Washington Journal (12/04/2025) exposes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s controversial Caribbean strikes—21 boats hit, 83 dead—amid Pentagon rule-of-engagement violations and classified leaks via Signal. Trump defends the policy as "war" against cartels, citing 300K U.S. deaths, while critics like Rep. Coyar (pardoned for $600K bribery) and Dem. Rep. Takuta question legality and escalation risks. Callers clash over war crimes, costs ($250K per missile), and political motives, with Luna (R-FL) framing strikes as necessary against "narco-terrorists." The episode reveals deepening distrust in military oversight and partisan weaponization of drug policy amid broader accountability debates. [Automatically generated summary]
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Coming out this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, Gabby Barenbaum, the Texas Tribune, will join the program to discuss President Trump's pardon of Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Queyar.
And then Florida Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees will talk about the tensions with Venezuela and her proposed congressional stock trading ban.
And later, Hawaii Democratic Congresswoman Jill Takuta of the Armed Services Committee and the Progressive Caucus will discuss the situation with Venezuela and the future of Affordable Care Act subsidies.
This morning, your take on the growing scrutiny of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, following bipartisan concern by lawmakers over the boat strikes against alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and a new Inspector General report that found the Secretary put U.S. troops at risk by using the signal messaging app and breaking Pentagon Protocol.
Your take on all of that this morning?
Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001.
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From the New York Times this morning, the headline, U.S. Military's Boat Strikes Planning takes on new significance.
The details could raise questions about who was responsible for a follow-up strike on September 2nd, the commander who ordered it, or the defense secretary.
From the New York Times reporting, before the Trump administration began attacking people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.
The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked, and out of what the administration considered a fight.
But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members.
After the smoke cleared from a first strike on September 2nd, there were two survivors, and one of them radioed for help, the U.S. officials said.
And Admiral Frank Bradley, who commanded the operation, ordered a follow-up strike and both were killed.
The military's contingency plans have taken on new significance as Admiral Bradley and General Dan Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to go to Capitol Hill today to answer questions about the attack amid an uproar over the killing of the survivors.
New York Times reports the men planned to present a vigorous defense of what they will assert was a lawful follow-up strike on the survivors.
That moment is just a small part of Mr. Trump's legally disputed campaign of killing people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea as if they were combatants in a war.
But it is now the focus of intense congressional scrutiny.
The details of the contingency planning could raise more questions about who was responsible for the second strike, the commander who ordered it or the defense secretary who approved the overall operation.
Many critics, including some lawmakers, have said the follow-up attack could be a war crime.
Listen to President Trump in the White House yesterday when he was asked about the boat strikes in the Caribbean.
unidentified
Mr. President, in the boat strikes, if it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished?
I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years.
I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed.
That's not mentioning all the families.
Have you seen what happens with the families of not only the people killed, but the people that are trying to get their son or their daughter off of this poison that they've been fed?
I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats.
And very soon we're going to start doing it on land too, because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we know where they put it all together.
And I think you're going to see it very soon on land also here, please.
unidentified
So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the attack.
President Trump yesterday at the White House talking about the survivors of that boat strike, the first boat strike on September 2nd.
Back to the New York Times.
Under the plans Mr. Hegseth had approved, Admiral Bradley interpreted the purported communications between the initial survivors and colleagues as meaning that the survivors were still in the fight rather than shipwrecked and helpless people whom it would be a war crime to target.
The Pentagon's law of war manual says that to be considered shipwrecked, persons must be in need of assistance and care, and they must refrain from any hostile act.
A U.S. Naval Commander Handbook says combatants, quote, qualify as shipwrecked persons only if they have ceased all active combat activity.
The Pentagon's defense of its actions rests heavily on the premise that there was a fight in the first place.
In defending the campaign of summary killings at sea as lawful, the administration has relied on Mr. Trump's disputed determination that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that people suspected of smuggling drugs for them are combatants.
We're going to get to your calls in just a minute on this growing scrutiny of the Defense Secretary over the boat strikes in the Caribbean, as well as a new Inspector General report that has come out today.
And joining us to talk about that is Paul McLeary, who's with Politico National Security reporter Paul McLeary.
First, who commissioned this report from the Inspector General?
unidentified
This was by Republican and Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Senators wanted this report done after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the signal app to communicate with other members of the government about strikes in Yemen.
So they demanded that the Pentagon Inspector General carry it out this spring, and they finally released the report that will be later today.
Yeah, the main findings here are that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to declassify information at will, basically, right?
But by using an unregulated and messaging app that's not secure, it's encrypted, but it's not secure, he potentially put the lives of U.S. service members at risk.
There's no real penalty here for him or anything like that, but it does find that he put the lives of people at risk because he texted the time, the location, the weapons being used, the platforms being used to attack these Houthi militants in Yemen.
Headlines today also say that he broke Pentagon protocol.
unidentified
How so?
By using Signal, right?
I mean, there are multiple ways that Pentagon and U.S. government officials can communicate securely with one another.
Signal, while I said it is encrypted and lots of us use it for lots of things, it's not formally approved by the government.
It's not secure, even though it's encrypted.
It can be intercepted, you know, in one way or another.
And it depends what device he used.
I mean, it seems that he used his government cell phone, which a lot of folks have installed Signal on, but they also have them on their laptops and things like that.
So he went out, and everyone did.
So did Mike Waltz, you know, everyone who's on that chat went outside normal government protocol to chat on Signal.
The Pentagon Press Secretary, Sean Parnell, put out a statement saying the Inspector General review is a total exoneration of Secretary Hagseth and proves what we knew all along.
No classified information was shared.
This matter is resolved and the case is closed.
Do you think that's true after talking to members of Congress and others who are concerned about the use of this messaging app?
unidentified
Right.
I mean, we're going to play a kind of language game here, right?
I mean, the message that Hegset, the information that Hegseth received about the strikes came from General Carrilla, a U.S. Central Command.
Carrillo transmitted that message with all that information over a classified, secure communications network in the Pentagon.
Hegseth then took that information from that classified and secure forum and put it on an unclassified and insecure app, Signal.
But Hegseth does have the ability to declassify information.
I don't think he formally did it here, but you can argue that since he has that authority, if he decides it's unclassified, it's unclassified.
So that's how Parnell and the Pentagon can say no classified information was shared.
Although, 10 minutes before he sent it, it was classified information sent over classified means.
There's widespread anger on both sides of the aisle, right?
Don Bacon, the Representative Roger Wicker, the chair of the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are both pretty unhappy with how this whole thing has played out and kind of the recklessness with which this information was shared.
So they'll be in this meeting today with Admiral Bradley and General Kane asking questions and really putting it to him, right?
I mean, I think that Secretary Hagseth and the Pentagon have put this on Bradley, which as the commander on the ground, it's his responsibility in the end, but he was given orders to do this by Pete Hegseth and Hegseth has tweeted and said, you know, said other things publicly that he supports Bradley and his decision, kind of almost taking himself out of the decision-making loop here.
Although Hegseth said he watched the first strike, so he was in the loop the whole time and he gave the orders, but he seems to have really distanced himself from the final result.
CNN with the headline this morning, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski suggests new leadership is needed at the Pentagon.
Who else has expressed concern and possibly called for the resignation of Pete Hegseth?
unidentified
I mean, many Democrats have, but also, as I mentioned, Don Bacon, the Republican representative, and other folks like Tom Till's Republican senator and wicker have really, they haven't called for Hegseth to resign, but they also haven't backed him.
