Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Congressman Adam Smith: Well, thanks, Greg. It’s always good to see you.
Congressman, what do you know about the situation?
Look, ever since Trump became president, one of the big questions in my world of the Department of Defense is: what do you do if you’re given an illegal order? And the military, you know, has steadfastly said, we serve the Constitution, we will not carry out illegal orders.
So I don’t think it takes an enormous leap of logic to think that maybe Admiral Holsey wasn’t comfortable with that—they had a discussion, and then he was forced out. We’ll see if something else comes out in the next couple of days, but I think that has to be the presumption until we see some evidence otherwise.
Smith: I have not heard anything specifically. No one has said to me, hey, there was a meeting between Holsey and Hegseth and it got heated and he said...but again, the logic of the situation—I cannot imagine a reason why Admiral Holsey would leave this job voluntarily, just because.
And as I mentioned, that starts with the Southern Command commander, Admiral Holsey. So all of those conversations swirling about concerns about illegal orders, and then the Southern Command commander just happens to resign? I mean, coincidences do happen—but not very often.
Smith: Not sure. I know that within the Pentagon there is discomfort with the way Hegseth and Trump have run DOD—so political, so focused on personal loyalty. And you’ve seen it. I mean, Holsey is—but yeah, I’m—well, I have to count through all of them—all of the senior DOD officials, starting with C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have been forced out in the last eight or nine months.
So, yeah—and of course we had the little trip to Quantico a week ago, where it was definitely implied that the military needs to be loyal to Trump much more than to the Constitution or to doing their job well. There is a deep amount of discomfort within the Department of Defense with being forced into that type of loyalty.
I believe some members of Congress, including yourself, have been briefed in some sense by administration officials. I understand that some of this is going to be classified, but what can you tell us about what you’ve learned?
And look, I’ve been through this stuff many times before—stuff we did in Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia and elsewhere. And when we have a target in this case, the committees are regularly briefed on the specific, very specific details—who was targeted and why, you know, and what was the accumulation of intel and evidence that led to the strike. And they’ve always given us the answer: this was the person, this was who did it, this is why we did it.
All they’ve said is, these people are part of a drug-running gang and we killed them. Who they are exactly, what this gang is, how it’s directly connected to the United States, what the overall plan is here, who is the organization exactly that we are targeting—I’ve never been in a situation like this where there has been less information provided to Congress on the details of that activity.
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): And the president’s been very clear, and he’s been very transparent about these strikes, releasing classified video, unclassifying that video, declassifying it rather for all of you to see, and to let the public and lawmakers know with each of these strikes. And there should be no surprise for this. The president campaigned on using every lever of power to go after the drug cartels who have been trafficking illicit poison into our country for far too long.
Smith: Well, I mean, that’s part of the overall disturbing pattern here, is we have seen the president seize more and more unilateral power without any checks and balances on it. And then part of the way he does that is to try to convince the people of this country that it’s normal—this is what people do all the time, nothing to see here, it’s not any different. And that’s just a lie in many instances.
I mean, certainly now we have Speaker Johnson shutting down Congress. You know, we’ve been shut down for three weeks—no intention of bringing us back. We have been in session during every single previous shutdown.
And the fact that they haven’t is troubling. The fact that they feel so comfortable simply lying about it is even more troubling.
Smith: No, they have not. And so they haven’t even presented that background, as I said. But also, even if they did, this is not justified by any stretch of the imagination.
And in every instance of the previous administrations I’ve worked with—heck, even the first Trump administration, for the most part, with a couple of exceptions—there is presented a legal justification. And basically, you’ve got two paths here. One is: has Congress authorized this?
So A) there was authority under the 2003 AUMF to take out those terrorist-related organizations doing that kind of thing. And B) that’s a direct, imminent threat to the United States. It is a direct effort to kill Americans.
Drug runners do not qualify for that. And I know—drugs kill—and they do. They kill tens of thousands of people. But it is not the intention of the drug runners to kill people. They’re selling drugs, and drugs are a major problem in this country. I happen to think it’s as much of a demand problem as it is a supply problem—but it is not a direct attack to try and kill Americans or seize territory in America.
Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about that as well. Just to be clear for people, Trump is claiming that drug trafficking constitutes an act of war. They keep using the word narco-terrorists, as Karoline Leavitt did in that clip we listened to. He’s claiming they’re somehow akin to Al Qaeda. That’s absurd on its face. But I just want to be clear. Nobody has seen any evidence that they actually credibly know they’re drug traffickers, correct? Do you think that they are drug traffickers? Is it within the realm...
Sargent: Right and so it’s it’s perfectly possible, it’s within the realm of possibility, that some of these are migrants and not drug traffickers correct?
Sargent: Right—so we really know nothing, is what you’re saying.
Sargent: Right. And so have any of you been briefed in any sense on this reported covert action in Venezuela? And do you expect war with Venezuela soon?
And look, I’ll tie a little terrifying connection in for you here. You hear what’s going on in Chicago—and it’s going on in other cities as well—but in Chicago, most blatantly, they are literally stopping people on the street and demanding their papers. If they don’t have them—frequently citizens, legal residents—are being detained by your United States federal government without any probable cause, articulable suspicion, or any measure, just because they showed up and they want to say it.
How far are we away from President Trump deciding to use the U.S. military to do a kinetic strike on people within the U.S. because he sees them as a threat, by whatever definition he wants to throw out there?
If you are an American conservative, do you want the federal government to be able to have that type of power—to take away your liberty—whether it’s Trump or anybody else?
Smith: Yeah, and now we got John Bolton—because Trump didn’t like his book—John Bolton’s got to be apparently prosecuted. And then Trump in the Oval Office yesterday throwing out another three or four people that he thinks should be prosecuted.
Smith: I have and concerns are expressed—and they don’t really want to do anything about it.
Smith: Yeah. They don’t really have an excuse other than, you know, not my hill to die on sort of thing. And also keep in mind that since September 19, we have been in session for a day and a half. So for a month now, that’s it. The Republicans are not here. They’re not in Washington, D.C. They’re not in the Capitol. They haven’t been here since, I think, we came in briefly on September 30. So they’re not around. And that, in and of itself, is a problem.
So we need to be worried about that, in my opinion.
Smith: All of those things are on the table—but just oversight as a starting point. Because let’s wrap up where we started, when you and I spoke earlier today, and that’s Karoline Leavitt’s press conference where she just lied about it.
If we were in charge of Congress, we could have hearings. We could actually exercise oversight and make it clearer to a wider swath of the American public what’s going on—and not so simply let the administration lie their way out of the authoritarian actions that they’re taking.
Smith: Yeah: Don’t. And I know it’s hard, but this has long been a cornerstone of the United States military, is you are not under any legal obligation or more to carry out an illegal order. And you can make that independent decision.
Smith: That is, well—I don’t like your terminology, but we would suggest—and perhaps subpoena—and say we need to have a conversation about this for the sake of the Republic. So, yeah, no, I think we can do that.
So, I want to hear more, either from Admiral Holsey or from others around him, about exactly what happened here. But, yeah, I mean, you’re not supposed to carry out an illegal order and an extrajudicial killing—that’s what we’re talking about here.
Sargent: So will House Democrats on your committee solicit testimony from the Admiral and try to get Republicans to agree to do that?
Again, this is all a battle of trying to educate the American people—or, educate is the wrong word—of trying to grow our coalition of people who are concerned about Trump.
So we need to do outreach. We need to grow our coalition. And again, I’ll come back—there’s a lot of things as a Democrat, you want this, you want that. No Republican should want an authoritarian president who can take away your liberty here in the United States of America.
Sargent: Right. I think there’s a big opening to do that. And that’s really well said. Just to be absolutely clear, your committee will request or even demand the testimony from the admiral who’s now stepping down and you will try to press Republicans to join you.
Sargent: Congressman Adam Smith, thank you so much for coming on with us. Really illuminating. We appreciate it.
Smith: Thanks, Greg. Appreciate the chance.
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