Breaking News from Pod Save America - Congressman SLAMS Trump and Hegseth for WEAK Leadership

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

Congressman Seth Moulton stops by Crooked HQ to talk to Tommy about the administration’s extrajudicial murders in the waters off of South America, Pete Hegseth’s weak leadership of the Pentagon, how Trump is selling us out to China, why the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are such a disaster, and why he’s challenging Ed Markey for his Senate seat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. Based on Route Metrics, Best Overall Mobile Network Performance, U.S. second half, 2025, all rights reserved, must provide a very recent post-paid consumer mobile bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal, additional terms, conditions, and restrictions, and My guest today represents the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We can't say great state. You know, like they say in Texas. You could say great Commonwealth. Great Commonwealth, Massachusetts. He's on the Armed Services Committee. He's a veteran in the Marine Corps. Seth Moulton, great to see you. It's good to be back. Welcome back. Welcome to L.A. In studio, you beat the snow.

Thank God. It looks kind of nasty. Get out just in time. You know, you know D.C. like two inches of snow. It's an apocalypse there. So I'm really grateful that you're here, especially the timing, because there is this really important debate happening in Washington about the legality of Donald Trump's foreign policy, especially these air strikes on boats in the Caribbean against so-called narco-terrorists, which as far as I can tell is a made-up term. Completely made up. Completely made up. In particular, people are talking about, Congress is talking about the so-called double-tap strike on the first one of these drug boat targets or alleged drug boat targets.

Some members of Congress saw the actual video of that strike, both strikes. imagine earlier this week. I know you got to read out from some of them. What did they see? What they saw is something that is blatantly illegal and blatantly immoral. And remember, this is something that's actually used as an example in law of war texts. They say you do not shoot survivors clinging to wreckage of a boat. In fact, in World War II, we tried German U-boat officers for this crime. And in one case, three of them were convicted. And then, executed by firing squad by the British because this is a war crime without question. So that, I think, is pretty black and white.

There'll be a legal debate about whether it's a war crime or just outright murder based on the legality of the whole operation. But we really need to talk a lot about that question. Is this entire operation even legal? I mean, look, we don't like drug runners. I don't want drugs in America. But drug running is not a capital crime. I mean, are we going to start conducting drone strikes on cars, ferrying drugs through the streets of Los Angeles? Because that's what they're doing.

They're just saying these people who are ferrying drugs deserve to die, and anybody who happens to be with them, even if we don't know who they are, they deserve to die to. And I saw Rand Paul posted a letter from the Coast Guard about their interdictions in the same region. And 20% of those interdictions found no contraband on the vessels. So, boy, I sure hope our error rate isn't quite that high. on these airstrikes because we're just killing a lot of innocent people but it's pretty it's pretty hard to believe that it's not yeah I mean and that's that's that those are some of the questions that are so important that those of us serving in Congress on committees like the Armed Services Committee need to be

to be asking and trust me we are yeah but the answers we're getting are not are not very satisfying we know for a fact that these these drug runners often hire fishermen just to pilot the boats we know for a fact that there are refugees trying to get out of these countries. They may be on these boats, too. So I'd put my reputation pretty solidly on the side of, I don't know for sure, but I can pretty much guarantee we've killed some innocent people here. Yeah. I mean, especially this first boat that had 11 people on it, it just doesn't really make sense. That's 11 people on a drug running boat. Yeah, I agree with you. Like, there's a much more important big picture question about the policy, but just a few more specifics.

I mean, do you guys know by any chance how close the nearest kind of Navy or Coast Guard vessel was to this ship when it was struck? Because, like, couldn't they just have gone, drove over to pick these guys up? I realize the ocean is large, but in October, like CSI has said that 10% of all deployed U.S. Navy assets were in the Southcom area of operations, which is where the Caribbean is. And that was before the Gerald Ford, another aircraft carrier, showed up with its associated strike group. It feels like why not just go check? We asked that question in the first hearing we got when they didn't disclose all the details of this first boat strike, but they did talk about it. And it was a classified briefing, so technically the answer is classified. But let me just say that they tried to make the excuse that they don't have assets nearby.

