Morning Joe - Lawmakers want answers after boat strike reporting

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Lawmakers want answers after boat strike reporting To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So this is not just about ending a war. This is about ending a war in a way that creates a mechanism in a way forward that will allow them to be independent and sovereign, never have another war again, and create tremendous prosperity for its people, not just rebuild the country, but to enter an era of extraordinary economic progress. It's a country, Ukraine has tremendous economic potential.

Ukraine has tremendous opportunity for true prosperity. We're thankful for the efforts of United States and its team to helping us. U.S. is hearing us, U.S. is supporting us, U.S. is walking besides us. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Ukrainian counterpart signaling a united front has U.S. negotiators now head to Russia for talks aimed at ending the Kremlin's invasion. Meanwhile, President Trump is seeing a notable slump in his poll numbers down to just 36% approval. Voters are paying close attention to the wars overseas. The economy here at home, home and the heavy-handed approach to immigration issues, including the deportation of a college

student who was brought to America when she was just seven years old. She's now in Honduras this morning after being shackled at the airport while flying home from Boston to Texas to surprise her family on Thanksgiving. That's just a terrible story. And when Republicans said they were going to deport the worst of the worst, did they really mean Babson college students that were coming home to surprise their family? And then here you have this college student at Babson, who was met at Logan and ends up being shackled and sent back to Honduras, a country where her parents removed her from because of the violence when she was seven years old.

And again, this is remarkable. I don't want to get into great details, but this weekend we ran into a couple. It was very sweet. They watched the show. The wife, though, was a, said she was MAGA, big MAGA supporter. We had a good, fun conversation for a few minutes. But then Mika Prester, Jonathan, on, okay, so, or do you really support mothers being ripped out of the arms of their babies? Just the way people are being treated by masks.

Do you really support kindergarten teachers being ripped out of their classrooms, American citizens, being grabbed, cuffed, detained? Do you really support these peaceful people who get caught up? You know, have done nothing, but maybe their parents were brought here. Some green card holders getting stopped again, American citizens. And in this case, a Babson student who went home to surprise her family for Thanksgiving and then coming back to Boston, surrounded at the airport. And again, literally taken in shackles to Honduras. Because the justification was for all of this from this very kind person we talked to,

well, we're at war. We are at war. And if we end up, you know, if American citizens get arrested and thrown in jail for a couple of days, if this happens to young children, we are at war. We're at war. border is more secure than it's ever been. Immigration is down. We're at war. So does she feel safer this morning because a 19-year-old young girl, young woman who was visiting her parents on Thanksgiving ended up handcuffed and shackled and and deported to Honduras? Does that make

America safer? Or does that make us look really cold? and callous and hateful to the rest of the world. Who are we at war with, I guess, is the question there. And I keep thinking about this. She's a teenager, teenager, she's 19 years old. How frightened she must be. She's not been to Honduras since she was a child. Her parents, as you say, they left the country there because of the violence.

They wanted a better future for her here. She's in college. And what is she doing? She's a great student. She ends up at Babson College, a great college. And she's sitting there wanting to pursue the American. dream. And to go home and celebrate Thanksgiving, the American holiday in many ways, with her family, to surprise her family and instead this happens. And it's moments like this

that I think the headlines for most. And maybe this woman is an exception. But a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump outside of that hardcore base think this is too much. It's too much. It's too much. And we have seen poll after poll, his numbers, his record low at Gallup for this term, but even on specific issues, like immigration, which was supposed to be a strength. And Americans, Yes, Americans made clear. They won the southern border closed. It's been closed. By the way, I wanted the southern border closed and said as much

and thought the Biden administration did a terrible job on it. There's a big difference in that. And going into Montessori's or whatever kindergarten that was and dragging out kindergarten teachers only to release them later from the reports I saw are going into school lines, car school lines, and breaking windows and grabbing people, grabbing mothers. throwing them onto the ground, cuffing them. It just doesn't make any sense.

And look at this independent number, only 25%, only 25% now. And I've said it time and time again. President Trump should declare victory and say we've closed the southern border, and now we're going to begin a humane, peaceful, reasonable process to get people who are here illegally, back to their countries, and if they want to reapply, they can reapply. But this is no way. I've got to say one other thing, too, because they have huge stories about war crimes being committed, reportedly, that we're going to get into.

