduct kinetic strikes into Venezuela. What's the goal?
Why hasn't he communicated this to the American people? That's the job of the president, to lay out a case before we
go to war. And if it is about removing
uh Maduro, I mean, how do you square that with pardoning Juan Hernandez who
is basically the same guy from a different country who got sentenced to 45 years in prison and he's barely been
there. He's probably hasn't even gotten settled in yet and the president's going to release him. Doesn't make any sense.
And I'll tell you what, regime change as a policy of the United States generally
in our history has not worked out well. Think of South Vietnam. Think of the Bay of Pigs, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
It results in the deaths of US service members without the intended outcome.
And in this case, I don't even think we know the intended outcome. president needs to make a case to the
American people when he is about to put thousands of American men and women in
harm's way. This is not the way to manage the US military. Hey, I want to thank all of you for spending the time
here today. I'm sorry the room is so warm in here, but we'll uh we'll cool it down next time. Thank you. Appreciate
[Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Sat Dec 06, 2025 4:53 am
MAGA Parents CONFRONTED by Kids… it BACKFIRES!
Adam Mockler
Nov 29, 2025 The Adam Mockler Show
Chris Mowrey (@chrisdmowrey) filling in for Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network breaks down a stunning podcast recording from @TheNecessaryConversation where a son and daughter confront their MAGA parents. The conversation exposes the terrifying depth of Trump's hold on his base, as the parents defend Trump calling a reporter "piggy," accuse their own daughter of making up a story about Trump harassing her in an elevator, and explicitly state they would support Trump ordering the military to execute American citizens because "'there has to be a reason'".
Transcript
All right, today is going to be a good
time. I have lined up several clips with
the help of Adam Mockler that I have not
seen before and I am going to react to
this podcast that's essentially like a,
you know, a son who is talking to his
MAGA parents about Trump. And it's like
family therapy mixed with politics where
he's like pressing his MAGA family on
how bad Trump is. And I think it gets
pretty intense. So, we're going to take
a watch. It's going to be interesting.
Um, really quickly, if you haven't seen
me before, my name is Chris Mauy. I'm
filling in for Adam Mach on the Adam
Mockler channel. If you enjoy this type
of content, the link to my YouTube
channel is in the description down
below. It means so much if you check out
and make one of these videos on my
channel, too. So, if you want to check
it out, again, link in the description.
Uh, on this channel, trying to build
something big to punch back against MAGA
Media. We upload so many videos every
single day here on the Adam channel. So,
if you're not subscribed already, it
would mean a lot. Join the community.
Help us grow. You guys are the best.
Now, I want to preface before we start.
Again, this is what Trump has done to
the brains of millions of people across
the country. Now, I want to preface one
thing before we start. Again, I have not
seen these clips, but I've been told
they are very bad. And so, remember, and
I'll do the same as we watch this.
Millions of Americans every single day
are thinking like this because of Donald
Trump. All right, let's start with the
first clip.
Was a reporter asking about the Epstein
files and he called her piggy. You think
that is appropriate behavior, Dad, for a
US president?
Sure.
Okay. Mom,
it probably wasn't nice to say piggy.
Well, nice.
Did it Did it harm her?
Did it harm her? This is the president
of the United States calling a female
reporter piggy.
Did it harm her? It it harmed the entire
country because it sets the example that
not only a man but the president can
talk to women that way.
It's not nice. Shouldn't have said it.
It's not funny. It's disgusting.
It is funny.
What What's the humor in it to you, Dad?
Well, I would have called her worse than
that. So, I thought she got off easy.
Why would you have called her worse than
that? because she's giving him crap and
he's the president of the United States.
As Haley said,
the it's real rich that uh Donald Trump
is calling anyone piggy.
I don't understand that.
I don't understand what she's asking
either.
That just sounded like bunch mumbling.
He's a pig in several ways. Do I need to
explain why?
Wow. Okay. What a stunning first clip.
So, I think this must be like the sister
or, you know, the daughter essentially.
It's it's a brother and a sister and
then their parents. Um, and it's a
podcast and they're pressing their MAGA
parents. And this is fairly recent.
Obviously, Donald Trump calling a
reporter Piggy and he says just
horrible, awful things about women. He's
been found liable for sexually abusing a
woman, a woman, excuse me. Um, and I I
think she said it so well in that clip
that it's like, why is the bar for
president of United States in effing
hell? It's like, yeah, I probably
shouldn't have said it. It's not nice.