And just talking to folks on the Hill, staffers and things like that, there's not a lot of support for Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill among Republicans or Democrats.
I mean, nominating someone else, going through a whole hearing cycle would be quite an ordeal, right?
First, you have to find the candidate, but there's not, and from the beginning, there hasn't been a lot of institutional support for Hagseth.
I mean, the White House expended a lot of political capital to get him through his confirmation hearings after accusations of alcoholism, accusations of abusing women, multiple divorces, you know, things like that.
Hagseth is, and the kind of drama that we saw at the hearing, even before the hearing, has just kept up over the past year.
I mean, it's been one thing after another.
And whatever support he did have, some of it has bled away.
It's your turn to tell Washington what you think of this growing scrutiny over the Defense Secretary.
Do you support him?
Should he stay in this position?
Or do you think it's time for him to go?
And what about the concerns from lawmakers across both aisles over the boat strikes in the Caribbean, as well as this new Inspector General report about the signal messaging app?
Let's hear from Steve, who's in Carroll Stream, Illinois.
Democratic caller, you are up first.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
And I would like to say those boats could not get halfway here because they're speedboats and they've run out of gas.
There's no gas stations like the guy a couple of days ago said in the Gulf of Mexico.
Very good point.
But I'd like to mention: why isn't Hag Seth being prosecuted for all the rape accusations?
Well, who runs Florida?
Trump's buddies.
They're not going to prosecute him.
He should be.
A guy like that, we don't need that pervert in the office.
So I think this is going to end up turning out to be just yet another Democrat hoax.
If you look back over the last few years, it seems like there's always an act, and it's usually done by Democrats, and then there's a reaction.
So what you get is you get these six senators.
I don't think they were all senators.
There were a couple senators, a couple people from the House of Representatives, the six Democrats who made that video a couple weeks ago who ended up in hot water because they were literally telling the troops not to disobey or yet not to obey illegal orders.
And of course, none of them could cite an illegal order that had been made by the Trump administration.
And I think they realized they got out over their skis.
So this is a reaction to that.
And it's a distraction because of that tape that came out by those six traitors.
These people, what they do is, I mean, I think it's going to turn out to be as legitimate as the Russia hoax and the bloodbath hoax and the very fine people hoax.
Everything Democrats throw at Trump turns out to be a hoax at the end of the day.
Can I jump in though and just ask you because there have been Republicans who have criticized the Defense Secretary over these strikes as well as the use of the messaging app.
So it's not just Democrats.
It seems to be bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill.
unidentified
I did tell Lynn, could I get a word in?
I understand there may be a small handful of Republicans who have a problem with this.
The problem is, is you all in the media are going to act like it's a larger majority of Republicans.
What's basically going on is there's a color revolution going on in the United States.
When the Trump administration came in, they were handed phones.
That's what happens when a new administration comes in.
Their phones have the signal app installed.
And who hands them those phones?
It's the CIA.
The very people who, under John Brennan, went after and spied on Trump on the orders of Barry Sessoro, who killed American citizens without trial, without finding them guilty of anything.
But Satoru was doing drone strikes on Americans, and the media didn't bat an eye.
Wall Street Journal reporting this morning on the boat strike on September 2nd.
There were two strikes, one to bomb the boat, and when there were survivors, there was a second strike.
The Wall Street Reporter reports this morning that the boat turned around before the strike, which some experts say calls into question the administration's claim that the traffickers posed an imminent threat to the United States.
Now, lawmakers are going to hear from Admiral Bradley, who ordered the strike, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They will get a closed-door classified briefing up on Capitol Hill today.
You can bet reporters will be outside of that room asking questions when these lawmakers come out from that briefing and going in.
Look to the C-SPAN networks for coverage of that.
The New York Times this morning from the story we read earlier, the focus may turn to plans for survivors in that U.S. boat.
On orders from Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth, the U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 83 people as part of a legally disputed policy of summarily executing people suspected of smuggling drugs as if they were combatants on a battlefield.
How do all of you feel about this debate?
What do you say?
Milton in Philadelphia, Democratic Caller, good morning to you.
unidentified
Thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to make this point.
All Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and veterans, should be outraged by what Cadet Bonespurs and his HASAP has done.
When you go out there and you kill innocent people, I mean, people that's in the water, captives.
Imagine we're supposed to be the country that respects law and order.
Now, eventually, our country is going to get in the war.
What do we say to other countries like North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran?
These other countries, when they capture our soldiers that might be wounded, they could just go in there and kill them.
This is setting a dangerous precedent that other countries could say, well, if America could kill innocent stranded warriors, then they could turn around and do the same thing to our soldiers.
Where's the outrage by Republicans and other people around the country about this?
Because eventually this could come back and really bite our men and women.
And their deaths is going to be on cadets, bone spurs, and drop HATESAPS.
You know, Pete Hegseth, I don't think he's really qualified to be in his position, but he's Trump's yes man, and he will do what Trump orders him to do.
That's my assumption of him.
But this whole idea of Pete Hegseth and Trump's policy of protecting Americans from drugs from Venezuela is a smokescreen.
What Trump wants to do is he really will be invading.
He's going to make good on his promise to invade Venezuela and also probably Colombia.
And Pete Hegseth will be the one that will be the figurehead for this invasion, coordinating it supposedly.
Let me jump in because the Wall Street Journal this morning has reporting about the president's plans for fighting, combating fentanyl, and going after these alleged drug boat runners.
Here is the Wall Street Journal.
Hegseth ousted Admiral after clash over boat strikes.
Now, this is a different Admiral than Admiral Brett Brady.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shocked official Washington in mid-October when he announced that the four-star head of the U.S. military operations in the Caribbean was retiring less than a year into his tenure.
But according to two Pentagon officials, Hegseth asked Admiral Alvin Hulsey to step down a de facto ouster that was the culmination of months of discord between Hegseth and the officer.
It began days after President Trump's inauguration in January and then intensified months later when Hulse had initial concerns about the legality of lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
Not long after, Hegseth said Hulse would be retiring.
Hegseth's move, which hasn't been previously reported, sheds new light on a brewing controversy over the legality of the military's campaign in the Caribbean and raises questions over whether concerns of service members about the attacks are addressed.
While Hegseth has dismissed a number of high-ranking military leaders since taking over the Pentagon, the ouster of a commander during an unfolding military operation was an extraordinary move.
Lawmakers and experts noted that to the Wall Street Journal.
John in Illinois, Democratic caller from the military family, it's your turn to weigh in.
John, good morning.
John in Illinois, Democratic caller, you're up.
All right, moving on to Randy in Kentucky, Republican.
Hi, Randy.
unidentified
Good morning.
Let's see how quick you can hang up on me for saying what people, what I think and other people are thinking is the truth and what's going on.
There are millions, billions, and billions of dollars through COVID that was paid to all these drug dealers and all these traffickers and all these cartels in America, which is still going on.
And I think they were sharing that money and paying off the Democrat Party so that they would continue to say stuff like this if they got arrested or bombed out of the water.
Now they're wanting the Democrats to say, hey, you got to stop this.
I pay you a lot of money to not allow this to happen.
So you've got to stop this.
You stop Trump.
You do anything you can to stop this because we want to keep bringing that line in through there to all these drug people.
And you'll hear all these drug addicts and all these dealers be calling in this morning agreeing with all the Democrats.
You've got to stop this stuff.
