Front Burner - U.S. Politics! Pentagon scandals, ICE targets Somalis

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Today, we bring you a wrap on U.S. politics. We begin with two scandals plaguing U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence.And we cover the fallout from President Donald Trump’s tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ICE raids in Minneapolis. Plus, the politics behind Trump’s win of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.Our guest is Alex Shephard, senior editor of The New Republic.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

I'm a bit of a spontaneous traveler, and I don't always know where I'm going to be or how long I'm going to be there. And that's where Aerolo comes in. An e-sim from Aerolo allows me to get internet coverage, whether I need it for a specific country, an entire region, or globally. It's easy to set up and I can top up as I go without having to swap out SIM cards. It's the perfect way for me to stay connected. Just download the Aeroa app, pick your destination E-Sim, including plan length and data amount, install, and you're connected the moment you land. No surprise roaming fees, no airport kiosks, or sketchy public Wi-Fi. Instead, just pay for the data you need.

Stream your playlist, scroll, text, navigate, and video call home, all without watching your phone bill explode. Plus, Aero Lo works in over 200 destinations and is trusted by over 20 million travelers. So, if you have an international trip, download the AeroA app or visit Aero.com. That's A-I-R-A-L-O-com, and use the code Roamsmart for 15% off your first ESIM. Terms apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Jamie, and we have a U.S. politics wrap for you today.

We'll deal with two scandals plaguing U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report, accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. And the fallout from President Trump's tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ice raids in Minneapolis. Plus, the politics behind Trump's win of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. Here today is Alex Shepard, senior editor of the New Republic. He's back to cover all of this with me, and there is a lot to talk about. So let's get straight to it. It's great to have you. Thanks for doing this. It's great to be back.

So let's start with Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, or as he likes to call himself, the Secretary of War. He has been under fire this past week on a couple of different fronts. First, there was reporting in the Washington Post that Hague Seth authorized a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat. That killed two surviving crew members clinging to the wreckage in the water. There's been a lot of back and forth this past week about what. what exactly happened and whether he did that. And can you just walk us through what's actually happened? Yeah.

So what we're starting to see is some actual oversight over the sort of targeted killings that the military has been doing on votes allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. The Trump administration launched its 20-second strike on an alleged drug boat Thursday. The Pentagon says four people were killed in the attack. The announcement came out of that. there's been very clear reporting, and there's been video that members of Congress and their staff have seen showing second strikes on boats. So in one case, I believe it was the first case of these sort of targeted strikes that one of the boats had been hit by a missile of some

kind and had capsized and had flipped over and aerial footage showed two survivors sort of gesturing upwards. And there's a question, obviously, of if they were surrendering. What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service. Democrat Congressman Jim Himes describing that second strike as an attack on shipwrecked sailors, something that would violate the laws of war. You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel who were killed by the United States. The U.S. military contended that they were signaling to someone else.

and then they hit them again. And I think that, you know, what we're seeing is a real question about the legality of these strikes. And, you know, the use of military force, you know, the Pentagon claims, the Trump administration claims that the U.S. is at war with Venezuelan cartels. So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire or smoke. You can't see anything.

You got digital. This is called the fog of war. is not authorized any military force here. So I think what we're seeing is some oversight, but I think that the kind of other subtext here, which I think is really interesting, is also the larger sense here that the Trump administration's kind of period

of doing whatever the heck it wanted, which was true for most of this year, is coming to an end, and that even Republicans in Congress now are signaling that they want to reign in this administration and that it looks as though the Secretary of Defense or, as he likes to call his office, you said, the Secretary of War, is someone who is going to be in the firing line. Tell me a little bit more about what we're hearing from some Republicans, not all of them, right?