This isn't like your uncle at
Thanksgiving dinner who, oh, I probably
shouldn't have said that. That wasn't
This is the leader of the United States
of America setting an example for
millions of people, children.
He's a leader. Act like a leader.
Unbelievable. Let's go to the next clip.
This is insane.
You cannot be this stupid. Jesus. No.
It's because you're in a cult.
What if Donald Trump says, "I want you
to carpet bomb Oklahoma City." Everyone.
You think the Air Force should carry
that out?
Yes.
There might be a reason. We don't know.
This is insane.
You cannot be this stupid. Jesus Christ.
Oh my my. This podcast was going well
until that.
You just said it's cool. We levels
Oklahoma. You're like, "Yeah, [ __ ] it.
There must be a reason." Like, you
literally can't be that dumb.
You know what the problem is? Mom and I
don't believe he'll ever blow up
Oklahoma because we're on his side and
so is the whole state.
No, it's because you're in a cult.
You guys are worried and afraid because
you live in a state where it might
happen.
Okay. Let's theoretically say that does
happen. Let's say Trump sends in the
Marines to Los Angeles, California. And
let's say I'm out going to see a movie
on a weekend and he says, "Go into that
shopping mall
under a truck."
Quiet piggy. He says, "Go into that
shopping mall and everyone you see." And
let's say I get gunned down by the
Marines for just being at a mall.
Okay, number one. Let's just Let's just
take
Wait a minute. Mom. Mom, wait one
second. Wait one second. Dad, just Hang
on. Mom. Dad, you just said you are for
Donald Trump murdering me for no reason
and you would support that.
If he walks into a mall to people with
with military,
there has to be a reason.
There's a reason and I'm all for it. And
the people in Los Angeles, California
are as deserving of execution as the
[ __ ] in New York City. You're all
communists,
bro. This is a This is crazy.
Wow. Oh my god. I mean, I was ready for
like
I'm kind of sh I was ready for like MAGA
conspiracy. I was not ready for this
level. And again, I mean, I guess it
makes sense now why Adam told me to
preface that this is how millions of
Americans are thinking right now.
Because I mean, that is crazy. And
again, my first thought in my head as I
react to that is like the same people
who have spent so long screaming and
yelling that, you know, big government,
there's this big evil government coming
after us. Don't, you know, don't shred
on me. The government's, you know, far
too big, and we need to go back to
conservative values and small
government. Now, it's literally like, if
Donald Trump carpet bombs a city, if
Donald Trump murders my children, I just
I I trust the government. I don't need
any evidence. we they could just do it
and tell us, you know, uh Donald Trump
could say, "I have the evidence, but I'm
not telling anyone." And they would go,
"Okay, that's fine." Just like this
crazy blind trust of this growing
massive government. It's insane. Wow.
Okay, let's go to the next one.
That in he was a veteran and then he was
like thrown out there. He was in space.
What does that have to do with the price
of eggs? The space
because he's he's devoted his life to
this country. in any other country if he
would go on the TV and spout that [ __ ]
off he would be executed.
That's not true.
That's not true at all. He's a traitor.
Should uh members of military follow
unlawful orders?
Yes.
What?
They should follow any order that the
president gives the government.
That's wrong. Even if it breaks laws,
it will endanger other people if you
don't follow orders.
What if President Trump orders uh a a
squad of army guys to walk down the
street killing anyone they see? They
should do it.
Yes,
mom.
Yes.
What?
I don't even understand. Like, how can
you come to that conclusion? Sounds to
me like you lefties are now beginning to
fear the fact that the military is going
to get involved and your asses are
grass.
The dude the dad is literally like
happily and he did this in the last
clip. I guess I just didn't mention it
in my reaction that I mean he's like
calling for the execution of people in
blue cities and states and then when
we're talking about lawful orders he
just comes back to like I mean if Trump
does it there must be a reason. Sounds
like you're scared that
again there is no like this sedicious
six and all it's all BS right it's very
simple the military has should uphold
the constitution of the United States
right you don't nobody serves the
president and anybody in government
should always obviously have the
constitution and laws uh the founding of
our country at the top of their head if
Donald Trump gave an unlawful order you
should not follow it Right. That's
actually what you promised to uphold.
Your oath to the Constitution, not your
oath to some orange guy. Dude, this is
this is honestly stunning. All right,
let's go to the next one.
Remember the story Haley told of meeting
Donald Trump?
I you know what? I never remember her
telling me that story ever until she
told it.