I mean, this is one of the bigger stories, I think, that's broken out of Washington in some time that you even have Andy McCarthy at Fox News talking about, it could be a war crime at best. You also had Christy Knoem. I'm going to bring in columnist at the Associate Editor, the Washington Post, David Ignatius. You also had Christy Knoem this weekend give a confession

on a Sunday show admitting to Judge Bozberg that she was the one that decided to ignore the judge's order. And she said she was the one who decided who left the country and who didn't leave the country. country. She was the one, not a judge, who would make that decision. That is, that is what you call

a confession, not an open court, but in front of everybody in America, David. It's gotten so out of control. I guess she and Pete Heggzeth and others never read the Constitution, and they don't understand that when a judge issues an order to a member of the first or the second branch, That order has to be followed, and then you appeal it. Well, Joe, we're going to have a real series of tests now about what we mean by the rule of law in the United States. What we mean when we say a judge, a judicial order has standing, and that people are subject to it, and if they disobey that order, they're subject to contempt of court. We're going to have tests of whether the rule of law.

applies to combat in the way that it traditionally has. Across the board, we're going to see just what our legal system in the end is worth in terms of guardrails, protections. And in the end, that will come down to our Supreme Court, which will decide a series of key cases and set the framework, certainly for the rest of this administration, but I think for the future going forward. But it's a time in which I think the rule of law is precious to us because we're seeing situations in which it seems to be abused with enormous consequences for people.

People shot in the water helplessly. People thrown out of vehicles cuffed in the situations you're describing in our cities. So it's a time when that clarity is absolutely necessary. And there is the beginning, thank goodness, of a bipartisan effort to be more serious in looking at exactly what the law says and how everybody, members of the Trump administration, included, are subject to it. Well, it certainly appeared, and we're going to get right into it right now, that you had his Secretary of Defense, who was bragging on Friday and Saturday about committing war crimes. It's what it certainly read on Saturday and Sunday, and things blew up. You had a Republican senator basically saying,

why would Americans care if we were committing war crimes? Didn't say it in those words, but he said, why, basically asking a CNN host, why do you even care if we shot these people when they were defenseless on a boat? ignoring everything that our men and women in uniform are taught, which by the way, this circles back, make it to the fact that the Democrats obviously put that video out for a reason. Yeah.

Because they obviously knew what happened on September 2nd. They understand that there were people reporting that war crimes took place. And now that's where we find ourselves. And that's going to be the great debate. President Trump belatedly last night. night saying he had nothing to do with this. The fact is, though, Pete Higgsith seemed to be bragging about it on Friday and Saturday. So we'll see what happens there. But the big question to what David's saying is, does the Roberts Court, does the Roberts Court believe what

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison said about an independent judiciary? Do they believe that? This is cut and dry for the Roberts Court as they sit back and allow these ambiguity. to fester. Do they believe in the rule of law? Do they believe in separation of powers? Do they believe in three separate and equal branches of government? Or are they just going to capitulate and forever make the third branch the weakest branch? We'll see.

This is the stress test. All right. CEO and founder of Axis, Jim Van de Hai is with us as well as decorated combat veteran and former commander of U.S. Army, U.S. Army. Europe. Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurdling is with us. So our top story this morning is lawmakers from both sides of the aisle demanding answers from the Trump administration about recent U.S. military operations in the Caribbean. This bipartisan scrutiny comes in the wake of new reporting from the Washington Post that one attack on a boat suspected of smuggling drugs,

a follow-up strike was ordered after the initial impact, left survivors on board. According to the Post, citing two sources with direct knowledge in a September 2nd strike, the first in the administration's ongoing offensive, defense secretary Pete Hegeseth gave a verbal command to kill everybody on the boat. And it bears repeating, we don't know who was on that boat. But after the missile hit and the smoke cleared, two survivors. were seen clinging to the wreckage.

The paper goes on to report that the Special Operations Commander overseeing the attack then ordered a second strike to comply with Heggsath's instructions. By the way, when that strike was ordered, the person ordering that strike knew that was a war crime.

It is in the most... And we'll talk to the general in a second. it's been part of international law. It's been part of the laws of war since World War II. They knew that that was an illegal action, that that could constitute a war crime. And as the Post puts it, quote, the two men were blown apart in the water.

MS now has not independently verified the report by the Washington Post. President Trump put out this video of the attack later that day, but it did not show any footage of a subsequent strike. Now, Republican-led committees in both chambers of Congress are pushing back. And the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island said, quote, we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances. And the House Armed Services Committee echoed that vow saying it is, quote, committed to providing rigorous oversight and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question. On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats alike are calling the allegations serious, illegal.