You got to stop it because you're cutting off our money, our lifeline, our trough.
Bob, you got to talk and listen through your phone.
Sarah, Cole City, Indiana, Republican.
unidentified
Good morning, CNN.
Grant, I wanted to tell you something.
You know, on Monday, Pedro said that you guys were going to have a segment about the election in Tennessee, and which me and my husband done talked.
I knew if the Democrat lady won, you guys would have a full show about it.
But since the Republican won, you know, you had just maybe five or ten minute little segment, a very little segment about it.
So you guys show who you guys really are.
And I just, I about talking about Pete Hegseth and them, I'll tell you what, I think he's doing a good job with what Biden's incompetent whole cabinet was, and even Biden.
You guys took up for him when he had dementia, didn't know what he was doing.
You guys took up for him.
So, but we, hey, people out there, do you know the guy that's head over the C-SPAN now is from CNN.
All right, Richard, on this September 2nd strike, the New York Times notes that U.S. officials said the military was also weighing whether it could show the full unedited video of the September 2nd engagement with the boat to lawmakers.
And again, on Capitol Hill today, behind closed doors, lawmakers will get a briefing about this boat strike and other actions by the Pentagon and the Trump administration.
It'll be a bipartisan briefing.
The Washington Post this morning front page with the headline, in GOP, vaccation grows at Hegseth.
In a classified briefing for lawmakers scrutinizing the Trump administration's killing of suspected drug smugglers around Latin America, top Republicans in the room appeared frustrated that the Pentagon appeared frustrated the Pentagon, facing questions about its legal basis for attacking civilian vessels, sent no lawyers to the meeting, a move multiple lawmakers in the room considered inexplicable.
The Defense Department officials who did attend, those people said, were unable to explain the mission's strategy and scope, even as President Trump openly mused about expanding the campaign to include land targets inside of Venezuela.
Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the House Armed Services Committee Republican chairman, condemned the secrecy, saying Congress had gotten more information from the Pentagon during the Biden administration, according to two people in the room.
This was a previous briefing, and the briefing today, again, there will be lawmakers there with Admiral Bradley, who ordered the strikes, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair.
Let's go to Arlene in Washington, D.C., an Independent.
I am only asking for one thing, and that is that we have accountability and transparency.
People make mistakes, leaders make mistakes, but a true leader steps up and assumes responsibility and explains what happened.
If it was a mistake, it was a mistake.
It was a horrible mistake.
But if it was something that was done and it was wrong, we need to know.
I am so sick of this playing the side different sides of the everybody, Republican, Democrat, everybody should want transparency and should want accountability.
And we can't have that unless people tell the truth.
Jim, we're going to go to open forum here later on in the Washington Journal this morning.
We have a two-hour program for you.
The House is gaveling in early this morning at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
We're going to talk to two lawmakers as well.
So open forum coming up and you can bring up any public policy or political debate at that time.
James, Carlton, Virginia.
Hi, James.
Morning to you.
What are your thoughts?
unidentified
Good morning, Greta.
22 years, Air Force, I'm retired.
This work, this thing that's going on with these boats and with the Secretary of War, as he calls himself.
The sad part is that, again, as a nation, the people, it's about the people.
They need to educate themselves on what the rules of engagement are, why we are attacking these boats.
The last time I called in was the day the first boat got attacked.
And I spoke then and I said it was one boat.
Again, I used to do this type of work, Greta.
I work for a company where we track these boats and we sent the Coast Guard from Venezuela.
We sent the Coast Guard from Costa Rica, whoever we were working with, whatever countries, those are the things that are going on every night with men and women in uniform, out of uniform, working 12 long hour shifts through the holidays to protect this country.
And the sad part is that their work is being overshadowed by what's happening to these folks on these boats.
Once you attack that boat and it becomes disabled, the rules of engagement change.
And the American people must understand that.
Stop buying into all the hype.
President Trump is the president, whether he's doing a good job, bad job, in your opinion.
The rule of engagements, the law must be followed.
If those two survivors after the first strike were hanging on and had radioed, as the administration contends, had radioed for help, at that point, are they still combatants?
unidentified
Greta, prove to me that they were radioing someone.
How do you radio after you've had a missile or a bomb hit your boat?
What makes you think now that a radio is going to be operative for me to call someone?
Now, remember, this boat traveled many miles in the ocean.
So who are they calling and who are they expecting to show up to them on the spot to save them?
That's what we do.
I watched drug dealers on those boats set their boat on fire and jump in the water.
Why?
Because they knew they were going to be rescued.
That is what we do.
That's how you gain the intelligence.
Find out what the next rung on the ladder is.
And that's how you stop drugs coming into this country.
But this game that we're playing is putting our American troops, men and women all over the world in danger, and it must stop.
James, what are the rules of engagement after the first strike?
And they see survivors on the boat.
unidentified
They're supposed to send folks to rescue them, to bring them in so that they can interrogate them, so they can find out more information.
But if you kill them, all we have is someone sitting behind the desk telling us that there were drugs, that it was fentanyl, when fentanyl is supposed to be coming in from Mexico and Canada.
We haven't had any strikes up there.
And all I'm saying is, American people, listen, the truth, we learned the difference between a lie and a truth.
When you hear something, make them prove it.
Just because, like you said, Greta, well, how they're radioing.
See, these things come up and we make these things up without providing the proof.
That boat had probably a walkie-talkie if it had that.
Again, I did this work.
I'm speaking from a position of knowledge, not because I'm mad at a Republican or I'm mad at a Democrat.
I'm mad at this country because we won't get smart enough and understand we have got to stop doing these things.
And yes, I'm all about protecting this country.
22 years in the Air Force.
And I want you to know every day I went to work, my goal was the protection of the men and women.
I don't care if you were Republican or Democrat, to protect this country because there is no greater country on this planet.
But we are doing things that are bringing this country down.
And Lord knows I'm praying that it stops very, very soon.
James, in Carrollton, Virginia, the argument about radioing for help is in the newspapers this morning.
New York Times reports that a still secret membo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel accepts Mr. Trump's claims about the nature of drug cartels and that there is an armed conflict.
Based on that premise, it concludes that the boat strikes are lawful.
One of its key-related conclusions, according to people who have read it, is that suspected cargoes of drugs aboard boats are lawful military targets because cartels could otherwise sell them and use the profits to buy military equipment to sustain their alleged war efforts.
The Pentagon's emphasis on the purported radio communications appears to rely on that logic.
The idea appears to be that without a second strike, another boat could have come to retrieve not only the survivors, but also any of the alleged shipment of cocaine that the first blast did not burn up.
So calling for help was a hostile act.
A broad range of legal experts reject the legitimacy of Mr. Trump's claim that this is an armed conflict.
They say that there is no armed conflict, that crews of boats suspected of smuggling drugs are civilians, not combatants, and that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have been giving illegal orders to commit murder.
The second strike and the September 2nd attack appears to have attracted bipartisan oversight, interest in part because Republicans can criticize it without directly challenging Mr. Trump.
That is because even if one accepts Mr. Trump's claim that it is an armed conflict, killing shipwrecked enemies is a war crime.
Mr. Hagseth issued the broad orders that authorized the military to sink the boats, destroy the drugs, and kill the people aboard.
Those orders developed ahead of the first strike have remained largely unchanged throughout the campaign.
Nathaniel in Mississippi, Democratic caller, it's your turn to tell Washington what you think of this.