Haley, please, for people who are new to
our show, please tell them this story. I
went to New York City in college like on
a study tour. Um we were like doing the
fashion district and all this [ __ ] and
part of our tour we were there for like
a week. We got to go to the Trump Towers
and as we are on the elevator thing it
opens, we still have to go up a level.
Donald Trump gets on the elevator with
us. Um,
I cannot remember exactly what happened,
but I remember him commenting. We're all
teenagers at this point, like
18-year-old freshman college students.
Um, and he commented on a lot of our
appearances,
like beautiful young women, like while
we're in the elevator with Donald Trump.
We are children. Like, you know what I
looked like at 18?
children.
I remember you telling us this story a
few years back, but I don't remember you
telling me about it when it happened.
When it really happened, did you?
Yeah, it was so traumatic. It took you
10 or 15 years to let us know.
They're accusing their child right now.
Bro, this podcast is crazy. I I shout
out to the people who do this podcast. I
imagine it's very difficult to share
this with the internet. But again, how
millions of Americans are think they are
accusing their daughter of of making
this up right now as if their daughter
is making up a story to make Trump look
bad. A story personal to her.
Like they literally have more loyalty to
Trump than their own children.
They Oh my god,
dude. Do you see? Wow. Wow.
How about it?
But did he touch you? Did he touch you
in any way? Did he grope you? Did he do
anything that was inappropriate?
Dude, what the hell? What the hell? Did
he touch you? Is insane.
Oh my god,
dude. He's He's in an elevator of like
teenagers talking. Can you listen to
your daughter? Oh my god.
He's saying you were all beautiful. You
think that's okay to be in an elevator
full of teenagers and comment on their
appearance that they're beautiful young
women?
First of all, I'd like to see a picture
of the whole group before I think he was
wrong.
Okay. So, you you just don't believe any
you don't even believe victims. So, why
are you even in a conversation?
Everybody's a liar to you.
There you go.
This is your daughter telling you she
and her fellow students were harassed by
Donald Trump and you're saying it didn't
happen.
How is that harass?
You guys are beautiful young women.
That's you pulling it out of your ass.
That's not harass.
Your daughter is telling you that that's
what happened and you're denying it.
You're ignoring her.
She's not telling me that. I I mean,
Haley, is that what you're saying?
That is what I'm saying.
Wow. I mean, it's so sad to and and I
know that a lot of people have
experiences with this. You can let me
know in the comments down below. Like,
again, just how I can't I can only
imagine I can't imagine, excuse me, how
hard it must be to be the children here.
Like, your just relationship with your
parents must deteriorate so much when
they're that I mean, they're in like a
literal state of psychosis.
suggesting that their daughter is making
up stories
uh to make Donald Trump look bad. I
mean, they have picked
they have picked a president over their
own children. They have picked someone
they've never met over their own
children. And they talk to their
children as if almost like I was
debating them on TikTok. Like they don't
they're like I don't know how to
describe it. Wow. Stunning. Okay. And I
do want to point out here that there are
so many reasons to know that Donald
Trump I mean it's endless that Donald
Trump very clearly treats women like
complete and total [ __ ] He's a
predator. Donald Trump is a predator,
right? Donald Trump has been found
liable for sexually abusing, excuse me,
for liable for sexually abusing a woman.
The judge in that case called Donald
Trump a rapist because that's what he
is. He's obviously been accused by
dozens of other women's women, excuse
me. He has bragged about walking into
the dressing room at his pageantss
because they begin while the girls are
undressing to quote inspect it, right?
Bragging that he owns the place so he
can walk back. These are teenagers,
underage girls. Obviously, Donald Trump
is best effing friends with Jeffrey
Epstein, right? It goes on and on. We've
heard the Hollywood Access take. You can
grab him by the blank. I mean, the guy
the evidence is
that Donald Trump is a president and is
absolutely even just the last few weeks
the way we've seen him talk to women.
It's not just a piggy comment, but he
said it now to multiple reporters. And
it's always interesting. It's
specifically women, right? And the way
he talks, it's so clear that he he in
private I I don't even want to think
about how he treats these individuals.
He's misogynistic as hell. He hates
women. He's a predator. He obviously is
an abuser. And it's honestly stunning.
All right, let's watch one more here and
we'll end off. Let me know in the
comments if you want me to make more
videos like this. I think I'll make one
on my channel. This podcast is crazy.
All right, let's take a listen.
Peter,
what?
