SEATTLE – When Donald Trump was first asked about the legality or otherwise of the military strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, he scoffed at the question.
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said in the Oval Office in October. “We’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK?”
Trump and his Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, a former weekend host for Fox News, claimed that they were targeting vessels used by a drug network – Tren De Aragua – which the White House had designated a “terrorist organisation”.
They never provided such evidence, but were happy to release video clips of the strikes, with the moment of lethal impact obscured, unaware or uncaring that they were themselves providing evidence of potential war crimes, something many experts said their acts constituted.
Suddenly, Trump’s nonchalance has gone.
After The Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave orders to “kill everybody” who had survived an operation on 2 September in a follow-up strike – a seemingly even more egregious violation of the rules of war – US politicians from the left and right have demanded an investigation.
Crucially, they want the full videos released, not just the clips they had been posted on social media and which invariably went viral.
The top Republican and his Democratic Party counterpart of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced at the weekend that they would be “conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts”. In the House of Representatives, a similar plan was announced.
“If that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Republican Mike Turner of Ohio told CBS News.
Hegseth, who served in the National Guard and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has continued to defend his actions. He has even posted AI-generated memes of the strikes, seemingly making light of a policy that has killed at least 83 people.
“The fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” he wrote on X.
At the same time, many commentators have pointed out that Hegseth may be about to be made the fall guy.
The 45-year-old “Secretary of War”, who Trump picked in large part because he thought looked the part, has not been involved in negotiations over efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, the administration dispatched Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, suddenly elevated and tasked with negotiating with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Russians.
On Sunday, Trump was asked about the so-called kill order while on Air Force One. While he was not exactly crestfallen, his confidence was more muted than usual. Noticeably, he did not try and dismiss the report as “fake news” and his support for Hegseth appeared restrained.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “[Hegseth] said he did not say that, and I believe him, 100 per cent.”
Asked if he would have supported a follow-up hit, Trump said: “We’ll look into it. But no, I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal, it was fine. And if there were two people around…”
He then said: “But Pete said that didn’t happen.”
At Monday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Hegseth “authorised Admiral Frank Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes”.
Coming on the heels of Trump’s defeat when he was forced to release the files relating Jeffrey Epstein, the row is a distraction for the White House, which wants Trump focused on domestic issues that matter most to voters, such as the cost of living.
Yet both on Epstein and the strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, now totalling 21, Democrats and others are not prepared to let up.
Last month, six Democrats who had served in the military or intelligence services posted a video reminding service members they were not required to follow illegal orders. Sharing the video, US Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who worked in the CIA, wrote: “The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.”
While Trump and Hegseth denounced the Democrats as plotting sedition, their defenders said they were only stating the truth.
Nevertheless, the timing of the video, as Trump has been sending troops into US cities against the wishes of local leaders, and amid mounting controversy over the drug boats strikes, suggested that some realised the controversy was set to escalate.
The Democrats were also predicting a future when Trump no longer exerted such an iron grip. While he has previously commuted the sentences of troops convicted of committing war crimes, they suggested there may come a time when he can no longer provide such protection and those members of the military would have to answer for anything they did at the orders of him and Hegseth.
Complicating the situation is the confusion over Trump’s policy regarding Venezuela. While he has ordered the biggest build-up of the US military in the Caribbean in decades, it was also reported that he had talked to the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has clung on to power with an iron grip. Maduro’s days may be numbered after Trump sided with opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won an election last year and who dedicated her recent Nobel Peace Prize to him.
Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in a US prison.
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Trump claimed Hernandez had been treated badly by former US president Joe Biden.
Was this the action of someone truly committed to tackling the flow of illegal drugs into the US?
Or was it the latest in a string of erratic decisions by a 79-year-old US President whose behaviour and statements make less and less sense, even to many of his most loyal supporters?
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