Republican Michael McCall talking about the Inspector General report that found the Defense Secretary can release classified information.
The use of the signal messaging app put U.S. troops at risk and broke Pentagon protocol.
We're getting your thoughts this morning on the growing scrutiny of the Defense Secretary.
Ron in Michigan, a Republican.
What do you think about Pete Hegseth?
unidentified
Well, specifically about the boat we're talking about.
I think the Democrats are politicizing this because, yes, there's a few Republicans, but they're calling for an investigation.
And it's only a few, because the majority are not, but all Democrats.
And they've already called it a war crime without knowing all the facts.
I thought we had due process in the United States.
And the Admiral is going to be testifying today.
So so much for that.
But you also need to remind the viewers about, I believe in accountability also, but you ought to remind the viewers about when Obama sent drone strikes, hundreds of drone strikes, and killed hundreds of innocent people in Syria.
And also more recently, when Biden sent a drone strike at Afghanistan and killed an innocent man just delivering water.
There was no outcry then.
So I wonder maybe you could do the research.
And can you tell me who was ever held accountable in those administrations?
Do you see a distinction, though, with where those actions took place?
You know, you mentioned Afghanistan, where we had troops, where there was an authorized, where there has been conducting military activities for decades in other places versus the strikes that are taking place in the Trump administration in the Caribbean.
Do you agree with the president that the alleged drug cartels are at war with the United States?
Yeah, you know what my focus on as I've been watching this is the fact that there were 11 people on that boat.
unidentified
And if you're running drugs, you probably need a crew, maybe two, maybe three people.
But that boat was doing some kind of transportation of people to wherever the boat was going.
And it would be interesting if, and I kind of hold the media responsible for this to some extent, that we're kind of dealing with the top of it.
If somebody could dig down in wherever the boat originated from and find out from family members or whatever, what were their, what were these people doing?
Why were there so many people on that boat?
Because it would kind of add to the fact that this thing wasn't fully researched.
And John, we read earlier from the reporting this morning that the boat turned around before the strike.
That's from the Wall Street Journal's reporting, which some experts call into question the administration's claim that the traffickers posed an eminent threat.
unidentified
Well, yeah, that's a joke.
I mean, you've got the Air Force up there.
I was just going to say I was in Vietnam.
I had one incident where we were being mortar.
By the time I got up to our company headquarters, nobody's in there.
You go around the back, and I find out from a radio operator.
This has been going off for 10 minutes.
They're waiting for authorization from battalion to fire back at this mortar, which I could see.
And, you know, so we had a small thing, Canon, 20 million there.
Anyway, I just gave them the order.
I mean, I literally forced the order on this, which has haunted me later, by the way.
But it's just an example that they went 10 minutes being mortar without firing at a company level because the battalion kind of dropped the ball on releasing us.
So that's where we're under attack and you still can't fire back.
Let's get an idea of what it's like in a real combat zone.
I think that the fundamental question is, is the country safer than it was under the Biden administration?
I think the answer to that is unequivocally yes.
I think the Trump administration and that the peace through strength policies that they are employing around the world are making our country safer.
And so Secretary Hegseth is a part of that.
He serves at the pleasure of the president.
And I am sure that with regard to the latest question that you all have been raising, that the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is going to look into and get the facts on some of the events that have happened down the Caribbean, that we will get those answers in due time.
But I have every confidence that the policies that this administration is employing when it comes to keeping people in this country safe and ensuring that our policy is one of peace through strength, that those policies are being adhered to and followed.
I just want to know if we're fighting a drug war, then why would the president pardon the ex-president of Honduran for drug trafficking to the United States?
Like, I'm just trying to figure this thing out.
The way that this country is running, I'm shocked that it's still running.
And this country is not safer because President Trump has come into office.
We have ICE troops, FBI people on the ground who could be doing intelligent work throughout this country trying to keep it safe.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and say, is this real?
And then I hear a lot of adults who are in their 60s and 70s coming on C-SPAN.
I'm 50.
I just turned 50.
Coming on C-SPAN talking like they're in elementary and high school, like they're part of some type of gang.
Like, this is the American.
You know, sometimes I watch this cartoon called Boondocks, and it's a satire type of cartoon.
And when I hear a lot of people call in and say, this is what the Americans want, this is the American people.
They are specifically talking about white Americans because they were the only ones who came into Indian land, the British, came onto Indian land and took it.
All right, Mo, we got to get this back on track to the topic here.
We're talking about the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth growing scrutiny and concerns by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Gordon in Kansas City.
Gordon, you're from a military family.
Good morning.
What's your take on this?
unidentified
Well, I was drafted in 1968 and figured I'd be straight to Vietnam, and I got sent to Germany because Russia kicked up with Czechoslovakia about Rock then.
I had a top secret cosmic crypto clearance when I was in the Army.
And I would a lot rather take an order from Pete Hegset than that fat ass slob Lloyd Austin that came up missing for two weeks.
Nobody knew where the hell he was, not even the president.
And you know what gets me about your show is I'd like for you to actually turn to all the people that lost their lives overdose of fentanyl and tell them that you're worried about some of your audience worried about two or three people out on a boat.
And they know they were bringing drugs in.
They know that.
But I mean, you guys act like, I mean, like, this is a big deal.
It's members of Congress who are expressing concern and reporters who are noting that in the newspapers this morning, on television networks.
It's in the national newspapers.
And here on the Washington Journal, we let you, only here on the Washington Journal, let all of you across America be part of the debate that's happening here in Washington.
Members of Congress are expressing concern.
The administration is responding to that concern.
There are clips of them making remarks.
We're sharing it with you.
We're sharing with you the reports from reporters here in Washington, from the sources, information that they learn from their sources, all of it so that you are informed about what the decision makers in Washington are learning, and then you get to be part of the debate.
Nelson in Pembroke Pines, Florida.
We'll hear from you, Nelson.
unidentified
Go ahead.
Good morning.
I am a combat wounded Vietnam veteran.
I served in the United States Marine Corps.
I am also a retired City of Miami firefighter paramedic.
During the 1980s, I rode rescue in the city of Miami streets during the cocaine cowboy wars and some of the other problems going on at that time.
I have seen the military of the United States go through numerous problems in the 60s because of drugs.
I have seen death and all kinds of destructive behavior in the city of Miami because of drugs.
There has supposedly been a war on drugs going back to, I believe, Richard Nixon in the early 70s.
But this president is the first one that actually takes that literally.
And I think he is doing a fantastic job, along with Pete Hegseth, to try and put a stop to the debacle that has been going on in the United States of America as a result of drugs being permitted to come in by the tons with the and also because Venezuela,
the so-called government of Venezuela, is in fact one of the primary catalysts at this time in history of drugs flowing into the United States and flowing into other parts of the world.
I find it astonishing that Americans in Congress, so-called congressional leaders, are actually making a big debate over the fact that a couple of narco-terrorists were killed by the attempts of the current administration to try and put a stop to what's been going on and to try to save American lives.
Millions of Americans have died as a result of drugs, and I hope that people will begin to take that into consideration.
First, I'd like to say that during World War I and during World War II, we were sinking our enemy ships, and they put two torpedoes into the ship, and there were still men aboard, 50 or 100 men still aboard that ship.
They still put another torpedo in it to sink it because it would be bad for navigation to have a ship just sitting there half sunk.
And, you know, the thing of it is, President Trump has done more than any other president has ever done.
He's brought in over $18 trillion, and he's lowered the price of cars.