Because I certainly saw some of them come out of that committee hearing defending the administration. But the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton, says he saw something very different. I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs, down for the United States. states back over so they could stay in the fight. Cotton calling the strikes righteous and entirely lawful. I didn't see anything disturbing about it. Tell me about some who are raising questions. Yeah, I mean, you're seeing certainly there are some Republicans like Don Bacon, right,

who is sort of more moderate, or at least a republic who is more willing to criticize the administration and the president who is basically calling for Hegset's resignation or his firing. But in general, I think what we're also seeing is, you know, sort of larger shift among kind of rank and file. So, you know, even people like Senator Wicker from Mississippi is a good example. You know, there are people like Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican senator who, you know, basically just said, you know, Hagseth not only did nothing wrong, that, you know, he should do it more. And that's going to be one of the dividing lines here.

But, you know, I think in general what we're seeing is the larger sense that, like, you know, If you go back to the SignalGate report came out last week as well, that is the sort of earliest Hexed scandal involving this kind of text threat that involved the reporter. He shared details of the March 15 U.S. attacks on Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi fighters in a signal group that included President Donald Trump's top national security officials and accidentally included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. Those screenshots show Hegzath discussing plans to kill a Houthi leader, just two hours before the operation.

And the sense that I'm getting from Republicans is the feeling that Hegset is an embarrassment to this administration and that he's incompetent and he's reckless and that they're signaling, I think, that he's somebody that if there was going to be accountability, that it should fall on him. Tell me a little bit more about the Signalgate report and what it found. So this was obviously, people might remember, Hegsef was part of this chat group, essentially,

and he was giving all this information in the chat group about American attacks on Houthis, right? And then what did this investigation conclude? Yeah, so the investigation was basically the big problem with this was not just that this discussion was happening over the encrypted ass. signal, it was also that they had accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic on the thread. And Hagseth claimed that the report had, quote, totally exonerated him. And it doesn't at all. I mean, what the report showed was that the entire conception of this chat and the discussion of class-bent material and of military strikes both, you know, sort of broke protocol, but also, you know, endangered American troops because of the general recklessness of its execution.

So, again, here, too, you just have an example of the Secretary of Defense being, at best, shown to be incompetent. And I think at worst, just shown to be completely reckless. Yeah, just on the Signal Gate stuff, I still, every time I hear this story, like, the messages are so specific that at one point he actually texted, this is definitely when the first bombs will drop. It's still so unbelievable. There's like a Saturday Night Live quality to this administration that everything in it just seems

like the first 10 minutes. Also, it's like bumbling idiocy a lot of the time and that it makes it hard to talk about it as if it's a real thing. I don't know if you cop it. I think Colin Joe's played Hugg, Seth. I only caught a little bit of it so far,

but it was pretty good. Now, you got questions for me? Fine. Pretend I'm a random fishing boat. and fire away. On Saturday, Hegsseth gave this speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, and he really is doubling down on this entire thing. He, among other things, said, if you're working for a designated terrorist organization

and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests. interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment. What's your read on that? Well, I mean, I think that that is the way that this administration conceives of itself.

And it certainly is how Donald Trump concedes of his foreign policy. Like, you know, it's funny that that speech was given a day after Trump claimed the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize at the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center. But I think that the tension between this administration is always between Trump's claim that he is the greatest dealmaker who's ever existed and who is bringing peace to the world in a way that no one ever has before. And the strategy in which the administration enacts most of its foreign policy goals, which is by seeing America's military, its strategic advantage there as a way to deter, to get what it wants from other countries. And I think that Hegset is trying to enact some

version of this. Now, I mean, the thing that I think is ridiculous about the strikes themselves are that no one I have spoken to as been able to describe the actual national security imperative that they enact. And then I think also they pursue other foreign policy goals, which I think are not the foreign policy goals of the president. They're the foreign policy goals of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense in that case, destabilizing and the Venezuelan regime and I think ultimately toppling it. But I think what we're seeing here, too, is just the the way that the second Trump term even more than the first is playing out are that, you know, there are people, the individual power brokers have an enormous amount of latitude to pursue

their own interpretations of what they think that the president wants. So I think it's worth underlining here, too, that the president has kind of distanced himself from these strikes in some too. So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the initial threat. No, I support the decision to knock out the boats. And whoever is piloting those boats, most of them are gone. But whoever are piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country. Yeah, please.