Let's just stop here. again, Republicans and Democrats alike. And it's not backbench Republicans. It's not Thomas Massey. It is Chairman Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. You have the chairman of the Republican House Armed Services Committee. Again, in the House, you have Mike Turner, a powerful voice in the Republican Party on all things regarding armed services. All of them, deeply disturbed. And, demanding that this be investigated. Serious, illegal, and potentially a war crime.

Here's just a sampling of some of their opinions on this. Congresses not have information that that had occurred. Both the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and ranking members have opened investigations. Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious. And I agree that that would be an illegal act. If the facts go to where the Washington Post article takes it, well then we'll have to go from there. But if it was as if the article said, that is a violation of the law of war.

When people want to surrender, you don't kill them. And they have to pose an imminent threat. It's hard to believe that two people on a raft trying to survive would pose an imminent threat. If that reporting is true, it's a clear violation of the DOD's own laws of war. as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime, if it's true. And the questions that we've been asking for months are, give us the evidence that the folks on board were really narco-traffickers. The former JAGs working groups said that it unanimously considered the reported orders to kill everybody aboard the suspected narco-trafficking vessel

and the execution of those orders to constitute war crimes, murder, or both. The group, which includes former officials who served as legal advisors for the military, issued the following statement in response to the Washington Post reporting on that September 2nd attack on a boat in the Caribbean. The group's statement reads in part, If the U.S. military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narco-trafficking vessels is a non-international armed conflict, as the Trump administration suggests, orders to kill everybody, which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give no quarter and to double-tap a target in order to kill survivors,

are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes. The group continues, if the U.S. military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel are a military destroyed would subject everyone from sect-deff down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under U.S. law for murder. We call upon Congress to investigate and the American people to oppose any use of the U.S. military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone, enemy combatants, non-combatants or civilians rendered or to combat out of the fight as a result of their wounds

or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them. We will also devise our fellow citizens, advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of patently illegal orders or all military members have a duty to disobey. This is important. Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the office. of legal counsel and George W. Bush's administration writes that if the Washington Post's reporting is accurate, the actions taken are in violation of the Department of Defense's own

manual, which prohibits the killing of shipwrecked enemies and constitutes a war crime. Goldsmith cites the DOD's law of war manual, which reads in part, it is forbidden to declare that there will, that no quarter will be given. This means it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Goldsmith continues. The DOD manual is clear because the law here is clear. Quote, persons who have been incapacitated by shipwreck are in a helpless state. This is the DOD manual. This is the DOD manual. This is not some left-wing, woke person is our fake news that Pete Heggzitz would suggest it is.

This is the Department of Defense Manual that says to shoot people on a shipwreck in a helpless state is a war crime. It would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. And conservative commentator and Fox News contributor and Drew McCarthy has a new piece in the National Review entitled, We Intended the Strike to Be Lethal is not a defense. He writes in part this. I believe the attacks on these suspected drugboats are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict. I don't accept that the ship operators are enemy combatants. There is no armed conflict.

They may be criminals if it is proven that they are importing illegal narcotics, but they are not combatants. Even if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight. I do not mean to be melodramatic, but the penalty for war crimes violation is life, imprisonment, or death if the criminalized, results in death. This is a very serious matter. The administration's defense can't be that we killed them because our plan is to use lethal force. And I go all the way back to the fact that these are suspected drug runners on a boat. Before they even got to the first strike, that didn't kill two people. And then they killed two people floating in the water, claim. to wreckage allegedly?

It's what Rand Paul had said. If you look at Coast Guard interdictions of boats where they think they're drug-running boats said they get that wrong at least 25% of the time. They think somebody's a drug runner. They're not a drug runner. Here, it's hard not to think that they blew up the boat

and then had orders to kill anybody else there because they didn't know who was on the boat and they didn't want to be exposed as killing fishermen or they didn't want to be exposed killing somebody else or let's say killed as I heard from somebody

in the military today because their families had been kidnapped by drug cartels and told you have to get on that boat or we're going to kill your families. That was from somebody in the military in the region saying if you want to understand if those are drug boats

who would go on those boats, boats, it's people who have families that have been kidnapped. And they're told, go on the boats, or we will execute your children. General, a lot to sort through here. And yet, it really does seem simple. Andy McCarthy, a very conservative legal commentator who is supported Republicans for, I mean, it's the reason he's a Fox News contributor, because he is conservative in his worldview and writing things. But Andy McCarthy puts it two ways. First of all, he says, he doesn't