He's lowered the price of taxes.
He's done all kinds of things to protect us.
The Democrats, they hate Trump because they're not even paying attention to what he's doing.
And frankly, myself personally, I think there should be the death penalty for anybody that's caught with fentanyl.
Ed there in Lawrenceville, Georgia, a Republican caller on the line for Democrats.
Michael is in Florida.
Michael, we'll go to you next.
unidentified
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I don't understand people and how they react to these things.
But the thing I don't quite understand is if they want to fight drugs and they want to blow up ships with drugs coming in, because that stuff is bad.
I don't like drugs.
It's a bad thing.
But the thing that I don't understand is they kind of contradict themselves when they pardon a guy that brought 400 tons of drugs, cocaine, into this country, and they're going to let him go.
Hey, Greta, thank you so much for letting me call in.
I have, after having kind of thought about this a little bit, and I'm sure I'm the only Democrat that's going to say this, I agree with the intention of the Trump administration's policies regarding drug trafficking organizations.
I am skeptical, and the recent boat incident verifies this.
I am skeptical of their ability to implement on it well within the bounds of the law.
Now, given HegSeth's mistakes on this, I believe it's moved the Overton window a little bit where the Democrats might be able to finally take and seize a much more aggressive posture towards the drug trafficking organizations while saying, look, we'll borrow this policy, but we're going to do it within the confines of our understanding of the law and making sure that we're identifying these traffickers accurately.
If Democrats were to say, okay, we agree with the overall policy, we just don't agree with the execution of it.
So then what do Democrats say?
Pete Hegseth has to go, but put somebody else in there who can do this within the boundaries of the law, your words?
unidentified
Yeah, so, you know, the boundaries, I probably misspoke when I said that.
I don't think that there's a way that the Democrats could embrace the policy and say that the Trump administration has a pathway for implementing the policy in a way that would be acceptable.
And by acceptable, I mean we are making absolutely sure that these boats are being identified accurately, and we're using all of the intelligence or surveillance assets we have to be able to do that.
The Democrats would only be able to take the policy and say, this is something that we would carry forward with much more scrutiny, but we would also be executing the drug trafficking organizations.
Now, a portion of their base would then push back and say, well, how do you know that you're really identifying them?
Well, I think that the assets that we have in intelligence are pretty good.
Number one, number two, you could kind of change the question and say, look, The Economist and ProPublica have both reported on this.
The drug trafficking organizations are integrated deeply with foreign intelligence operations, and the foreign intelligence operations are clearly benefiting from the destabilization that the drugs provided to the U.S. public.
John, can I have you respond to Michael Waldman, who is the president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice?
He writes an opinion piece today in the Wall Street Journal, how to respond right now to the president's boat strikes.
And he says this: any order to, quote, kill everybody, however conveyed, would be a black and white violation of the law.
Extradicial killing of drug traffickers or other criminals would be considered murder.
Even if the United States was at war with narco-terrorists, as Mr. Trump claims, military law specifically prohibits conducting hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors.
John?
unidentified
Well, he's probably, I'm no brain surgeon, but he's probably a lot smarter than I am.
And maybe there's a little political thoughts in that.
But yeah, we wouldn't want the president going overboard.
But we're in a war.
We're in a war.
And right in my own town, people that I know that have had drug problems and died, that gentleman said his grandson died with this stuff.
We're in a war, going back and forth.
And they're not being prosecuted for killing a lot of young people.
So I don't know.
I'm not as smart as maybe that fellow or whatever, but I do go right down to the basics.
And we have to win as much as we can on this war because it's killing a lot of innocent people.
And you can't always have a discussion with people.
Some people just aren't ready to hear it.
But there are a lot of minds that you can change one mind at a time.
unidentified
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The House is going to gabble in at 9 a.m. Eastern time for legislative business.
Until then, we're going to be in open forum here from until the top of the hour.
We're going to get two lawmakers to join us briefly from Capitol Hill to talk about news of the day.
And we'll get your reaction to what we hear from those lawmakers in this hour as well.
Before we get to your calls, though, let's begin with debate on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Several members of Congress in hearings and news conference were talking about the rising cost of health care and specifically the expiration on December 31st of those enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act.
Here's a portion of yesterday's hearing held by the Senate Health Education Labor Committee.
It's an exchange between the panel's chair, Bill Cassidy, Republican Louisiana, and the ranking member, Bernie Sanders, Independent in Vermont, on how to handle the expiring ACA subsidies.
I can tell you, the doc, putting a band-aid over a broken bone does not help anything.
But Republicans are absolutely interested in figuring out a solution that can make health care more affordable and health insurance more affordable from 2026 and beyond.
Now, I'm speaking to both sides of my dais right now, my Democratic and Republican colleagues.
I'm hoping that we can find a bill that can get 60 votes that can fix the problem of the exchanges for January 1, 2026.
So let us extend the current ACA tax credits for at least another year, two years, three years, while in fact, and I'd love to work with you on this, in this committee we tackle the real issues.
Yesterday on Capitol Hill and the Senate Health Committee, a exchange there between the top Republican and Democrat over what to do on these expiring ACA tax credits.
Front page of the Washington Times this morning, they cite a government accountability office report that found Obamacare premium tax credit teeming with fraud is their headline, losses found amid push for an expansion.
They also have this headline.
Democrats reject lifelines for expiring subsidies.
Democrats, believing they have the political upper hand on a health care cliff they created, are rebuffing Republican alternatives to extending enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the month.
A small number of Republicans are trying to tweak and temporarily extend those subsidies, the central issue in the government shutdown this fall.
It's no coincidence that these moves are driven mainly by the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.
Healthcare and the debate over what to do with these expiring ACA subsidies on the table this morning as we are in open forum.
Any other public policy or political issue as well?
I think what the president should be concentrating on in terms of the drug war is that there are cartels in almost every city.
And we know for a fact that in this area, Youngstown has a cartel, but you don't see him bringing in people from the military or even the National Guard to get rid of them.
This is where we've got to concentrate is on the cartels.
And we know that there are cartels because of an incident that occurred in Akron, Ohio.
Now, another thing is, according to the Cato report that you guys bring Cato in all the time, is that Mexico is the one who brings in the fentanyl, not Venezuela.
That was cocaine.
And the fentanyl is what's killing people.
I also know by my son used to work for a police department.
When they would drug test these people when they got arrested, fentanyl was in their marijuana.
So don't tell me that cocaine is what we should be concentrating on.
Diane, referencing that boat strike on September 2nd, ordered by the Defense Secretary, carried out by the Admiral who was overseeing the mission.
There were two strikes.
The first boat strike did not blew up the boat.
There were two survivors.
Then, according to reports, there was a second strike to kill the survivors.
And that is at the heart of the debate on Capitol Hill today.
Behind closed doors, lawmakers will question the admiral who carried out those strikes, as well as the joint chiefs of staff chair.
They will be meeting with lawmakers to defend the administration's position.
The president was asked about this at the White House yesterday, and this is what he had to say.
unidentified
Mr. President, in the book of Strikes, if it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished?
I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years.
I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed.
That's not mentioning all the families.
Have you seen what happens with the families of not only the people killed, but the people that are trying to get their son or their daughter off of this poison that they've been fed?
I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats.
And very soon we're going to start doing it on land, too, because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we know where they put it all together.
And I think you're going to see it very soon on land also.
Yeah, please.
unidentified
So to be clear, do you support the decision to kill survivors after the activity?