But if indeed they're actually tracking these boats well enough as they claim to know, that in fact these are these so-called narco-terrorists who are on these boats, then it seems to me they had plenty of time to take just one or two of those myriad assets that have been diverted from things that matter like deterring China over to Venezuela and got it in place to interdict the boat. Yeah, apparently the smoke from the first strike cleared after 30 minutes that revealed these survivors who they claim were trying to flip the boat back over and they believe that constituted an indication.

Tell me, what would you do if you were stuck? I mean, right. It's insane. That means you're in the fight that you're trying to somehow rescue yourself? Right. So like if someone is wounded on the battlefield and that person tries to stand up, like does that constitute an offensive maneuver, so therefore you get to shoot that wounded soldier? No.

In fact, you know, if you go on one of these defense blogs or whatever, they're always sharing videos of Russians killing wounded Ukrainians with the tagline, here are the Russians committing another war crime. How is this different? Senator Tom Cotton said on CNN, we were right to kill them. He said that the capsized ship did constitute an ongoing threat from drugs, and that the drugs on the boat, quote, detonate like a bomb in communities and kill those communities in the United States. What's your response to Senator Cotton's very different reading of this watching? this video than say Congressman Jim Himes or...

I mean, Senator Cotton went to Harvard as ostensibly a smart guy, but seems to have forgotten common sense when it comes to defending Donald Trump. Explain to me how a pile of drugs floating in the middle of the ocean is a continued threat to the United States. Is the idea that like, are the drugs the weapon or are the drugs the means to buy? Well, the administration can't really make up its mind because on the one hand, they're saying that, you know, we know drugs are a problem, right? But on the one hand, they're saying that these drugs are killing Americans. On the other, they're saying that these drugs finance a war from the cartels against our allies.

Like, which is it? Trump went on TV many times at the beginning of this operation saying fentanyl is killing Americans in our streets. And we know that. Is this fentanyl? No, it's not. Almost certainly not. Before getting elected to Congress, you served four tours in Iraq. How does what you've heard in these briefings about these strikes and the rules of engagement around them and the process for making the decision whether to fire a missile or not kind of compare to your experience and kind of rules of engagement as you knew them?

We got rules of engagement that we believed were lawful and honest and true. And you could ask questions if you disagreed. The commanders wouldn't encourage that. I, as a commander, would encourage that. I didn't see people getting fired for asking questions. I didn't see a lot of troops disagreeing with the fundamental morality of the rules of engagement. And yet we know that's happening in this chain of command. And Major Pete doesn't care.

He just rolls right over people and fires whoever's in the way. And at the end of that first briefing that we finally got on these strikes, a classified briefing for the House Armed Services Committee, I went up to the senior Navy commander briefing us. And I looked him in the eye. I stood about a foot from his face. And I said, I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the constitutional peril you're putting our troops in. Can you elaborate that?

I mean, what legal risk is there for the men and women involved in these operations? And then more broadly, what message does it send to men and women in uniform when the Secretary of the Defense, the Secretary of Defense in the President of the United States are just sort of like, I don't care about war crimes. I mean, J.D. Vant said, I don't give a shit, right? That was his tweet about this. Well, that's convenient if you're in a position

where President Trump is just going to pardon you. But that doesn't work very well for the young men and women who are pulling the trigger here. And, you know, look, if my company commander in Iraq had ordered me to commit a war crime, he would have been doing something illegal, but so would I. And we should both be held accountable in that situation. And so if we care about laws, if we care about morality,

if we actually believe in the Constitution again in America, then we need to prosecute these offenses if that's what they are. And that means that a lot of people in the chain of command are going to be held accountable. And that's what I emphasize to this Navy admirable. who was briefing us is you're putting yourself at risk. I hope you recognize that. But don't forget that you're putting a lot of people under you at risk as well. And there are some people like Pete Higgsteth who are just going to throw his subordinates under the bus.

That's what he did to Admiral Bradley, right? You know, nice little pat in the bat. Hey, it was your decision. I don't take responsibility for that. Yeah. But I'm not sure everyone in the military likes that. And that's not what we're supposed to do. Yeah, do you have any sense of how this is going over at the Pentagon?