Do you think that Hegseth's job is actually in danger here? Because Trump does seem to like him. It's a very difficult question to answer. I think the short answer, I think, is that, so Trump is the apprentice guy, right? Like his literal catchphrases, you're fired, but he hates firing people. And I think the way that the second term in particular is working is that they have a kind of no-scalps rule. They see, like, firing people as evidence of, you know, the administration being in disarray or of it failing. And resignations would be that way as well, I think.

So, you know, they're trying to, you know, for all of the talk of this administration's kind of despotism or authoritarianism, so much of it is built on its projection of its strength and power more than the actual reality. Should Secretary Hedgeseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished? I think you're going to find that this is one. war that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years. 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. And I think that they see any kind of accountability here, whether it be in the form of

resignation or firing as like as damaging that so I think it's highly unlikely um meanwhile this is all happening as the new york times is suing the department of defense over the pentagon's new restrictions on press access and according to the times post person the policy is an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes and in violation of a free press's right to seek information under their first and fifth amendment rights protected by the Constitution. And what exactly are the restrictions that led to many Pentagon beat reporters handing in their credentials instead of agreeing to them? Yeah. So, I mean, basically what the Pentagon tried to do or sort of successfully tried to do is ban reporting on the Pentagon. They said that, you know, to have credentials,

you know, you basically could not use any unidentified sources, for instance, that basically everything that you would produce had to be vetted by the Pentagon in some ways. And these were restrictions that were so onerous and so, you know, so oppositional to the very concept of journalists that, you know, even Fox News did not comply with them. I would also like to take a moment today to welcome all of you here to the Pentagon briefing room as official new members of the Pentagon and Press Corps. We're glad to have you. Legacy media chose to self-deport from this building. And if you look at the numbers, it's... And, you know, there, we've seen, seen the new, the new Pentagon news outlet. It's basically all of these kind of, like,

tiny outlets and streamers, and they're all just, you know, cheerleaders for the administration. There's a lot of talk online about us and our level of professionalism. I'm interested to hear what the level of professionalism was like before. I've heard stories about ambushing people outside their offices, making a hostile work environment for everyone who works in the DOW. What was that like? Oh, it was absolutely crazy. My first week's here. I think that that kind of gets to where I actually think Hegset is really in danger with the president. It's just that it's embarrassing, right? Like, what they're doing not just the lawsuit from the Times, but the sort of new, you know, Instagram influencer-friendly press pool. It just makes the administration look bad. And, you know, it's not really actually that restrictive in terms of reporting itself.

Now, it does mean that, you know, we don't have, for instance, you know, reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. kind of wandering around the Pentagon and talking to people, but, you know, they still have phones. They're still talking to sources and doing reporting and doing a job very well, as we've seen on reporting over these strikes. And so, you know, I think that with Trump, what he cares more about is his perception. And in this instance, I think, I'm sure he's happy to, you know, shoot another arrow into the New York Times. What we're also seeing, too, is just kind of Heggseth being just, embarrassing. I'm a bit of a spontaneous traveler, and I don't always know where I'm going to be or how long

I'm going to be there. And that's where Aerolo comes in. An e-Sim from Aerolo allows me to get internet coverage, whether I need it for a specific country, an entire region, or globally. It's easy to set up and I can top up as I go without having to swap out SIM cards. It's the perfect way for me to stay connected. Just download the Aeroa app, pick your destination ESIM, including plan length and data amount, install, and you're connected the moment you land.

No surprise roaming fees, no airport kiosks, or sketchy public Wi-Fi. Instead, just pay for the data you need. Stream your playlist, scroll, text, navigate, and video call home, all without watching your phone bill explode. Plus, Aerolo works in over 200 destinations and is trusted by over 20 million travelers. So if you have an international trip, download the AeroA app or visit Aero.com. That's A-I-R-A-L-O.com and use the code ROMSmart for 15% off your first ESIM. Terms apply.

Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.ca. Switching gears a little bit here, Trump has, of course, gone after specific ethnicities and nationalities before he's called Mexicans rapists and murderers. He perpetuated those ridiculous myths about Haitians eating pets. But now he's going after Somalis as part of his ice crackdown on Minneapolis. And what brought on this sudden focus on the Somali community? Yes, so there's, I think, two ways to answer that. One is just that there's been this kind of sweeping fraud case in Minnesota. Minnesota is reeling from a fraud scandal involving $1 billion siphoned from multiple federal programs during the COVID pandemic.

In the past three years, 87 people have been charged, 61 convicted, most of Somali descent. According to investigators, the schemes involved bogus receipts and invoices for meal programs, housing assistance, and behavioral health services charging the state millions. The other is that, you know, Trump has been feuding with Minnesota Governor Kim Walls for most of the year, who was Connell Harris's running mate, and he's sort of has been established as one of the more frequent sparring partners of Trump. I think there's something wrong with him. Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into his state and pay billions of dollars up to Somalia. And then, of course, there's a

There's also Ilan Omar, who is a Somali American, who is a member of Congress and is also one of Trump's top targets. Elon Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These are people that say, let's go. Come on. Let's make this place great.

These are people that do nothing but complain. But I think in general, the administration has seized on this broad case because it's trying to attack birthright citizenship and just the idea of multiculturalism in America. arguing that immigration is antithetical to the idea of America, which is obviously ridiculous. This is a nation that's founded by immigrants. But, you know, they sort of are targeting the Somali community because they see it as being symbolic of the larger fight against multiculturalism. But I think it's also just, you know, you saw this, that awful clip of Trump talking about Somalis in the White House. I wouldn't be glad to have the largest Somalian. Look at their nation. Look how bad their

nation. It's not even a nation. just people walking around killing each other. She's always talking about the Constitution provides me with, go back to your own country and figure out your constitution. All she does is complain about this country and without this country, she would not be in very good shape.

She probably wouldn't be alive right now. So Somalia is considered by many to be the worst country on earth. I don't know. For all of, I think, the talk of Trump's, you know, occasional savviness with this issue. And with immigration, you know, he seized on it because it was an issue that Republicans cared about, first and foremost. And you saw this here,

that he was someone who, I think, is disgusted by black and immigrant communities. And that really, I think, shines through. And with the administration, too, I think, you know, there's the message these Senate of Thanksgiving, where he called Tim Walz, a slur. But that, too, I think, reflected the administrations, I think, really increasingly virulent racism and bigotry. And its willingness, I think, to seize on kind of far-right narratives and tropes that have taken hold in places like England and the Netherlands and to try to apply them to the United States. Yeah. And just there are 80,000 members of that diaspora that live in Minnesota. Most of them are American citizens.

Good afternoon. My name is Jacob Fry. I'm the mayor of Minneapolis to our Somali community. We love you and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid. Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country. I think it's been very moving in a lot of ways is that there's been, I think, a real, like, outcry, you know, both in Minnesota from a lot of people about how these are. neighbor they're their neighbors they're not only american citizens they're um members of the community they are members of the state legislature they're members of congress um and uh and and there's been also i think a lot of mockery of this too that um i think it's simali is basically you know making a joke about you know minnesota being their promised land uh and i think it's in some ways

it's the best way to respond to this administration is is by um just mocking you know, the vitriol that comes from it. But I think you're seeing, you know, people rally behind this community in a way that you're seeing people rally behind other immigrant communities that have been targeted by ICE, especially as the administration has sort of spread its crackdown most recently to New Orleans. Put all of this in the wider context for me of these recent restrictions that we've seen after the two National Guard soldiers were shot in D.C. One of the most sweeping is the decision to halt the processing of all immigration and citizenship applications from 19 countries. Christy Noam, the Homeland Secretary of Homeland Security, announced over the weekend that this list would expand to 30 countries.