And that's exactly why we have this format, so that you can call in and tell us what you think and let lawmakers, the president, the decision makers who are watching this program hear from you as well.
The Democrat from Texas, Congressman Henry Coyar, joining us this morning to talk about this pardon is Gabby Bierenbaum.
She is a Washington correspondent with the Texas Tribune.
Remind our viewers, Gabby, what the congressman was charged with and where were those charges before this pardon by the president.
unidentified
Yeah, so Congressman Coyar was first charged by the DOJ in 2024 related to a raid they conducted in 2022.
It was about a dozen counts, mainly bribery and money laundering.
So the allegation was that he took bribes of about $600,000 from the government of Azerbaijan and from a Mexican bank, and that he and his wife set up sort of shell companies to launder that money.
And then in exchange, he supported policy positions that Azerbaijan supported.
That was the allegation made by the DOJ.
Congressman Coyar has maintained that, you know, this was sort of retaliation for his position on the border, which was against President Biden's right for a while.
And clearly, President Trump agreed with that analysis and pardons him yesterday.
Is the congressman running for re-election in 2026?
unidentified
He is, and that's going to be really critical here.
He's running in a seat that President Trump won in 2024 by about seven points.
And Congressman Coyar was one of the biggest Democratic overperformers last year.
He overperformed Kamala Harris by about 13 points.
It's a seat that Republicans have now redrawn to be more favorable for them.
Now Trump would have won it by about 10, assuming the new maps that Texas Republicans drew over the summer hold up in court.
And so this is going to be a critical seat.
Republicans have a recruit there, the Webb County judge where Laredo is, Tano Ti Arena.
So we would expect this to be a really competitive race.
And I think that's one of the dynamics, right, is that President Trump, in pardoning Congressman Coyar, sort of neutered what had been up to this point one of Republicans' best arguments against him, right?
What was the reaction from Democratic leadership to this pardon?
unidentified
Yes.
So Minority Leader Keep Jeffries said that he felt that the case against Queyar had been thin anyway, and he said he didn't know why Trump had made the decision he did, but that he felt the outcome was correct, that the case against Quear should not have proceeded.
Is there a chance that Congressman Quayar could switch parties, as some have speculated in news reports?
unidentified
Yeah, that was the initial speculation yesterday, right, that there might have been some sort of deal.
I think Congressman Quayar, for now, put that to bed pretty quickly.
It just so happened, right?
He filed for re-election yesterday as a Democrat, and that filing sort of rendered on the Texas Secretary of State website right around the same time that the pardon kicked in shortly after.
So he is for this cycle running as a Democrat.
He's filed.
He described, he said nothing has changed for him.
He said, I'm a conservative Democrat, as he's been.
He is, you know, one of the most moderate members of the Democratic caucus.
He's the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House.
And so as of now, it appears he's still running as a Democrat.
But he did make the decision to go on Fox yesterday.
He has thanked the president, talked about how he wants to find areas to work with the president, and that's sort of always been the MO of his career.
Any public policy or political issue and the headlines from the newspapers, you can react to all of that.
Let's listen to President Trump yesterday when he was asked about his decision to pardon the Congressman Henry Quayar during an event at the White House.
unidentified
So, President, did you speak with House Republican leadership about your decision to pardon Congressman Henry Quayar?
President Trump at the White House yesterday responding to a question about his decision to pardon Democrat Congressman Henry Quayar.
That is on the table this morning for conversation.
Also want to share with you before we go back to calls.
Front page of the Washington Times, the House calls Smith to testify about Trump prosecutions.
No public hearing for the former special counsel.
The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Wednesday, compelling testimony from Jack Smith, the former special counsel who pursued prosecutions against President Trump.
Mr. Smith was ordered to turn over documents by December 12th and to appear for a deposition on December 17th.
Front page of the Washington Times this morning.
Eddie in Georgia, Democratic caller, what's on your mind?
unidentified
Yeah, just a couple of comments and observations.
You know, I'm a retired PE teacher from Michigan.
And I always, as a child, believed that, you know, seeing the first scene is believing.
And some of your callers say that last caller from California, he never answered your question that you reiterated twice to him about the boat strikes.
And they always come back with rehearsed rhetoric, like the Republicans do.
They can't answer a yes or no question at hearings.
They come back with repeatedly wasting the senators five minutes with repeated scripted rhetoric, Bondi, Kash Patel, all of them.
Not too long ago, Mike Johnson held up a book indicating that was their health plan, but they never shared the content and still haven't.
And that's been going on for 10 years now.
And how about Trump calling people garbage?
I really, I mean, these Republicans, the one thing I did want to say, the final thing I wanted to say was that Ed from Lawrenceville, Georgia, said Democrats don't follow the news, and Trump has made us $18 trillion.
So wouldn't that put the national debt at only $20 trillion?
I mean, come on.
We got to start, even in your last clip of Trump, he speaks about the truth.
And we did show you earlier from the New York Times on orders from Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth, U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing 83 people.
Cheryl, Louisiana, Republican.
Hi, Cheryl.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
I'm listening to everyone else that's come on, and it's very interesting.
You can definitely tell who does not like the Republican administration, President Trump and his administration.
You can tell the ones that just are Democrats.
What I'd like to say is to the caller before about President Trump calling garbage to some of the Democrats and to some of the reporters that President Biden himself referred to President Trump as garbage, as well as many other names that all the Democrats have called this administration.
The second thing is that when it comes to the boats, everybody focuses just on the boat strikes.
We all know that We know that President Trump was elected to get rid of drugs, to close our borders.
Unanimously, he was elected for several of these things that he's doing now.
And the Democrats just nitpick every little thing that he's doing, even though he was elected to do it.
So we know that Maduro is in Venezuela.
We know there's a bigger picture to some of this stuff.
Unfortunately, we the people can't be told everything because there's so many leaks that happen when it comes to the Congress and Senate.
So we just have to sit back to a certain extent and let things happen because everything that President Trump has done so far has worked for us, including the tariff.
I am just shocked and in awe of the people who don't have any concern of a missile being shot on a boat, not knowing who's on the boat, what's on the boat.
Oh, wait a minute.
That boat has 15 kids on it.
Maybe it does.
Maybe it doesn't.
Does that boat have drugs on it?
Do you know?
You do not know.
You can't just shoot a boat and say, oh, it came from Venezuela.
It was drug trafficking, killing our people.
You can't even get from Venezuela to America.
How inhumane do you can you be?
And it's against our law, our Constitution, and it should be against everybody's natural rights and their Christian beliefs, whatever their beliefs are.
We're going to go back up to Capitol Hill this morning.
Joining us is Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida.
She's a member of the Oversight and Government Committee, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Congresswoman, thank you so much for your time this morning.
Let's begin with what we have been talking about here on the Washington Journal with our viewers in those boat strikes in Venezuela.
Your thoughts about the administration's position on striking these boats, as well as that strike on September 2nd, two strikes that killed the survivors that were left after the first strike.
So before there's any strike that happens, there's something called a strike package that's put together.
unidentified
And what the strike package involves is an Intel report.
Some of that is gathered, whether it be stateside or internationally.
But the point is, is that there is intelligence that does deem these traffickers as narco-terrorists.
That's an important designation because these are not just innocent civilians or in the previous callers example of children on boats or children on boats.
These are people that are bringing drugs into this country that are responsible for killing many people.