think this constitutes war attacking these boats and says if it doesn't constitute war, it's murder. But even if you believe and he says, even for argument's sake, if you believe

that this constitutes war, well then it's a war crime. That lays it out pretty starkly, General. I'm curious, based on everything you've seen over the weekend, including Pete Heggseth bragging about this on Friday and Saturday. Republican congressmen or senators bragging about it on Sunday. I'm curious your thoughts, and please clear this up for us. You just walked through about six or seven different people who are highly respected, Joe, in terms of their legal dynamics. I'm not a lawyer, but I will tell you.

tell you that if a senior official urged someone else, a military person, to conduct such a strike, then we are morally bound to ask additional questions that any democracy should be asking. Were these unlawful orders? It appears they were. Were they issued or were they implied? We don't know that. That's part of an investigation. Did the service member feel pressure to act unlawfully. We don't know that either. Were there the attempts to suppress the supporting was additional guidance provided? These aren't political questions, Joe's. These are constitutional ones, legal ones, and moral injury ones. Because soldiers or anyone who is asked to pull a trigger in this kind of situation, not only does it illegally based on what they've been taught,

but that also creates, and the reason we have these rules, is to avoid moral injury for those individuals. And doing any of this, along with some of the other things that we have watched happen, the Secretary of Defense disparaging legal oversight, sidelining JAG officers, eliminating the press to report on such actions, or treat accountability for such actions than the enemy. They do more than risk unlawful actions. They weaken the moral foundation that makes our military so great. Because a military that abandons abiding by these kinds of laws, Geneva Conventions, Law of Land Warfare, they cease to be American. And a military that fails to investigate serious allegations of this kind of conflict invites tragedy, the strategic, the moral,

in the human domain. Hey, I got to tell you, Joe, it was interesting to me watching just a few months ago, the Secretary of Defense talking to the generals and admirals and their senior enlisted advisors at Quantico that he brought up this very issue and said, hey, we're no longer going to pay attention to these very strict rules of engagement. And we've got to eliminate this kind of stuff from the Department of Defense. Well, we're seeing it now. And it's an ugly, ugly scene. And truthfully, I hope Congress gets on this very quickly and provides oversight to determine what happens. The one other point I'd make is last night I saw the president say, oh, Pete told me it was okay that he didn't conduct a second strike. Well, that's easily disprovable

because if there were any weapons used against these boats, they were filmed. They have to be filmed because it's a laser paint of the ship. We had the first part of the film. Was there a second part where we can see exactly what happened. There's pretty clear evidence in all this. This is a very good point. Again, Pete Hegzeth, Republicans bragging about the kill strikes, killing everybody in the waters right now. It's a dangerous time legally for Pete Hegzeth. It gets more dangerous if he is spending this time furiously going around, trying to cover it up, trying to make phone calls. I'm not saying he is. I'm saying this is when people really get in trouble in his position because he's been exposed. He's got the House Armed Services

and Senate Armed Services Republican chairman getting the evidence. There are five people that are already talking about this. This genie is out of the bottle. And that's why nobody has said that President Trump knows what's what was going on. But they certainly have said Pete Higgseth delivered the kill orders. And so now if Pete Hegzeth is going around trying to cover this up, this is when a situation goes from being very dangerous for him to being even, even more dangerous. So the evidence is there, and there's no circling back. It doesn't matter that you now are only letting people like, you know, Chinese religious cults

cover your Pentagon and that you've kicked out all the real news services, the Washington Post, the much maligned, let us say, Washington Post over the past six months, broke this story. And the evidence is there, the names are there, the House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, they've got the details, getting the details, and how interesting, the Democrats, when they released that video a week or two ago, three months after these kill strikes and the kill orders, the alleged kill orders, they knew what was going on. And it's hard not to believe that's not the reason they put that out. And that would certainly explain Secretary Higgs that's really over-the-top reaction to the video. Perhaps he knew.

That's what I was thinking. Saying to execute them after, as Andy McCarthy said, if the reporting is right, that Pete Higgs is the one. Seems rather trigger who has put himself in an extraordinarily dangerous legal situation. Yeah, and certainly let's just, let's not understate this. This is a very serious matter. As our friend Tom Nichols and others have pointed out in recent days, this type of incident where survivors were shot as they were clinging to a boat. That happened in World War II.

