Hegseth erupts over WaPo ‘fake stories’, vows to stop ‘poisoning of the American people’
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth chastised the press following media reports that he signed off on a second strike against an alleged drug boat after the first one left survivors....
By Fox News · Fox News
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth chastised the press following media reports that he signed off on a second strike against an alleged drug boat after the first one left survivors. The Trump administration has come under renewed scrutiny for its strikes in the Caribbean targeting alleged drug smugglers, after the Washington Post reported on Friday that Hegseth verbally ordered everyone onboard the alleged drug boat to be killed in a Sept. 2 operation. The Post reported that a second strike was conducted to take out the remaining survivors on the boat. On Monday, the White House confirmed that a second strike had occurred, but disputed that Hegseth ever gave an initial order to ensure that everyone on board was killed, when asked specifically about Hegseth’s instructions. Hegseth said that he watched the first strike live, but did not see any survivors at that time amid the fire and the smoke — and blasted the press for their reporting. HEGSETH BACKS SPECIAL OPS CHIEF'S 'COMBAT DECISIONS' IN DEADLY CARIBBEAN STRIKE AHEAD OF CLASSIFIED BRIEFING "This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don't understand," Hegseth told reporters at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. "You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nit pick, and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about ‘kill everybody’ phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made." Hegseth said that after watching the first strike, he left for a meeting and later learned of the second strike. The White House said Monday that Hegseth had authorized Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley to conduct the strikes, and that Bradley was the one who ordered and directed the second one. At the time of the Sept. 2 strike, Bradley was serving as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, which falls under U.S. Special Operations Command . He…