To put it in context in perspective, a couple of weeks ago, I actually went on a ride along in Pinellas County, which is the community that I represent in Florida.
And even a week prior, the law enforcement in our community found over one pound of fentanyl and one pound of cocaine.
That was enough fentanyl to pretty much kill everyone in the county, everyone in the state, multiple times over.
So this whole argument that these people are somehow innocent and deserve due process, when you're willingly making a decision to kill American citizens, when you're coming in and benefiting terrorist organizations, we do not treat you as people that are innocent, but also to remember there was an intelligent assessment and report that came through.
unidentified
So they were deemed as narco-terrorists and thus treated as such.
And so, in the correct assessment that another caller had previously made on C-SPEN, we're not always going to put out the intelligence to the American people because, again, some of that is classified information.
unidentified
But make no mistake, there's absolutely intel assessments going into this.
And I would say that President Trump is definitely on the lower side of things in regards to drone strikes in regards to presidents because Barack Obama, everyone's beloved Democrat president, made over 536 authorized strikes when he was in office.
unidentified
And I don't remember seeing the liberal media or the press going after him for it.
How do you respond to Michael Waldman, who's the president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice?
He argues in the Wall Street Journal this morning this, that any order to quote, kill everybody, however conveyed, would be a black and white violation of the law.
Extradicious killing of drug traffickers or other criminals would be considered murder.
Even if the United States was at war with narco-terrorists, as Mr. Trump claims, military law specifically prohibits conducting, quote, hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, end quote.
unidentified
Very interesting.
Never heard of him, never read his article.
But again, we're operating under civilian law, not military law.
And the president of the United States is protected under his authorities and given authorities by the people of this country to make decisions to include operating and carrying out drone strikes when there's imminent threat and danger against the American people.
unidentified
I would say that that individual, I don't even remember his name that you just mentioned, but is he sitting in those classified briefings?
Is he carrying a classified level clearance to where he can read into that information?
But what he is doing is taking this position and spinning it with a great amount of, I'd say, you know, dishonesty to the American people in an effort to make it political.
For any of these people, I don't care if they're Democrats or not, but are they super critical of President Obama when he did the same thing?
unidentified
The fact is, is that for the most part, to my knowledge, since I've really been alive, which has been for 36 years, there's been many presidents who have used this authority and it hasn't been a big deal.
I do understand though that it might be shocking for people to see footage of narco-terrorists being blown out of the water, but I would argue that maybe those people need to go into inner-city Chicago or maybe they need to check out Skid Row and see what happens when you have people injecting themselves with drugs or see what happens to the families in this country that have to deal with children that are ODing.
unidentified
So I have no sympathy for those people that are choosing to traffic drugs into this country.
And I definitely don't have any sympathy for the fact that these terrorist networks are responsible for destabilizing and causing mass atrocities in part of these countries in South America, of which I've traveled to.
unidentified
I have seen the mass graves and the footage of mass graves that are responsible and funded largely by these terrorist networks.
So no, I don't have sympathy.
This is called governing and we are going to do what we need to do to keep the American people safe.
Congresswoman, your reaction to the special election in Tennessee's 7th district earlier this week, the headline in the Washington Post says, Tennessee election reveals House GOP has a base problem.
It notes that in that same district, President Trump and Senator Marsha Blackburn won the district by 22 percentage points.
The Republican here won by 9 to 10 percentage points.
Would you agree or are you concerned that there's a base problem here?
No, I think right now if you're looking at actually what happened previous to the special election, the Republican now member of Congress that will be sworn in had to face a very brutal and bruising primary where there was a lot of sour grapes over the results of that primary.
unidentified
He did come out the winner and so obviously we support the winner and now he's going to be a member of Congress.
But that's not something that's atypical outside of the midterm elections.
You know, remember, when you have a bruising primary and then you're taking in millions and millions of dollars from the Democrat machine, of which I have personally been the victim of at some points during my elections, it can be difficult elections, but I'm not too worried about it.
unidentified
I do think, though, that Congress as a whole, you know, instead of putting the NCAA legislation on the floor, we should maybe talk about insider trading and banning it.
And there's massive bipartisan opposition within the House chamber to enable this to continue happening.
unidentified
I can tell you the American people, overwhelmingly, 86% of Americans actually support banning of the single trading stock because it is such a problem with insider trading here in Washington, D.C.
But again, that's going to be something that we have to flush out.
unidentified
If we're really talking about the problems that exist in this country, look no further than individual stock trading of members in Congress.
They are personally controlled by the top three, BlackRock Vanguard, and the pharmaceutical companies.
BlackRock is contributing to the housing crisis in this country, where young single families can't purchase homes because they're being bought up by these corporations.
And then also, in addition to that, when you have over one in three members of Congress that are exposed to whether it's Big Pharma or BlackRock, do you really think that they're going to cap prescription pill prices and codify President Trump's executive order?
And then I also heard actually this morning that Speaker Johnson is having a meeting with some of those holdouts in the Republican Party and also to talking to Democrat members as well that might not necessarily be as on board with this legislation.
But the thing is that I'm open to amending the legislation as long as we're stopping and making it very difficult for the insider trading to take place.
unidentified
Even just yesterday there was a letter where over 90 members of former members of Congress had written a letter to both Hakeem Jeffries and the Speaker of the House.
This included Democrats, Republicans and Independents saying that insider trading is a problem in Washington DC.
What's been interesting is you'll see that there is a lot of people from behind the scenes that are trying to tank this process, but no one wants to come out and publicly tell the American people or their voters that they're going to block the legislation to really take down the insider trading happening here in D.C.
So there's a big internal war that we have and it's not just Republicans, it's Democrats as well.
No, I don't necessarily blame him because there was a House admin hearing where they chose, meaning the individual who's in charge of that committee chose to make this a closed-door hearing, meaning that other members like myself or Representative Magazine or Jayapal or Chiproy or Tim Burchett who have been championing this legislation couldn't gavel on and actually speak to the issues that exist here in Congress on that topic.
unidentified
But I will say that there is no excuse for why this legislation hasn't been moved sooner.
And that is why I chose to act in good faith with the discharge petition.
I said back in September prior to the shutdown that House leadership had until the end of the month.
I did that in a press conference.
It was bipartisan and very widely covered.
And of course then the government shutdown happened.
And so I'm simply fulfilling and following up on what I promised to do.
But what I will say is that there is now open discussions at moving legislation through regular order to bring this to the floor.
Now, to be clear, if the leadership of the House of Representatives, if Democrat leadership tries to water down this legislation, which I think they might try to do, not the Speaker, but other actors within these parties, I do think that you are going to have a massive, massive amount of people, both Democrat and Republican, signing on to this, because we're frankly sick and tired of it.
You have people that are insider trading, it's illegal, and they are bringing bad name on all of the House of Representatives.
We're going into the midterms.
The American people as a whole are disappointed in Congress because they don't feel that we work on behalf of the American people, and they're not truly wrong.
Look at what's happening with insider trading.
How could you ever be expected to truly advocate on behalf of your constituents when you're working and you're benefiting personally from the deals that some of these corporations are getting?
And so it's my job to call it out.
I've been made wildly unpopular on the Hill because of it, but wildly popular among the American people.
But to provide some context and perspective, the former Speaker who, you know, we ended up putting our issues past in the past once he was elected Speaker, but he worked against me to get re-elected or to get elected to office.
And then when it came to really pushing support for, you know, new moms being able to vote, he wasn't going to support that either.
unidentified
So all that to say that, you know, Mike Johnson at least picks up the phone call.