Japanese soldiers shot Americans who were cleaning the boats. Those Japanese soldiers were later convicted and executed. Right. Because that is indeed a war crime. That's how serious this is. And David Ignatius, it comes at a moment. where the drums of war are beating loudly right there in Venezuela. We have seen President of the United States in recent days suggest, yes, there will be land strikes

and potentially soon, even as he talks to Maduro. We have also seen him this operation is allegedly to cut down on drug trafficking. Yet we have seen the President of the United States issue a pardon for the former president of Honduras, who was convicted as being a drug cartel leader, more or less, and funneling drugs through from Honduras, through Venezuela to the United States, saying he wanted to put it up, Americans' nose, his words. And now we saw Trump last night on Air Force One try to create some distance between himself and Heggseth.

We don't know yet. We don't know yet. We may, as General Hurtling just pointed out. We may know what he knew in terms of these strikes. We don't yet. But there is a sense here. This is a significant moment. Trump wants nothing to do with it. Republicans, it's rare. It's been rare this year. Republicans defying this administration, demanding answers. So the military and strategic policy situation towards Venezuela in Central America is unclear. But one thing that is, I think, increasingly clear is that the administration, Pete Hegseth specifically, has been trying since February to strip away the kind of legal protections that might have prevented what is a law. alleged to have happened on September 2nd when this boat with 11 alleged rug runners is shot out of the water

and the two survivors are then taken out in a second strike. What happened in February was that Heggseth fired the top lawyers in the military, the people who were there to give commanders advice about whether orders are legal or not. That's their job. Their job, their job is to say, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Commander General, that order to fire on a boat, let's say, violates the laws of war. You can't do it. And they've been in that position many, many times, as we've been in 20 years of conflict. They've had to give orders that you can't legally do this. Those people were gone, and it's very telling that the statement that you read earlier, the one that was so direct that said this is what happened if the facts in the Washington Post are right

was either a war crime or it was murder came from a judge advocate generals former judge advocate general's working group these are the people who got fired and they're now speaking out they're saying what they would would say if they had an opportunity to counsel commanders a final point This makes us understand better why a series of former military officers led by Senator Mark Kelly, Representative Jason Crowe, Senator Alyssa Slotkin, and others made a point of giving military officers advice. You don't have to follow illegal orders. In fact, you have a responsibility not to follow illegal orders. And here we see exactly why that's so.

because if you do follow an illegal order, you may end up being guilty of a war crime or a murder. That's why those people spoke out. And then we're attacked for it by the president who called it treason to have suggested that you ought to get legal advice and by similar comments from Secretary HECS. So these pieces, I think, do begin to tie themselves together. And it's clear now with a bipartisan investigation in Congress, we're going to begin to get some answers. And, of course, accusing these people of these senators of, quote, treason, talking about their hanging

for simply going back and saying you don't have to follow illegal orders that would have you held responsible as, again, Republicans are saying, not left-wingers, Republicans, that would, that would. have you in the end found guilty for war crimes or murder, as Andy McCarthy of Fox News said, Jack Goldsmith of the Bush administration said. I want to bring in right now former senior government official. That's a bit of an understatement. Morton Halperin, Dr. Halpern worked for the Johnson, Nixon, and Obama administrations. And Dr. Alpin also early on in the Clinton administration, you were very much engaged in questions regarding the interdiction of drug boats. Since you have spent a lifetime being an expert on where international law,

human rights, and the Pentagon come together, please give us your take on what we've seen over the past three days. Well, I think what you've been hearing from everybody is the same thing. Either it's, oh, there's a war going on, which I think there is not. But if there's a war going on, this is a war crime. You can't shoot people who have surrendered or who have rendered inoperative or who are threatened to be drowned. So if there's a war going on, we have committed a war crime. If there's not a war going on, then it's a murder. And not only that, it's done in violation of Congress's intent. Because Congress, when it authorized the military to begin a program of assisting in drug interdiction.

It's explicitly said the military may not be used to arrest people or to engage in combat or use of force. They were to provide secretarial support, drivers, researchers, various other kinds, but not war. And so this is not only a war crime and illegal act in the United States. It's a violation of Congress's intent, and Congress is clear authority to regulate the armed forces. Mort, this is David Ignatius in Washington. I just wanted to jump in and ask you a question.

