When even a charlatan like Sen. Rand Paul (KY)—an idealogue who tends to get caught up in such pursuits as vowing to protect Kentucky’s hemp industry, only to give up and allow THC products to be struck down as part of the shutdown-ending spending bill, or fighting against the right of mothers to breastfeed at work—takes the time to call out the obvious hypocrisy of a Trump administration cabinet member, then you know things must be getting pretty bad. And bad they most certainly are, as “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth finds himself facing a growing, bipartisan clamor from both halls of Congress regarding the Sept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbean that killed 11 accused Venezuelan “narcoterrorists.” That strike, just one of more than 20 that have to date killed at least 80 people in the Trump administration’s posturing against the regime of Nicolás Maduro, now balanced on the edge of conventional war, recently reignited a firestorm of controversy when fresh reporting at the end of November revealed that a second strike had allegedly been ordered to kill several survivors of the wrecked boat. This would be a clear violation of the law of armed conflict, a breach that has multiple members of Congress mouthing the words “war crimes.”
So far, that hasn’t included Sen. Paul, but that also didn’t stop him from eviscerating Pete Hegseth in front of reporters at the nation’s Capitol on Tuesday. Taking into consideration Hegseth’s constantly shifting stories regarding the so-called “double tap” strike, Paul acknowledged the obvious: The only conclusion a person can logically draw is that Hegseth has either been lying to Congress and Americans about the strikes, or Hegseth is incompetent beyond belief. Neither of these are considered optimal qualities for the man tasked with overseeing the entirety of U.S. military operations.
“Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this, and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen. And then the next day, from the podium at the White House are saying it did happen,” said Sen. Paul, addressing reporters at the Capitol. “So, either he was lying to us … or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened. Do we think there’s any chance that … the Secretary of the Defense did not know there had been a second strike? So as a country, we’re just going to let people lie to us, to our face?”
Much as we hate to agree with Paul, there’s little way to phrase it better or more directly than that, although he should just bite the bullet and throw in the words “war crime” as well.
If Rand Paul is on his ass I can confirm two things
1. Even the worst people on the planet hate Pete Hegseth
2. My electoral platform of “drop Pete Hegseth into a vat of crabs” is viable and accepting donors now
[image or embed]
— BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL (@edsbs.bsky.social) Dec 2, 2025 at 10:16 PM
When Paul refers to Hegseth disavowing knowledge of the incident, or saying that it outright didn’t happen, he’s referring to the constantly shifting narrative that has surrounded this particular strike, and the series of Caribbean boat strikes in general, none of which have been supported by the U.S. government actually furnishing direct evidence of the drug smuggling they claim as justification for extrajudicial killings. When news stories about the “double tap,” a secondary strike to kill survivors of the boat (who were reportedly clinging to the wreckage) first broke on Nov. 28, the initial response of Pete Hegseth on Twitter was to call those reports “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” in effect calling them fake. He would go on to call every action of the U.S. military in the Caribbean unilaterally lawful, saying “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, was grilled about the alleged double tap strike while aboard Air Force One on Nov. 30, and immediately cast doubts on whether the strike happened, while also saying that “I wouldn’t have wanted that,” saying that he wouldn’t have authorized a follow-up strike. Which is to say: By saying he wouldn’t have ordered it, the President of the United States effectively said that any second strike carried out did not have his blessing. He should be pretty angry with whoever ordered it then, right? …Right?
As is so often the case in Trumpland, however, a few days in order to mobilize talking points and spin resulted in the likes of Trump, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Pete Hegseth changing their stories entirely, in order to put up a united front. As of Dec. 1, this trio shifted to declaring that not only had the secondary strike happened, but that it was totally awesome, actually, and had been ordered by U.S. Special Operations Command, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley. Despite Trump saying a day earlier that he wouldn’t have wanted or ordered the second strike, the White House was by this point falling back on its “anything we do immediately becomes justified” defense, saying that Bradley was “well within his authority” to order the bombing of defenseless Venezuelans clinging to a sinking boat, while attempting to shift focus off Hegseth.
So yeah, you can hardly blame Rand Paul for not liking the feeling of being expected to act like an idiot who can’t see a shifting narrative being crafted in front of his very eyes. He found obvious agreement from Democratic Senators such as Richard Blumenthal (CT), who said “Ultimately, Hegseth trying to shift the blame and make Admiral Bradley the fall guy ought to be reason to ask for his resignation or fire him. He should be gone.” Occasional MAGA critic Sen. Thom Tillis (NC), meanwhile, drives the point home, saying that whoever is authorizing the U.S. government to commit war crimes should be held accountable.
“You don’t have to have served in the military to understand that that was a violation of ethical, moral and legal code,” Tillis said to CNN. “And so, if the facts play out the way they’re currently being reported, then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington. Whoever that is, is the person who made the decision and we can be connived that it was isolated to that one person. Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable.”