Would you all please have courtesy to
listen to what I want to say and quit
laughing at me? I don't laugh at your
[ __ ]
You and dad make fun of us every week
constantly. I don't look at him as a
politician, but rather a man who
believed and tried to instill in others
the right of free speech, which is what
I'm trying to do right now as you laugh
in my face. That's what the necessary
conversation is all about, too. But when
you sit there and laugh, that's nervous
laughing. By the way, he loved to have
discussions with college kids to agree
or disagree in debates in a civilized.
Sounds like we're talking about Charlie
Kirk here. Just for the record,
fashion that made them think.
That's what everybody's That's what
everybody was afraid about. He was
turning our youth into thinking the
right way. I truly believe that he
debated these kids with dignity. He made
them think. They came to listen. Freedom
of speech is for all of us. And there
are but there are also consequences
to your freedom of speech. I do believe
he never brought harm to anyone. He
believed in God. He never called others
by wrong names.
remember you said that because I've got
a clip I'm going to show you.
Yeah. So, I do want to point out, you
know, in the beginning here, and again,
I I think what happened to Charlie C
truly tragic, absolutely tragic, awful
for our country, for for the people
there. Uh, and you know, I wishing
family well. She called him a civil
rights leader. No. And here's the thing.
It's possible to believe that what
happened to Charlie Kirk is tragic while
also agreeing that he spit racist,
hateful, awful um ideologies and things,
right? And he certainly was not a civil
rights leader. He's somebody who
actually said that Martin Luther King
was a uh bad guy is what he said. Take a
listen. Radical
view that the country made a mistake
when it passed the Civil Rights Act.
Also true. As we note in the piece, Kirk
has previously described Kirk as a hero
and a civil rights icon. It's true. I
used to be wrong. We note in our piece
that Kirk describes King as quote a bad
guy. It's true. And Kirk self-described
very, very radical
view that the country made a mistake
when it passed the Civil Rights Act.
Also true. As we note in the piece, Kirk
has previously described Kirk as a hero
and a civil rights icon. It's true. I
used to be wrong. What inspired Kirk to
shift his view on MLK? Why does Kirk
think that MLK is a bad guy? When Kirk
says that MLK says quote one good thing
he didn't believe, what does he mean by
that? Why does Kirk believe passing the
Civil Rights Act was a mistake? Now
again, apparently they don't listen to
the show because we do that at least
once a week, right?
I mean, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Here
the man who says that MK was a bad guy,
that MK that excuse me, we shouldn't
have passed uh the Civil Rights Act.
This is a civil rights leader according
to the mom of the podcast. Absolutely
not. Absolutely not. and he's bit a lot
of hateful, hateful things. Listen, let
me know if you want me to make more
videos like this. I'm honestly shell
shocked. This podcast is crazy. Once
again, my name is Chris Mauy, filling in
for Adam Mockler on the Adam Mockler
channel. There's a link to my YouTube
channel in the description down below.
Make sure you subscribe to the Adam
Mockler channel. I hope you have a great
rest of your weekend and I will see you
in the next
Adam Mockler
Nov 29, 2025 The Adam Mockler Show
Chris Mowrey (@chrisdmowrey) filling in for Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network breaks down a stunning podcast recording from @TheNecessaryConversation where a son and daughter confront their MAGA parents. The conversation exposes the terrifying depth of Trump's hold on his base, as the parents defend Trump calling a reporter "piggy," accuse their own daughter of making up a story about Trump harassing her in an elevator, and explicitly state they would support Trump ordering the military to execute American citizens because "'there has to be a reason'".
Transcript
All right, today is going to be a good
time. I have lined up several clips with
the help of Adam Mockler that I have not
seen before and I am going to react to
this podcast that's essentially like a,
you know, a son who is talking to his
MAGA parents about Trump. And it's like
family therapy mixed with politics where
he's like pressing his MAGA family on
how bad Trump is. And I think it gets
pretty intense. So, we're going to take
a watch. It's going to be interesting.
Um, really quickly, if you haven't seen
me before, my name is Chris Mauy. I'm
filling in for Adam Mach on the Adam
Mockler channel. If you enjoy this type
of content, the link to my YouTube
channel is in the description down
below. It means so much if you check out
and make one of these videos on my
channel, too. So, if you want to check
it out, again, link in the description.
Uh, on this channel, trying to build
something big to punch back against MAGA
Media. We upload so many videos every
single day here on the Adam channel. So,
if you're not subscribed already, it
would mean a lot. Join the community.
Help us grow. You guys are the best.
Now, I want to preface before we start.
Again, this is what Trump has done to
the brains of millions of people across
the country. Now, I want to preface one
thing before we start. Again, I have not
seen these clips, but I've been told
they are very bad. And so, remember, and
I'll do the same as we watch this.