What's the effect of this kind of activity on individual officers and soldiers in the U.S. military who have to make these life and death decisions every day? What do they think when they read the same headlines that you and I are? Well, they think they have to begin, I hope they think, that they begin to have to asking themselves, is this a lawful order? And if it's not a lawful order, saying they will not carry it out. That's a very heavy responsibility to put on a serving military officer to make that decision. But I think they oblige to do it by their oath of office and by the Constitution. But we should not be putting them in that position.

It's the Congress's responsibility now to stop the president from doing this by making clear in the appropriations that it passes that the military cannot be used for combat operations against drug control matters and investigating who gave these orders and then considering impeachment of anybody who ordered military. military operations in violation of U.S. laws and in violations of international law. So, Jim Van der Heinehy, let's talk about this moment for Secretary Hegeseth during his confirmation hearings. There were real questions about his qualifications and character. You know, he is someone who has had some issues already, the signal gate. That was his mistake there, even though he didn't take the fall for it. We know President Trump has said he likes him. We know Hegeseth is popular in the Maga base who really went to battle for him during those confirmation hearings. But yet we know within the West Wing there's been some frustrations.

And now this is, of course, by far, the most serious moment with real consequences of his tenure. Give us the latest to what you're hearing right now, as there are Republicans like Senator Wicker's calling into question what is happening here. At least last night, Hegseth remains defiant. He tweeted a illustration of a cartoon of a children's book, Franklin, a popular children's book. I don't know if we have the tweet to show, but it's a anime. it's a cartoon turtle. And in Heggsets, recounting here, the new headline here is Franklin targets narco terrorists. And yes, it is a cartoon turtle hang off a helicopter, shooting missiles down at boats below. That is the response from the Secretary of Defense after this story

already went, exploded, and Trump tried to distance itself from it. Yeah, I hope you can put it on the screen, and then people should just reflect that that is the defense secretary who posted that in a public setting. terms of how Republicans think about Hagseth, you'd be hard pressed to find a single Republican senator who thinks he should be defense secretary. Most of them ended up voting for him because Trump wanted Hagsath. Trump supports Hagsath. And there's still a big gap between rhetorically saying, hey, I'm troubled by what I'm seeing here about what happened off the coast of Venezuela and then actually doing something about it. So we'll see if those members of Congress

and Joe's right, they're very serious. They run the committees that matter most. on these matters, but let's see if they actually do the difficult investigation, if they actually hold people to account if what was reported is true. And there's a whole other layer that we haven't even talked about this, is why are we there in the first place? The administration has done a terrible job in explaining, are we there for oil? Are we there for strategic purposes? Are we there to truly stop drug smuggling? And if we are, is that really the best use of American military to have our troops on a ship on the coast targeting drug runners, maybe keeping a little bit of cocaine or keeping a little bit of drugs from getting into the U.S. It's not going to

have an effect whatsoever on the amount of drug use or what's getting shipped into America. And so that piece, not just everything we've talked about for the last 30 minutes, has been baffling to a lot of Republicans with all that this White House has to deal with why this and why now. And then you step back even further and you see why Republicans are worried and why little by little, drip by drip, you are seeing Republicans starting to challenge Trump. And that is the bottom is falling out. You look at all of these polls. To be 25% favorable ratings among independents, that signals a bloodbath in the next election.

That's what Republicans are really, really fearing now. And you even look at this poll over the weekend where how do Republicans feel about Congress, even their support of Congress has dropped. It's their Congress. When you're losing your people and you have control, it just shows a deflation that you're seeing inside the Republican Party, toss in the fact that you have MAGA spending way more time in fighting than trying to defend the president and his policies,

and you really do have, I think, the most perilous predicament for the White House, certainly of this second term. And this is not going to go away because either that reporting is accurate or it wasn't. And if it is accurate, everything that was said today is all true. I don't know how Congress doesn't grapple with that in a very serious way. Well, and again, the evidence is out there. And the five sources are out there. As the general said, you've got the video, you've got, you've got evidence that I suspect the Armed Services Committee already has its hands on. We shall say. see. But Mika, it's, you know, you listen to what Dr. Halpern said. And first of all, he, like Jim,

raises the questions of the legality of the so-called war against Venezuela because of drug intervention. And then you look at what, Andy McCarthy writes, Fox News is Andy McCarthy. And he says, if it's war, it could be a war crime. Right. If it's not, a legal war, then it's murder. That's why he said it could be a war crime at the top of his op-ed, and he said, quote, at best. Right. And then Andy went on to say, he doesn't think this is a war. It doesn't meet the qualifications, as Dr. Halpern said, of being a war. So then suddenly you're talking about the stakes being so much higher for Pete Hegseth and for those that issued the Hill warnings, if, in fact, that is what happened.