We don't always agree on things.
And I've definitely debated with him behind closed doors, but we're both honest brokers with one another.
And so what I will say is this is an incredibly big pressure cooker being in Washington, D.C.
I think any member of Congress will tell you that.
I'm 36 and I'm already getting gray hairs because of the job.
So I'm not a huge fan of the pressure or the stress, but for him to manage 435 personalities is a lot.
Well, MAGA Mike was a term that everyone used to call him when he was in committee.
So he can be a Spitfire, but I understand that with the numbers and the vote, the different personalities, obviously such a slim majority, he might not be able to be full MAGA Mike, but he's still in there somewhere.
You can respond to what you heard from the Congresswoman here in our last hour of today's Washington Journal.
In about 15 minutes, the House will be gaveling in.
Let's go to Mindy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Democratic caller.
Mindy, what's on your mind?
unidentified
Thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate it.
My thing is I want to take politics out of all of the things that are going on in the Caribbean Sea.
We have a U.S. Coast Guard station here in South Florida that has been very successful in gaining access to these votes that were bringing drugs into the country.
Matter of fact, they've probably confiscated more than 10 tons, if not more, of illegal drugs.
We have a Coast Guard in this country that protects our seas and our ports.
If Trump wanted to make a point, why not seize these boats?
Why not prove to the American public that these are full of drugs and cartel participants?
Why not show the drugs?
Why sink them?
It makes no sense to me.
As I said, we should take the politics out of it and look at what we're doing.
So what I'm saying is, is finally, fentanyl is being overrated.
I think alcohol kills three times more people.
I just checked that out from the CDC.
It kills more people than fentanyl.
So I don't know what the big deal is.
And my last point is: yesterday I was listening to C-SPAN, and I was surprised to hear that the gentleman that committed a bad crime for killing those two military people was PTSD.
I was shocked.
And he was 15 years of age when they sent him to the military.
I mean, I had a change of mind for the Afghan people because I hate for all of them to suffer just because of the crime of one person.
Okay, I will leave it at that caller because we need to go back up to Capitol Hill.
Joining us there is Congresswoman Jill Takuda, Democrat of Hawaii, serves on the Armed Services Committee.
Congresswoman, let's begin with those boat strikes in the Caribbean.
What is your position on the September 2nd boat strikes, the first and the second one?
unidentified
I think that the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, owes the American people a lot of answers that he has not been given.
Let's be clear.
In the past, when we've gone after potential drug smuggling boats, we have not literally blown them out of the water, not once, but twice.
These are unprecedented actions that very well, when we see all the information and facts laid out before us, could result in war crime prosecutions here.
And we're not talking about saddling the blame and scapegoating an admiral.
We're talking going all the way to the top.
Who gave those kill orders?
And I think that's a question that Pete Hegseth has been absolutely avoiding.
The New York Times writes this morning that in defending the campaign of summary killings at sea as lawful, the administration has relied on Mr. Trump's disputed determination that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that people suspected of smuggling drugs for them are combatants.
Congresswoman, are these cartels armed and are they killing Americans?
unidentified
First of all, war powers authority rests with Congress and you've got a lot of warlike language that the President and his administration is using to try to defend these, quite frankly, unlawful actions.
And when we talk about survivors clinging to the side of the boat, these are not armed combatants.
In fact, some would argue even before the strike itself, were they armed combatants pointing guns to the heads of Americans right now, posing an imminent threat to life and to democracy, to the country.
I think that this administration, this president still has a very big case to make in terms of how he can justify this level and use of force, this massive deployment of our military to the region right now.
And those answers have not been gotten from this administration.
So to justify these actions, I think the Americans have right to question whether or not this was a justifiable use of force and this was not in fact a violation of our own rules of law as well as international law.
We have not seen any pictures or evidence, quite frankly, to this day that really shows that these are armed combatants that are posing imminent and immediate threat to Americans.
And again, as you recall, with this particular boat strike, from what I understand, as it's been reported, not just two strikes to kill all survivors, but four strikes in total to absolutely sink the boat so that no evidence, nothing could actually be retrieved to actually be able to even lay claim that that was in fact the case, that these were armed combatants posing threats to American citizens.
What about the Americans who have lost their lives, the families of those who have lost loved ones to drugs like fentanyl?
Is that not a threat to the United States?
unidentified
Drugs are absolutely 100% a threat to the United States.
And you're talking about an administration that's actually cut funding to support programs that help families and individuals dealing with drug addiction.
So it's quite the hypocrisy now to go out and blow up these boats.
You know, in the past when we had these incursions, we actually seized the boats.
We arrested and detained the individuals so we could actually get to the root of the crime and stop the penetration of all drugs into our country.
We don't even know what kind of drugs were actually on those boats.
You can't when you sink it to the point of having it drop to the bottom of the ocean.
And so the question really lies, what is this president truly trying to do?
If stopping drugs is the case, there's questions as to if these routes even are bound for the United States, if they even carry fentanyl.
As we know, that typically comes over land in the southern border area.
You're in the ocean now.
Usually this particular route heads to Europe containing cocaine and other illicit drugs, which of course are not good.
But again, the past practice has been to seize, to detain, to make sure that we absolutely understand what's going on so we can better prevent the flow of drugs into this country, not blow them out of the water with our military forces.
Congresswoman, the Inspector General report came out about the use of the signal messaging app, and they found that the Defense Secretary put U.S. troops at risk and that it broke protocol.
However, the Pentagon Press Secretary, Sean Purnell, put this statement out.
The Inspector General review is a total exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along.
No classified information was shared.
The matter is resolved and the case is closed.
The administration pointing to the part of the report that said that the Defense Secretary has the authority to declassify information.
unidentified
I think just because you can declassify information doesn't mean that you should.
And I think what we have here is a secretary who, from day one, we have questioned whether he has the competency, the character, and the ability to make good decisions.
And I think anyone, any American out there looking at the SignalGate situation can tell you that he did not use proper channels to communicate sensitive information.
He put American service members' lives at risk.
Just because he can declassify information doesn't mean that every bit of piece of paper or information that comes into his hands should at that moment then become declassified.
People should be asked the question, yes, he can declassify.
Should he have declassified that particular information?
Did he, in fact, declassify that information at the point that he then started to signal with his buddies and friends on, you know, about the war plans that he had in the area.
So I think there's a lot that you can take from the report.
We should be asking tough questions to Pete Hegseth in a public setting, you know, under oath.
And again, I think this really comes down to a question of competency, character, as well as his ability to make good decisions.
Being the secretary is about making choices.
Should you use signal?
Should you walk away when that second strike goes out on the boat in the middle of the ocean?
Should you give a kill order?
I think these are legitimate questions that we need to be asking the Secretary of Defense.
I know that there's been bipartisan efforts to call Pete Hegseth forward to get information.
It needs to be in a public setting.
I appreciate that you can have classified briefings, but the bottom line is the American people deserve to know what happens.
They deserve to see him answer or not answer their questions.
So I do hope that the Armed Services Committees will bring forward the Secretary in short order to be able to be held accountable to the decisions that he has made throughout his tenure so far.
Do you think that Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, should resign?
unidentified
I absolutely think that he should take a look at his body of work, his ability to make good decisions, ability to keep this country safe.
And I think if he were to look back honestly and openly about it, that he would decide it's in the best interest of this country and our Department of Defense for him to resign.