Category: department of war
‘Reckless and seditious’: Hegseth issues brutal demotion of Democrat senator over ‘illegal orders’ video
The Department of War is ramping up its efforts to punish Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over his involvement in what President Donald Trump and his administration have described as a “seditious” video.
At Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s direction, the department is set to cut Kelly’s military retirement pay for an alleged “pattern of reckless misconduct,” namely the video of Democrat lawmakers calling for servicemen to disobey “illegal orders” from the president. The DOW also issued a letter of censure to Kelly, which “outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly’s reckless misconduct.”
‘Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability.’
“Six weeks ago, Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline,” Hegseth said in a post on X. “As a retired Navy Captain who is still receiving a military pension, Captain Kelly knows he is still accountable to military justice.”
“And the Department of War — and the American people — expect justice.”
RELATED: ‘Ridiculous charade’: Bill O’Reilly torches Democrat senator over ‘seditious’ political stunt
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Hegseth justified the response by arguing that Kelly’s prominence as a senator does not give him special privileges, citing specific articles Kelly may have violated.
“Captain Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action,” Hegseth said. “These actions are based on Captain Kelly’s public statements from June through December 2025 in which he characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders.”
“This conduct was seditious in nature and violated Articles 133 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to which Captain Kelly remains subject as a retired officer receiving pay.”
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Kelly fired back at Hegseth, calling him unqualified and accusing him of targeting lawmakers for simply opposing the administration.
“Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution – including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out,” Kelly said in a post on X. “I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that.”
“Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way,” Kelly added. “It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”
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Turns out that Hegseth’s ‘kill them all’ line was another media invention
Under his authority as commander in chief, the president can blow up pretty much anybody on Earth whom he deems a national security threat. He does not need permission from Congress, the media, or a panel of self-appointed commentators. The missile strikes on drug-running vessels operated by a designated terrorist group are lawful, routine, and predictable. What made the episode explosive was that it enraged exactly the faction that always reacts this way: the political left.
Impeachment is the only real consequence available to the administration’s critics, and after two failed efforts, that prospect does not keep President Trump awake at night. Republican control of the House makes even a symbolic attempt unlikely.
It is time to put a moratorium on the online laws-of-armed-conflict ‘experts’ who materialize whenever a strike hits a target they sympathize with.
So the disloyal opposition defaults to its remaining weapon: information warfare. Media outlets, activist networks, and hostile bureaucrats have been carpet-bombing the information space with false claims designed to sow dissension among the ranks and mislead the public.
The country needs a president who can act decisively in defense of national security, without media gatekeepers, rogue judges, or partisan lawmakers running armchair military campaigns from the sidelines. The “Seditious Six” tried to undermine the president’s authority and cast doubt on lawful orders. The Washington Post attempted to turn that fiction into fact by quoting anonymous sources with unverifiable claims.
The central allegation is that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued an order to “kill everybody” on the vessel. The Post framed it this way: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”
The headline amplified the accusation: “Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.”
A “spoken directive” means no record. The quote is a paraphrase. Nothing indicates that the source actually heard the Hegseth say those words. This is an anonymous, secondhand characterization of an alleged statement — precisely the sort of raw material the Post loves to inflate into scandal.
Even if the words had been spoken, the context would determine legality. If a commander asks, “How big a bomb do we drop on the enemy location?” and the answer is, “Use one big enough to kill everybody,” that exchange would not be criminal. It is a description of the force required to neutralize a hostile asset.
If these anonymous sources truly believed the secretary issued an illegal order, they were obligated to report it through the chain of command. Their silence speaks louder than any paraphrase. The most plausible explanation is that someone misunderstood — or deliberately distorted — an aggressive statement by Hegseth and nothing more.
The United States targets terrorists. The implication behind the Post’s story is that survivors remained after the first strike and that either the secretary or JSOC ordered a second engagement to kill them. No evidence supports that claim. No one outside the direct participants knows what the surveillance picture showed or what tactical conditions existed immediately after the first blast.
RELATED: White House names names in new ‘media bias tracker’ in wake of ‘seditious’ Democrat video
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump stated publicly that Hegseth told him no order was given to kill survivors. The fact that U.S. forces recovered two survivors from the submersible drug vessel undercuts the Post’s narrative even more. Pete Hegseth is far more credible than Alex Horton and the newsroom that elevated this rumor.
It is time to put a moratorium on the online laws-of-armed-conflict “experts” who materialize whenever a strike hits a target they sympathize with. They insist that the presence of wounded combatants instantly transforms a hostile platform into a protected site and that destroying the vessel itself becomes a war crime. Even the New York Times — no friend of the administration — punctured that claim:
According to five U.S. officials … Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile failed to accomplish all of those things … and his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.
The mobs demanding Hegseth’s scalp will be disappointed. The voters who supported this administration expected firm action against terrorist cartels and open-ocean drug networks. Another hostile vessel was reduced to an oil slick, and most Americans see that as a success.
Woke ‘Franklin the Turtle’ publisher and Democrats lose their minds after Hegseth shares hilarious meme
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth shared a meme on Sunday depicting the eponymous star of the children’s book franchise “Franklin the Turtle” and the television adaptation “Franklin” dressed as an American soldier, perched on the side of a Bell UH-1 helicopter, and firing a rocket-propelled grenade at maritime drug-runners.
The AI-generated illustration, shared after lawmakers from both parties expressed concerns over American strikes against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, was made to look like the cover of a book in the series, complete with a title — “A Classic Franklin Story: Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.”
‘We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels … or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists.’
The viral meme, which Hegseth captioned “for your Christmas wish list” and had over 25.6 million impressions on X on Wednesday, evidently enraged various liberal media personalities and Democrats as well as the Toronto-based publisher of the Franklin books.
Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) also complained about the meme, stating on the Senate floor, “He wants to be taken seriously, but yesterday he posted a ridiculous tweet of a cartoon turtle firing on alleged drug traffickers — a sick parody of a well-known children’s book. This man is a national embarrassment.”
Kids Can Press said in a statement, “Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity.”
RELATED: Trump’s boat strikes may leave one Venezuelan drug-smuggling pirate haven in ruins
Photo by Rick Madonik/Toronto Star via Getty Image
“We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values,” added the Canadian publisher.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded to the publisher’s condemnation, stating, “We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels … or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists.”
Unfortunately for Kids Can Press and Democratic critics, their condemnations of the fictional turtle’s enlistment in MAGA memes appear to have only helped fuel the desire by trolls to depict Franklin in other provocative fake titles including, “Franklin Guards the Woman’s Locker Room,” “Franklin Gets Falsely Accused of War Crimes,” “Franklin Assists with 20 Million Deportations,” “Franklin Explains What Fauci Deserves,” and “Franklin Learns about George Floyd’s Autopsy.”
One fake book cover titled “Franklin Gets a New Job” features an image of the turtle, this time dressed up as a Department of Homeland Security agent, arresting the eponymous Latin American star of the animated children’s show “Dora the Explorer.”
Another fake cover titled “Franklin and Pete Hegseth Laugh at Communists” features an image of the war secretary and the turtle riding their bikes past four slovenly leftists.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) also got in on the fun.
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who was among the Democratic lawmakers who urged the military last month to “refuse” allegedly illegal orders from the Trump administration, called on Hegseth to resign on Tuesday in the wake of a report claiming that the war secretary ordered SEAL Team 6 to leave behind no survivors in a recent boat strike.
Luna responded with a fake Franklin cover titled “Franklin Shows His Classmates How to Identify a Spook.” The fake cover features an image of the turtle directing his fellow woodland critters’ attention to an apparent caricature of Slotkin on a chalkboard.
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