So up and down the line, General Hurdling, we'll close out this conversation with you. What are the questions this bipartisan group of lawmakers will be asking, moving forward, and could this inspire any type of inquiry inside the military? It certainly will inspire if it hasn't already happened yet inside the military. There are people asking questions in uniform about what occurred. But if I can, Joe, before I go into answering your question, you know, as a commander, I would have welcomed an inquiry into any act I did.

And in fact, it happened several times in combat where you said, okay, what kind of a strike was this? What were your legal ramifications? What did the lawyers say about the legality of a strike? I remember one time we hit a mosque because we had intelligence that there was a massive supply cash inside that mosque. and it was protected in a city, and we waited for people to get out of there before we struck it, and then it was questioned later on, and we were able to show drone video and the actions we took to say it was a legal strike. Now, it was a horrible strike, but it was legal. In this case, what we're talking about is questions like, what order was given and by who?

What kind of actions were taken? Were there any questionings of the orders? Do we have video of what happened? And I would suggest they probably do. These are the kind of questions that I think Secretary Hegseth is going to get from a congressional committee. But here's the hard part, too. The military commanders are going to get those same questions. And they are, you know, if Secretary Hegseth gets a pardon from the president, that's one thing. He can do that in legal court.

But I got to tell you, the military will be under courts martial authority, and they will not get just a sweeping away of any kind of actions like that because it contributes to how the military sees things. One last thing I'd point out, the Secretary Higseth was one of the great defenders of several war criminals when he was a Fox News anchor back before the president came into office. So we know exactly where he stands on giving these kind of orders and what his background was in Iraq to give these kind of orders and how he felt about the Jags. One other thing I'd mention, David Ignatius talked about the relief of many of the early retirement of many of the JAG officers in each one of the services, there was also the early relief of many of the inspector generals, the people that look after

these kind of things to see what happened and provide reports on them. Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurling, thank you very much for being a part of this. He's author of the forthcoming book entitled If I Don't Return, a Father's Wartime Journal, CEO and co-founder of Axis, Jim Vandahai. Actually, if Jim can stick around, I want to talk to him about his piece in Axis. All right, his new piece, along with Mike Allen on the, quote, volatility vortex facing most administrations is online now. We'll talk about it. Former senior government official Morton Halperin, thank you as well for being on this morning.

Thank you, Dr. Halper. And still ahead on morning, Joe, the story, Jonathan Lemire mentioned moments ago. if President Trump cares about drug trafficking, why is he planning to pardon a convicted drug trafficker? We'll show you what he's saying about that. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travelers' forecast this morning from Ackyweathers, Bernie Raynow. Bernie, how's it looking?

Happy Monday, Mika. It is cold in the northeast, bud dry. Watch out for the snow in Chicago this afternoon. That's going to produce some slippery travel. Then rain will arrive in the southeast, exclusive ACAW, the forecast, Atlanta 52, Jackson, 50, New Orleans, 62 with the rain. Your acuether travel forecast here, we're fine across the northeast and the southeast today.

To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, make sure to download the Accuether app today. If the Republicans want to maximize their way back, they need to go back and remember the immortal words of that great strategist, James Carville. It's the economy, stupid, he said, to, and you've got to have an agenda that is forward-looking. What are we going to have in the way of pro-growth policies that Americans will say, yeah, that'll make my family and my community and my financial prospects better. And don't forget health care, Carville famously said. The Republicans have got to have a health care agenda, otherwise they're going to be in deep

trouble. All right. A 52 past the hour, those longtime GOP strategist Carl Rove with a warning to Republicans ahead of the midterms. And Jim, you and Mike Allen have a really a bracing article about all of the things that Republicans on Capitol Hill are absolutely petrified by. And yes, it is the economy stupid. It's why Donald Trump won in 2024. And yet, if you look at the headlines, Here we're talking about Pete Hagsit bragging about, you know, kinetic strikes and possible war crimes and putting out cartoons when the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee is, you know, talking about a massive investigation. Before that, you know, it was tearing down the White House, now a ballroom that's a fit for Marie Antoinette before that.