Millions of Americans every single day
are thinking like this because of Donald
Trump. All right, let's start with the
first clip.
Was a reporter asking about the Epstein
files and he called her piggy. You think
that is appropriate behavior, Dad, for a
US president?
Sure.
Okay. Mom,
it probably wasn't nice to say piggy.
Well, nice.
Did it Did it harm her?
Did it harm her? This is the president
of the United States calling a female
reporter piggy.
Did it harm her? It it harmed the entire
country because it sets the example that
not only a man but the president can
talk to women that way.
It's not nice. Shouldn't have said it.
It's not funny. It's disgusting.
It is funny.
What What's the humor in it to you, Dad?
Well, I would have called her worse than
that. So, I thought she got off easy.
Why would you have called her worse than
that? because she's giving him crap and
he's the president of the United States.
As Haley said,
the it's real rich that uh Donald Trump
is calling anyone piggy.
I don't understand that.
I don't understand what she's asking
either.
That just sounded like bunch mumbling.
He's a pig in several ways. Do I need to
explain why?
Wow. Okay. What a stunning first clip.
So, I think this must be like the sister
or, you know, the daughter essentially.
It's it's a brother and a sister and
then their parents. Um, and it's a
podcast and they're pressing their MAGA
parents. And this is fairly recent.
Obviously, Donald Trump calling a
reporter Piggy and he says just
horrible, awful things about women. He's
been found liable for sexually abusing a
woman, a woman, excuse me. Um, and I I
think she said it so well in that clip
that it's like, why is the bar for
president of United States in effing
hell? It's like, yeah, I probably
shouldn't have said it. It's not nice.
This isn't like your uncle at
Thanksgiving dinner who, oh, I probably
shouldn't have said that. That wasn't
This is the leader of the United States
of America setting an example for
millions of people, children.
He's a leader. Act like a leader.
Unbelievable. Let's go to the next clip.
This is insane.
You cannot be this stupid. Jesus. No.
It's because you're in a cult.
What if Donald Trump says, "I want you
to carpet bomb Oklahoma City." Everyone.
You think the Air Force should carry
that out?
Yes.
There might be a reason. We don't know.
This is insane.
You cannot be this stupid. Jesus Christ.
Oh my my. This podcast was going well
until that.
You just said it's cool. We levels
Oklahoma. You're like, "Yeah, [ __ ] it.
There must be a reason." Like, you
literally can't be that dumb.
You know what the problem is? Mom and I
don't believe he'll ever blow up
Oklahoma because we're on his side and
so is the whole state.
No, it's because you're in a cult.
You guys are worried and afraid because
you live in a state where it might
happen.
Okay. Let's theoretically say that does
happen. Let's say Trump sends in the
Marines to Los Angeles, California. And
let's say I'm out going to see a movie
on a weekend and he says, "Go into that
shopping mall
under a truck."
Quiet piggy. He says, "Go into that
shopping mall and everyone you see." And
let's say I get gunned down by the
Marines for just being at a mall.
Okay, number one. Let's just Let's just
take
Wait a minute. Mom. Mom, wait one
second. Wait one second. Dad, just Hang
on. Mom. Dad, you just said you are for
Donald Trump murdering me for no reason
and you would support that.
If he walks into a mall to people with
with military,
there has to be a reason.
There's a reason and I'm all for it. And
the people in Los Angeles, California
are as deserving of execution as the
[ __ ] in New York City. You're all
communists,
bro. This is a This is crazy.
Wow. Oh my god. I mean, I was ready for
like
I'm kind of sh I was ready for like MAGA
conspiracy. I was not ready for this
level. And again, I mean, I guess it
makes sense now why Adam told me to
preface that this is how millions of
Americans are thinking right now.
Because I mean, that is crazy. And
again, my first thought in my head as I
react to that is like the same people
who have spent so long screaming and
yelling that, you know, big government,
there's this big evil government coming
after us. Don't, you know, don't shred
on me. The government's, you know, far
too big, and we need to go back to
conservative values and small
government. Now, it's literally like, if
Donald Trump carpet bombs a city, if
Donald Trump murders my children, I just
I I trust the government. I don't need
any evidence. we they could just do it
and tell us, you know, uh Donald Trump
could say, "I have the evidence, but I'm
not telling anyone." And they would go,
"Okay, that's fine." Just like this
crazy blind trust of this growing
massive government. It's insane. Wow.
Okay, let's go to the next one.