Because, look, he is not subtle. Those tweets being like, I stand by Admiral Bradley and the decisions he made about this strike and every other strike. Everyone saw right through that. I don't think there's anything that's going to really piss off the military more than that, see that passing the buck. I mean, let's not forget, this is a secretary who has repeatedly shown he's completely unwilling to accept personal accountability. for his actions. And that's like one of the most fundamental things you're taught in the military is take accountability for you and your troops. I mean, my job description as a platoon commander, was you responsible for everything your platoon does or fails to do? You, Lieutenant Moulton,

don't go blaming a private, a lance corporal, you are responsible. But when the Secretary of Defense takes classified details of an operation about to occur that could literally lead to pilots getting shot down, an absolute mission failure, which by the way is exactly what the report actually says, then you should take responsibility for something that any private under your command would get court-martialed for and probably thrown in prison. But what has Major Pete done? Refuse to take any responsibility at all. Totally past the buck. And I would never claim to speak for all the troops, right? But I can tell you. there are not many troops who look fondly on that sort of quote leadership.

Yeah, I mean, not only did he not take responsibility for Signalgate, he didn't sit with the IG for the investigation. I don't think he turned over. He refused to be interviewed. Yeah. I mean, what's this guy so scared of? Yeah. He's not only weak, but he's afraid. Yeah, he's definitely afraid.

Also, I mean, look, again, just in terms of the message it sends to the troops, I mean, this is a guy who spent a lot of his time before becoming Secretary of Defense defending an individual named Eddie Gallagher, who is. was accused by his own men of some pretty heinous war crimes. He, you know, wrote a book where he referred to JAG officers, you know, military lawyers as jagoffs, right? So he's someone who has shown scorn and contempt, basically, for rules of engagement and the law of war. What does that do to the military when their leader says and does and thinks those things? I mean, there's no one who hates bad cops more than good cops, right?

because they give everybody a bad name. And it is embarrassing as a veteran of our armed services to hear that kind of trash from a military leader and a fellow veteran. Because war criminals are an embarrassment to us. They're despicable. I want nothing to do with them. And I don't want to ever be associated with war criminals because that has nothing to do with how I behaved or acted, even in a war candidly, that I disagreed with in Iraq.

I mean, on a totally different subject, I'm getting some heat from the director of ICE right now because I'm just saying ICE officers who break the law should be prosecuted. Seems reasonable. Pretty reasonable. Like, if you're in law enforcement and you're actually breaking the law, you should be prosecuted. Right? Not in this administration. They obviously disagree with it. And so, you know, this guy's going after me on the Internet, right?

But the point is that if you actually not only put your life on the line for the country, but put your reputation. on the line for doing the right thing, that it is despicable to see people who are defended for doing the wrong thing. So that's what that's what Hague Seth does. Yeah, I mean, you were talking the other day. It is, um, it's interesting to see the dam break a little bit among Republicans on this particular issue, right? There is genuine concern on a bipartisan basin about this specific double tap strike. Um, do you think, is there likely to lead to action? I mean, what could Congress do, to get at the bigger point you were making earlier about the legality of this entire policy of these air strikes. I mean, look, Congress could do a lot. Congress could impeach the Secretary of Defense. Congress could censure.

You know, could conduct a huge investigation. I mean, not just these little small investigations behind the scenes. It's fundamentally the job of Congress to hold the administration accountable. And the problem is that too many Republicans in Congress, just about all of them, are total cowards. You know? I'll give credit to the one exception, Don Bacon. bacon, yeah. You know, but they're basically cowards.

And the only times I've really seen them go after the administration, like they did about three or four days ago this week, is, of course, in a classified briefing. Now, it was impressive. And I give credit to the chairman of our committee, in fact, from Alabama for really holding the administration accountable on some things. But let's also see it in public. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, you know, look, this isn't about personal attacks.