And like, what's been the impact of these restrictions? How are they being felt? I mean, I think that there's a lot of outrage and, I mean, especially there's a lot of anxiety. I mean, I think that there was a sense, I think, especially a few months ago, that we had sort of, not that we had seen the worst of what this administration was going to do in terms of immigration, but that we had a general sense of what the contours of it would look like and that, you know, they had kind of done the damage that they could. but I think what we're seeing is that, you know, given any opportunity, they will restrict immigration even further. I think the other thing that I found interesting talking to people about this last week was that this administration is also starting to have to do a real kind of dance with the World Cup approaching. And that what we're seeing is that, you know, there has been

some kind of flexibility here and that, you know, the administration did kind of create a special visa, the kind of which we saw in. Qatar and Russia that will allow a lot of people, not from nations, affected nations like Haiti, for instance, but from places that we're facing really long wait times that they could kind of find a way in. But as we're seeing that kind of more flexible approach to the World Cup itself, the administration is growing even more restrictive in its larger immigration approach. And I think that as World Cup draws near, the sort of tension between those two demands of, you know, of running a in the what second largest maybe the largest um global sporting competition and the

administration's larger effort to um you know to basically just change the very face of american immigration is to say not that this is a country built by immigrants to you know to bring us here what tired hungry and weak but that this is you know a nation that belongs to the people who are here right now and and that no one else is welcome um i think that we're we're we're starting to see that really, really come to the forefront. Since we're on the topic of the World Cup in FIFA, last week, I'm sure you saw our Prime Minister Mark Kearney and Mexican President Claudia Shanebaum. We're in Washington for the FIFA draw that determined events and games for the World

Cup we're hosting with the U.S. A pretty uneventful time, no public breakthrough for us in our current trade talks that have been suspended. For example, that's what we were all watching for. But also, Trump was awarded this, this FIFA Peace Prize, which you mentioned before. And, you know, they played YMCA for him while everyone watched him dance. And just any parting thoughts on that event. I think that I, leading into that talking to a lot of people, I think the general consensus was that this would be kind of humiliating for Trump that, you know, Gianni Infantino that had a FIFA had kind very carefully choreographed this, you know, real authoritarian show, frankly, that you

just kind of say, oh, the president likes all this stuff. You know, the president wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but he's not going to get them because his administration is literally murdering people in the Caribbean will give him one. This is truly one of the great honors of my life and beyond awards, John and I were discussing this. We saved millions and millions of lives. The United States one year ago was not doing too well, and now I have to say with hottest country anywhere in the world that we're going to keep it that way thank you all thank you

have a great time and johnny a tremendous honor thank you um and watching it i was like oh actually like like infantino is the person that's being humiliated here that that trump is is getting exactly what he wants right what he wants is to sort of bend reality to him and he's perfectly happy with that he it doesn't matter to him that the village people look ridiculous. Or that the peace prize itself is fake, right? What matters to him is that he didn't know there was a

peace prize that FIFA gave out until last week's right. Yeah, no, no, this is the inaugural one. No one has gotten it before and it seems highly likely that no one will get it again. And I think that that's going to be one of the questions heading into this World Cup. I thought that Mark Carney and Claudia Scheimbaum acquitted themselves very well in this, but that the World Cup is Trump's and that he wants it.

He's going to be front and center in a way that we have not seen a head of state be front of center at the World Cup at any time recently. I can't think of any time ever. But I think that that is, I think, more alarming than a lot of people are taking into account right now. I think in large part because of the question of immigration, that it's not just that Trump wants to be front of center at the World Cup because he likes attention. That is, I think, a huge part of it. But there are a lot of people in his administration, most notably Stephen Miller,

but Vice President J.D. Vance as well, who see this World Cup as an opportunity to broadcast their vision of America, this sort of restrictive, anti-immigrant, nativist, blood and soil, populist thing. And I think that what we saw on Friday was ridiculous and kind of stupid, but it points, I think, to what's going to be, you know, I think a really troubling tournament come June. That's a good place for us to end. Alex, thanks so much. It's always good to have you on. Thank you so much. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you all tomorrow.