That in he was a veteran and then he was
like thrown out there. He was in space.
What does that have to do with the price
of eggs? The space
because he's he's devoted his life to
this country. in any other country if he
would go on the TV and spout that [ __ ]
off he would be executed.
That's not true.
That's not true at all. He's a traitor.
Should uh members of military follow
unlawful orders?
Yes.
What?
They should follow any order that the
president gives the government.
That's wrong. Even if it breaks laws,
it will endanger other people if you
don't follow orders.
What if President Trump orders uh a a
squad of army guys to walk down the
street killing anyone they see? They
should do it.
Yes,
mom.
Yes.
What?
I don't even understand. Like, how can
you come to that conclusion? Sounds to
me like you lefties are now beginning to
fear the fact that the military is going
to get involved and your asses are
grass.
The dude the dad is literally like
happily and he did this in the last
clip. I guess I just didn't mention it
in my reaction that I mean he's like
calling for the execution of people in
blue cities and states and then when
we're talking about lawful orders he
just comes back to like I mean if Trump
does it there must be a reason. Sounds
like you're scared that
again there is no like this sedicious
six and all it's all BS right it's very
simple the military has should uphold
the constitution of the United States
right you don't nobody serves the
president and anybody in government
should always obviously have the
constitution and laws uh the founding of
our country at the top of their head if
Donald Trump gave an unlawful order you
should not follow it Right. That's
actually what you promised to uphold.
Your oath to the Constitution, not your
oath to some orange guy. Dude, this is
this is honestly stunning. All right,
let's go to the next one.
Remember the story Haley told of meeting
Donald Trump?
I you know what? I never remember her
telling me that story ever until she
told it.
Haley, please, for people who are new to
our show, please tell them this story. I
went to New York City in college like on
a study tour. Um we were like doing the
fashion district and all this [ __ ] and
part of our tour we were there for like
a week. We got to go to the Trump Towers
and as we are on the elevator thing it
opens, we still have to go up a level.
Donald Trump gets on the elevator with
us. Um,
I cannot remember exactly what happened,
but I remember him commenting. We're all
teenagers at this point, like
18-year-old freshman college students.
Um, and he commented on a lot of our
appearances,
like beautiful young women, like while
we're in the elevator with Donald Trump.
We are children. Like, you know what I
looked like at 18?
children.
I remember you telling us this story a
few years back, but I don't remember you
telling me about it when it happened.
When it really happened, did you?
Yeah, it was so traumatic. It took you
10 or 15 years to let us know.
They're accusing their child right now.
Bro, this podcast is crazy. I I shout
out to the people who do this podcast. I
imagine it's very difficult to share
this with the internet. But again, how
millions of Americans are think they are
accusing their daughter of of making
this up right now as if their daughter
is making up a story to make Trump look
bad. A story personal to her.
Like they literally have more loyalty to
Trump than their own children.
They Oh my god,
dude. Do you see? Wow. Wow.
How about it?
But did he touch you? Did he touch you
in any way? Did he grope you? Did he do
anything that was inappropriate?
Dude, what the hell? What the hell? Did
he touch you? Is insane.
Oh my god,
dude. He's He's in an elevator of like
teenagers talking. Can you listen to
your daughter? Oh my god.
He's saying you were all beautiful. You
think that's okay to be in an elevator
full of teenagers and comment on their
appearance that they're beautiful young
women?
First of all, I'd like to see a picture
of the whole group before I think he was
wrong.
Okay. So, you you just don't believe any
you don't even believe victims. So, why
are you even in a conversation?
Everybody's a liar to you.
There you go.
This is your daughter telling you she
and her fellow students were harassed by
Donald Trump and you're saying it didn't
happen.
How is that harass?
You guys are beautiful young women.
That's you pulling it out of your ass.
That's not harass.
Your daughter is telling you that that's
what happened and you're denying it.
You're ignoring her.
She's not telling me that. I I mean,
Haley, is that what you're saying?
That is what I'm saying.
Wow. I mean, it's so sad to and and I
know that a lot of people have
experiences with this. You can let me
know in the comments down below. Like,
again, just how I can't I can only
imagine I can't imagine, excuse me, how
hard it must be to be the children here.