This is about breaking the law. but it just shows that Pete Hegseth is not only wrong, he's weak. He's afraid. He's a coward. He's like a classic schoolyard bully, just like Donald Trump, who has to try to act tough because he knows he not. And when that's the example that we're setting for our troops, when that's the leadership that they're supposed to follow, that's not just dangerous for our national security. It's dangerous for the reputation of our entire military. Yeah, and he just, he seems dangerous.

incompetent. I mean, bigger picture, there are, as I said earlier, like, you know, 300,000 tons of naval assets in the Caribbean right now. There's 15,000 troops. There's all this talk about a potential invasion of Venezuela. Donald Trump apparently told President Maduro of Venezuela that he had a week to leave. Of course, that deadline expired, because Trump lets every single deadline expire. But there's all this talk about the CIA taking covert action. I mean, do you, do you feel like we are going to war with Venezuela? It feels like we might. And that's why I authored legislation to prevent

us from doing that. I actually authored a bill to say that Congress will not fund operations in Venezuela without a vote from Congress. Of course, Republicans don't want to give this legislation a vote yet, but that is

legislation that we are working on to try to get some Republican support for because actually there are Republicans who should care enough to not repeat the mistake that we made in Iraq, you know, to not get us into another war that we don't belong in. And, hey, at least in Iraq, they actually had a vote. I mean, I disagree with a lot of people and how they voted on that, but we at least had a vote. I don't know. I missed the episode you did last year on what a national security threat, Venezuela, almost the United States of America.

It is wild. I mean, you know, meanwhile, we're pardoning another narcoterrorists from we're pardoning other narco terrorists. We're seeing the threat of war over time. Huang go up with China because Trump is so weak with China. We don't talk about this nearly enough as Democrats. I also sit on the China committee. I mean, he is selling the farm to China. We are completely losing the trade war he started with China. And he is encouraging Chinese aggression in the Pacific while moving assets out of the Pacific. They would actually deter a war there. In Europe, I mean, they're withdrawing troops from Romania, which is the place that Putin sent drones in. So Putin sends militarized drones into a NATO country.

And what does Donald Trump do? He withdraws NATO troops. I mean, tell me how that is peace through strength. It's utter weakness. And the point is it's not just a political, it's not just politics here. This is about our national security. You know, we keep Americans safe by having a strong deterrent, whether it's China invading Taiwan, Putin invading another country in Europe.

The deterrence matters, and he is undermining deterrence with what he's doing. There's one more part I want to make of this, by the way. We should talk more about how much this costs. The ships in the ship's doing. All this stuff he's doing, yeah. You know, every time they shoot a missile at two people clinging to a shipwreck in the Caribbean, that's like a lot of taxpayer money. A couple million dollars?

We don't know exactly what missile, I mean, classified what, I mean, sure, we can find out. But, yeah, that could be a couple million dollars depending on just what piece of ammunition they're using. Not to mention the millions of dollars it costs every single day to keep aircraft carriers and all these other assets over there. I mean, we are spending tens of millions of dollars a day for this ridiculous farce off Venezuela at the same time that people cannot afford health care, that Marjorie Taylor Green's own family can't afford health care. Like, let's talk about this. Let's talk about what a massive waste of taxpayers. or money these extrajudicial killings actually are. But it's probably a good use of $2 billion to rename the Department of the Department of War.

I believe I read that was the estimate. $2 billion? $2 billion? Seems like a good use of time. Because you've got to be tough if you're Pete Hague says. You mentioned China. There was an article I saw this morning, I believe, in the Financial Times that was about the Salt Typhoon hack, which hopefully you can sort of give listeners kind of the 101 of the scale and scope.

of how big deal that was. Very big deal. And that the Trump administration is actually now not going to sanction the part of the Chinese Communist Party sort of government that was responsible for that hack because they're worried about a trade deal getting blown up. Can you talk about the significance there? Again, the bottom line is Trump is weak on China. And he needs this trade deal because he's getting rolled by China in the trade war that he

started. Remember, a year ago, we weren't worried about not being able to produce our own. computers and weapons and everything else because China was cutting off the supply of rare earth minerals, right? On these magnets and stuff that we need. But China is now holding that over our heads because the trade war that Trump started. We were actually feeling better about our ability to win the AI race because we weren't giving the crown jewels to China. Trump threw those rules out, rules that his own first administration first came up with. And Biden then reinforced. Nope, out the window because Trump is losing the trade war he started, and so he has to figure out a way to

make up ground. Americans can't afford things at the grocery store because of his tariffs, and as a result, he's selling our national security. And it is, I mean, this is just like a dream for C.J. Ping. Now, what he did with Saltifoon is infiltrate networks in the United States in a way that is very difficult to detect and could remain latent for a long time so that, we might not even know it's there. And in a year or two from now, they could activate this cyber system and it could attack our basic infrastructure and whatnot.