Argentine beef. I mean, you just run the gamut. It's just, again, everything but the economy. Which is, I think we overcomplicate politics sometimes. Like, if you go back all the way to Bill Clinton, this happens to every president. And by the way, Carl himself was seduced by this, this idea that you win, and then you win power in Congress, and you assume now you're going to have this durable governing majority. and you play to your base and you try to flex your muscle. And then within months, you realize independence don't like you. Activists on the other side are riled up, and you're about to lose your majority. Like clockwork, it's happened every single couple of years going back.

Yes. You talked about in your piece, and it's something I talk about all the time. The back and forth, the back and forth, a whiplash. It's constant whiplash. You know, and I hate to do it again, but Carl Rove, 2004, they win. he says, permanent majority. Two years later, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, two years later, Barack Obama wins. Democrats go, permanent majority, a coalition of the Ascendant.

Two years later, the Tea Party wins. Tea Party says, we've changed Washington forever. Two years later, Barack Obama wins. And they're like, this is confirmation. We've changed Washington forever. Two years later, Republicans have a massive landslide. Then Donald Trump wins. Everybody goes, MAGA forever.

Two years later, Nancy Pelosi's Speaker of the House. You know, it's just, this keeps going because the winner, in this case, by one or one and a half percentage points, maybe two percentage points, overreaches. Biden did it by barely winning and going, I'm going to be FDR. Now Donald Trump's team doing it, acting like they're going to own Washington forever. It's crazy. The country's been what it's been for the last 30 years. It's basically 33% Republican, 33% Democrat, and then 33% independent. We can quibble about the specificity of those numbers.

But that's essentially the reality. You live in a 50-50 country. And every time that these parties calculate, like Trump is, that you can just play to your base and you can own the other side and you can leverage maximally the power that you have, independents say, I don't like it. I want my economy to work. I want my health care premiums not to go up 18%.

And I want my kids' schools not to suck. If you can deliver on those things, I'll vote for you again. Then the party doesn't deliver on it. They get diverted by these topics that most people don't really care about. I don't think many people in America were thinking about Venezuela at all, unless you were from there originally. I don't think most people are that worried about whether or not there's a drug flow coming illegally and whether that's the number one priority of the U.S. military. When you do that.

Then you have this bizarre news. possible war crimes, according to Annie McCarthy and Jack Goldsmith and Republicans, and Roger Wicker investigating it, you have all of that. And then you have, again, it's dizzying news, the pardoning of one of the biggest drug traffickers ever in the Western Hemisphere. I mean, the incoherence is unspeakable, right? You can't say on the one hand that the biggest problem facing America is fentanyl and cocaine, coming in illegally to our shores and then someone who dumped a ton of cocaine who's been convicted of it, you're just going to pardon because a buddy of yours felt like this guy deserves

freedom. And that's like most people won't pay attention to it, but like they do pay attention to the totality of what they're seeing. And they feel like you have a Washington that's not paying attention to their health care costs soaring, the economy, you know, at least in some areas, souring. The fact that if you're not in the stock market, you're not prospering and you're worried about whether or not you're going to have a job. Those things, have been true going back to what James Carville and people before Carville ever talked about when it comes to the economy. And that is why you have Republicans, little by little, I don't want to overstate it, little by little challenging the president, certainly challenging him on this

reporting from the Washington Post, but also challenging him on health care, challenging him on other topics. And by the way, the reason you see a lot of Republicans saying, I've had it, even though we have power, I'm leaving. The idea that I come to Congress and I don't have any authority, have a ton of death threats. And by the way, both of those things are different from when you were in Congress and I was covering Congress. You might have gotten an occasional death threat, but you talk to these members, they're getting hundreds of death threats. They're having to security up. Then they go into Congress, and they're basically told, I just have to do what the president says I have to do. And even though he's my guy, like, I don't really have a job.

I'm not really even in town. We shut down. No one seems to care about it. And that's why you see members of Congress retiring. And I think you're going to see more Republicans retired. The more that they retire, the harder it is to hold the majority. The more they think they're not going to hold the majority, the more people retire. That's how you create this cycle. And I think that's the cycle that Trump finds himself in this morning. And, of course, the reporting that Republicans, if this continues, may find themselves in the minority in the House even before the election. So when we come back, we're going to continue this conversation, Jonathan Lemire, writing a piece on the ISIS.

and what it's doing in the White House and what it's doing to Republicans in the House and the Senate. Jim Vandehi, thank you very much for real this time. We'll see you next time.