Like, your just relationship with your
parents must deteriorate so much when
they're that I mean, they're in like a
literal state of psychosis.
suggesting that their daughter is making
up stories
uh to make Donald Trump look bad. I
mean, they have picked
they have picked a president over their
own children. They have picked someone
they've never met over their own
children. And they talk to their
children as if almost like I was
debating them on TikTok. Like they don't
they're like I don't know how to
describe it. Wow. Stunning. Okay. And I
do want to point out here that there are
so many reasons to know that Donald
Trump I mean it's endless that Donald
Trump very clearly treats women like
complete and total [ __ ] He's a
predator. Donald Trump is a predator,
right? Donald Trump has been found
liable for sexually abusing, excuse me,
for liable for sexually abusing a woman.
The judge in that case called Donald
Trump a rapist because that's what he
is. He's obviously been accused by
dozens of other women's women, excuse
me. He has bragged about walking into
the dressing room at his pageantss
because they begin while the girls are
undressing to quote inspect it, right?
Bragging that he owns the place so he
can walk back. These are teenagers,
underage girls. Obviously, Donald Trump
is best effing friends with Jeffrey
Epstein, right? It goes on and on. We've
heard the Hollywood Access take. You can
grab him by the blank. I mean, the guy
the evidence is
that Donald Trump is a president and is
absolutely even just the last few weeks
the way we've seen him talk to women.
It's not just a piggy comment, but he
said it now to multiple reporters. And
it's always interesting. It's
specifically women, right? And the way
he talks, it's so clear that he he in
private I I don't even want to think
about how he treats these individuals.
He's misogynistic as hell. He hates
women. He's a predator. He obviously is
an abuser. And it's honestly stunning.
All right, let's watch one more here and
we'll end off. Let me know in the
comments if you want me to make more
videos like this. I think I'll make one
on my channel. This podcast is crazy.
All right, let's take a listen.
Peter,
what?
Would you all please have courtesy to
listen to what I want to say and quit
laughing at me? I don't laugh at your
[ __ ]
You and dad make fun of us every week
constantly. I don't look at him as a
politician, but rather a man who
believed and tried to instill in others
the right of free speech, which is what
I'm trying to do right now as you laugh
in my face. That's what the necessary
conversation is all about, too. But when
you sit there and laugh, that's nervous
laughing. By the way, he loved to have
discussions with college kids to agree
or disagree in debates in a civilized.
Sounds like we're talking about Charlie
Kirk here. Just for the record,
fashion that made them think.
That's what everybody's That's what
everybody was afraid about. He was
turning our youth into thinking the
right way. I truly believe that he
debated these kids with dignity. He made
them think. They came to listen. Freedom
of speech is for all of us. And there
are but there are also consequences
to your freedom of speech. I do believe
he never brought harm to anyone. He
believed in God. He never called others
by wrong names.
remember you said that because I've got
a clip I'm going to show you.
Yeah. So, I do want to point out, you
know, in the beginning here, and again,
I I think what happened to Charlie C
truly tragic, absolutely tragic, awful
for our country, for for the people
there. Uh, and you know, I wishing
family well. She called him a civil
rights leader. No. And here's the thing.
It's possible to believe that what
happened to Charlie Kirk is tragic while
also agreeing that he spit racist,
hateful, awful um ideologies and things,
right? And he certainly was not a civil
rights leader. He's somebody who
actually said that Martin Luther King
was a uh bad guy is what he said. Take a
listen. Radical
view that the country made a mistake
when it passed the Civil Rights Act.
Also true. As we note in the piece, Kirk
has previously described Kirk as a hero
and a civil rights icon. It's true. I
used to be wrong. We note in our piece
that Kirk describes King as quote a bad
guy. It's true. And Kirk self-described
very, very radical
view that the country made a mistake
when it passed the Civil Rights Act.
Also true. As we note in the piece, Kirk
has previously described Kirk as a hero
and a civil rights icon. It's true. I
used to be wrong. What inspired Kirk to
shift his view on MLK? Why does Kirk
think that MLK is a bad guy? When Kirk
says that MLK says quote one good thing
he didn't believe, what does he mean by
that? Why does Kirk believe passing the
Civil Rights Act was a mistake? Now
again, apparently they don't listen to
the show because we do that at least
once a week, right?
I mean, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Here
the man who says that MK was a bad guy,
that MK that excuse me, we shouldn't
have passed uh the Civil Rights Act.
This is a civil rights leader according
to the mom of the podcast. Absolutely
not. Absolutely not. and he's bit a lot
of hateful, hateful things. Listen, let
me know if you want me to make more
videos like this. I'm honestly shell
shocked. This podcast is crazy. Once
again, my name is Chris Mauy, filling in
for Adam Mockler on the Adam Mockler
channel. There's a link to my YouTube
channel in the description down below.