And I don't think we've done enough to hit back against China. But what little we've proposed, Trump is now throwing out the window. Well, it's also, look, there seemed to be a bipartisan consensus before Trump won around his election that China was the big national security threat. And all of a sudden we're steaming another aircraft carrier to the Caribbean to deal with that as well. None of it makes sense. Yeah, like, this is the thing. I talk to some megatypes, people, you know, who worked for Trump or worked around him or in the media.

I, like, we fight about a lot of shit. But then I'll ask him, like, do you understand this Venezuela thing? Not a single person can explain it to me beyond saying, this is Marco Rubio's, like, you know, life's ambition coming out of Miami right-wing politics. He wants to run for president. But that still seems crazy to me because, like, it's not going to benefit Donald Trump. Does anyone you talk to have a better explanation? No one has an idea. And it's just so pathetic that they are so.

so subservient to Trump that they'll just defend every crazy thing he does. Not only when you can't explain it, but when it really undermines our interests everywhere else in the world. And that's the point here, is that this isn't just lawless. This isn't just bad strategy or bad policy. This isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars. It is making us less safe. It is severely risking our national security, in a very dangerous world. And we don't know if Xi Jinping is going to take advantage to this moment to say, oh, they're tied down in Venezuela. Now's the moment that are going to start a war in the Pacific

that could become World War III. You know, we don't know if Putin is going to say, oh, they're tied down in Venezuela. Now's the moment to take one of the Baltic countries, completely undermine NATO and kill a lot of innocent allies of ours and also some US troops that might be in the way because we're tied down in Venezuela. But that's what's at stake here.

And that's what Donald Trump is risking for some crazy personal vendetta or whatever the hell is going on here. Yeah, just doesn't like Maduro, I guess, wants the oil. You mentioned Ukraine a couple times. You know, last week there was this, you know, like fever pitch of negotiations and the 28-point plan and it was whittled down to a 20-point Ukraine peace plan. And then Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner go over and they meet with Putin. And now it just feels like everything's kind of hanging again.

Do you have any sense of where these talks are if we're any closer to resolution? what the Ukrainians are saying? Well, I mean, first of all, this wasn't a 28-point Ukrainian peace plan. This was a 28-point Russia appeasement plan. I mean, if it looks Russian, it sounds Russian, and it serves Russian interests. It's basically a Russian plan. And that's what this was. And then it got whittled down to 20 by Rubio, who, I mean, kind of saved the day in the sense that he said,

okay, we shouldn't just do what Russia wants. But what he, what we came up with was still clearly not in Ukraine. interest or in our own or in the interests of our NATO allies. And so actually it's just a relief that the administration is not going to just give in to Russia and give them this gift, sell out the Ukrainians, sell out our deterrence, sell out our allies because Jerry Kushner seems to want to do a real estate deal. Right. They dangled a couple deals in front of them. I mean, it doesn't seem like a coincidence that they sent the sovereign wealth fund guy from Russia to dangle some deals in front of Jared and Steve Wickrow. I mean, there's this debate going on behind the scenes about

whether Steve Whitkoff and Jared are just dumb and getting rolled by the Russians or whether they're just corrupt. But like that's the, those are the margins of the debate. Yeah, why not both? Last week, we saw this horrific shooting of two members of the U.S. National Guard in Washington, D.C., one of them, Sarah Bextram, was murdered. The shooter was a man who fought alongside U.S. forces or on behalf of the United States in Afghanistan and these so-called zero units. He was here in the U.S. because of that service. Now the administration is halting asylum decisions. They're no longer issuing visas for anyone from Afghanistan.

