A Murder Most Foul
Under the orders of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth the US is committing murder on the high seas ... and it was completely predictable
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E-Day Is Here!
Voters in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District are headed to the polls today to choose a new congressman, and there’s not a reasonable chance that a district Trump won by 22 points just one year ago could flip to Democratic control.
To be sure, my money is on Republican Matt Van Epps to prevail, but the fact that this is even a close thing speaks volumes about the state of the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s historically high unpopularity. (If Epps wins by anything less than 10 points (or loses), congressional Republicans will be in a full-fledged panic).
One reason for the uncertainty about today’s electoral outcome is that, according to a recent poll in the district, the Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn leads among those who have already voted - by 56-42 percent. If that number is correct, Van Epps will need to win big among Election Day voters. As I said above, that could very easily happen, especially since President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have spent the past few days beating the bushes to boost turnout.
Brian Rosenwald and I will jump on Substack Live tomorrow at 1:00 to talk about the results. This week, we’ll be joined by Democratic communications expert Johanna Maska to talk about what Democrats need to say and do to take back Congress next year. The link is here. You won’t want to miss this episode!
In the meantime, you can read my latest MSNBC piece, which looks at the state of the race and the chances for a Democratic victory.
Murder By Any Other Name
Remember last month when six congressional Democrats posted a video reminding members of the US military that they were duty-bound not to carry out illegal orders.
Here’s why that video was so necessary.
The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
As troubling as Hegseth’s behavior is, the actions of the commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, are even more problematic.
[Bradley] told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.
Perhaps I’m guilty of reading between the lines here, but Bradley’s justification for the second strike gives up the game.