Make sure you subscribe to the Adam
Mockler channel. I hope you have a great
rest of your weekend and I will see you
in the next
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Re: Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down
by admin » Sun Dec 07, 2025 6:10 am
Now We Know Why Top Navy Admiral Suddenly Resigned Under Hegseth. Admiral Alvin Holsey didn’t resign of his own volition
By Hafiz Rashid
THE NEW REPUBLIC
December 4, 2025/10:07 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/203949/why ... at-strikes
[x]
Admiral Alvin Holsey
FRANCO BRANA/AFP/Getty Images
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pushed out four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey after months of conflict.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, contrary to Hegseth’s announcement in October that Holsey was retiring a year into his tenure, the defense secretary asked Holsey to resign. Tensions between the two began since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January and increased with the administration’s campaign to bomb boats in the waters near Central America, ostensibly to target boats smuggling drugs.
Holsey was concerned about the legality of the strikes, former officials told the Journal, and soon afterward, Hegseth announced the admiral’s retirement. The move to push out a highly decorated Naval officer raises questions about whether military leaders are on board with the boat bombings, and if their concerns are even being heard.
While other military leaders have been pushed out during Trump’s second term, Holsey is the only commander to be dismissed during the current military operation in Central America.
“Having [Holsey] leave at this particular moment, at the height of what the Pentagon considers to be the central action in our hemisphere, is just shocking,” Todd Robinson, who was assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs until January, told the Journal.
Holsey’s background lends itself to the military’s current operation. A former Navy helicopter pilot, the admiral has experience in intercepting drug shipments and had expressed interest in increasing interceptions. In his confirmation hearing in September 2024, Holsey told senators that he wanted a stronger approach to “dismantle the drug cartels.”
“My first deployment to the Southcom area of responsibility was over 33 years ago conducting counterdrug missions,” the admiral said at the time.
Hegseth and Holsey were on good terms at times during the past year, with the admiral preparing military plans after Trump said he wanted to reclaim the Panama Canal. At other times, though, Hegseth thought Holsey was a source of leaks from the DOD. But by the time the boat strikes began in September, the secretary had already lost confidence in the admiral, according to the Journal.
Holsey’s last day is December 12, and he has not spoken publicly about stepping down. But Hegseth is facing increased scrutiny over the legality of the strikes from Congress, including Republicans, and the admiral’s dismissal is going to reflect poorly on Trump and his secretary of defense.
By Hafiz Rashid
THE NEW REPUBLIC
December 4, 2025/10:07 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/203949/why ... at-strikes
[x]
Admiral Alvin Holsey
FRANCO BRANA/AFP/Getty Images
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pushed out four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey after months of conflict.
The Wall Street Journal reports that, contrary to Hegseth’s announcement in October that Holsey was retiring a year into his tenure, the defense secretary asked Holsey to resign. Tensions between the two began since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January and increased with the administration’s campaign to bomb boats in the waters near Central America, ostensibly to target boats smuggling drugs.
Holsey was concerned about the legality of the strikes, former officials told the Journal, and soon afterward, Hegseth announced the admiral’s retirement. The move to push out a highly decorated Naval officer raises questions about whether military leaders are on board with the boat bombings, and if their concerns are even being heard.
While other military leaders have been pushed out during Trump’s second term, Holsey is the only commander to be dismissed during the current military operation in Central America.
“Having [Holsey] leave at this particular moment, at the height of what the Pentagon considers to be the central action in our hemisphere, is just shocking,” Todd Robinson, who was assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs until January, told the Journal.
Holsey’s background lends itself to the military’s current operation. A former Navy helicopter pilot, the admiral has experience in intercepting drug shipments and had expressed interest in increasing interceptions. In his confirmation hearing in September 2024, Holsey told senators that he wanted a stronger approach to “dismantle the drug cartels.”
“My first deployment to the Southcom area of responsibility was over 33 years ago conducting counterdrug missions,” the admiral said at the time.
Hegseth and Holsey were on good terms at times during the past year, with the admiral preparing military plans after Trump said he wanted to reclaim the Panama Canal. At other times, though, Hegseth thought Holsey was a source of leaks from the DOD. But by the time the boat strikes began in September, the secretary had already lost confidence in the admiral, according to the Journal.
Holsey’s last day is December 12, and he has not spoken publicly about stepping down. But Hegseth is facing increased scrutiny over the legality of the strikes from Congress, including Republicans, and the admiral’s dismissal is going to reflect poorly on Trump and his secretary of defense.
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