There's thousands of Afghan men, women too, I assume, who were in zero units or worked with the U.S., who are now in this pending kind of purgatory, waiting to see if they're going to get sent back to a country led by a government that may kill them. I know this is personal for you. You know, you worked alongside translators and others in Iraq. Rock. I wondered what your reaction was and what we can do to prevent this. I mean, it's heartbreaking to see a member of the National Guard killed on a mission she shouldn't be on. It's probably not even authorized to do by the President of the United States. It's heartbreaking to see an ally of ours who risked his life not just for Afghanistan, but for the United States of America,

with the work he did alongside us, be the perpetrator. But the bottom line is that there are bad people in the world, and there are bad people even in good programs. Right. And just because Eddie Gallagher is a war criminal who should be in prison, it doesn't mean that everyone who served in Iraq or Afghanistan is a war criminal who should be in prison.

And yet that's the conclusion of Donald Trump. Why? Because Donald Trump is a racist. That's just, it's not much more complicated than that. He's just a racist. He doesn't like people who don't look like him, who are not white. And so if he sees an opportunity to attack Afghans, Somalis,

South Africans, whatever it is, he's going to take that opportunity and that's what he's done here, even though it will put the lives of so many more of our allies who we still have not gotten out of Afghanistan, which, by the way,

is partly the Biden administration's fault. It will put those lives at risk. It's collective punishment, right? I mean, you're seeing it with Somalis too, right? Like there's some corruption in the Somali community in Minnesota, and now Trump is, you know, he fell asleep at a cabinet meeting until he woke up just to scream

some racist shit. about Somalia. I mean, this is kind of like... Yeah, and Chrissy Nome is just trying to outdo him with even more racist shit. I mean, it's so pathetic, but let's just call it what it is. It's racism. It's not more complicated than that. He doesn't have some complicated understanding of Afghan immigration

and where it's breaking down. He just doesn't like black and brown people, and so that's what he's doing. Yeah. You're taking the plunge, you're running for Senate. Why now? What motivated you this cycle to do it? I don't think we can afford to wait six more

years for new light leadership as a Democratic Party in Massachusetts or the United States for America. I mean, look, if you actually believe that the establishment, the status quo, the playbook that we keep reusing that has gotten us a second term of Donald Trump and is hurting a lot of people across Massachusetts, all across America, if you believe that's the way forward, then vote for an 80-year-old running for re-election, someone who's been elected in Congress longer than you and I have been alive to chart the way forward for the Democratic Party. But if you believe we need a new generation of leaders, if you believe in people like Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spamberger who won big victories, Zorn Mandami, next generation leaders, if you believe in that kind of leadership, then you have to vote for change. And that means people have to be willing to take on the establishment because sometimes the establishment doesn't give up power on its own.

And so in the same way that, you know, when I got to Congress, I ran against a nine-term incumbent who had passed one. one bill in 18 years. And I said, we should do better than that, America. We should do better than that sixth district of Massachusetts. Well, I think we can do better than this in the United States Senator. And I think actually as Democrats, we need to because the stakes are too high. Last question for you. The Patriots are 11 and 2, our New England Patriots, we're talking about the NFL right now. Are you very surprised, extremely surprised? You saw this one coming all the way? Very surprised. We'd love to say I saw it coming.

I don't think anyone saw it coming. No, I think I was like, I was like, I think Drake May looked pretty good the first couple of games. I think I tweeted a few times, Drake May is good, but the Patriots suck. And then all of a sudden, we're just fucking dominate. Turns out we're pretty awesome. It turns out like, Freeple. Some of us have kind of always known, but.

Do your friends from out of, from not from Massachusetts, hate you as much as mine, hate me? Because they're like, how do you assholes? get to have Tom Brady for 15 years and all these Super Bowls and all this success. And then you have like one and a half seasons in the wilderness and now this is happening. Because we're that good. Are you following the saga of Bill Belichick down at UNC? I'm really not keeping up with that. I'm sorry. We're on Seattle on Seattle. Congressman Nolta, thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me back. Appreciate it.