Pete Hegseth Should Be Charged With Murder
No matter how you look at the strikes on alleged “drug boats”—as acts of war or attacks on civilians—Hegseth has committed a crime and should be prosecuted.
by Elie Mystal
December 3, 2025
The Nation
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth laughs during a cabinet meeting hosted by President Donald Trump on December 2, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
Pete Hegseth is a murderer. He meets all of the legal qualifications to be a murderer. He should be charged with murder for his role in killing unarmed civilians on boats in the Caribbean.
Hegseth claims that the murders are authorized because the United States is “at war” with… drug cartels and “narcoterrorists.” Since September, under Hegseth’s direction, the US military has conducted 21 strikes (that we know of) on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean. These attacks have killed an estimated 83 civilians. The term “civilians” is important, because these people are not combatants. They are not waging war against the United States.
For a certain kind of morally stunted MAGA sycophant, the administration’s claims that these 83 victims were involved in illegal drug running is enough of a justification for their deaths. But that is just not how the law works. The government cannot kill people unless they pose an imminent threat of violence. It cannot simply declare somebody a “narcoterrorist” (whatever the hell that means) and summarily execute them without trial.
The entire boat-strike operation is a murder conspiracy being carried out by the US government. Each one of these deaths is an execution without trial. You don’t need to go to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to hold Hegseth accountable. The guy is ordering hits on unarmed civilians he has deemed a threat without trial or jury. His actions are criminal by any definition of “criminal law.” The Department of Justice should charge him with crimes under the normal federal murder statute, and the DOJ should criminally charge all of the people willing to carry out his illegal, homicidal orders.
Hegseth, and a load of other MAGA Republicans, including President Trump, seem to think that calling this a “war” absolves Hegseth and the military of all accountability. That is also false. First, we’re not at war. Second, even if we were, there’s no proof that these boat victims are combatants in this purely hypothetical, undeclared war. And third, even if we were at war, and even if there were proof that the people in these boats were combatants, there are laws of war that should prevent these kinds of attacks.
On September 2, according to reporting from The Washington Post, Hegseth ordered a second strike on survivors of one of his boat strikes. Hegseth allegedly said “kill everybody” when authorizing the second strike. Hegseth denies that he said this (he and the White House now claim that Adm. Frank Bradley ordered the second strike… because the buck always stops somewhere else with these cowards), but he also wrote on Elon Musk’s Twitter: “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
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This doesn’t sound like a denial to me. Hegseth effectively suggested that since the strikes were intended to kill, any person who survived an attack could still be killed in a secondary, mop-up attack.
Again, that is just not how the laws of war work. It is a war crime to kill defenseless people, even in a theater of war, after they’ve laid down their arms. George Washington University law professor Laura Dickinson spoke about this with Time magazine, and her quote puts it plainly: “In an armed conflict, the intentional killing of a protected person—someone who is a civilian or a person who is ‘hors de combat’ because they have laid down their arms or are shipwrecked at sea—is a war crime.”
What it all comes down to is this: If we’re not at war, Hegseth is a murderer; if we are at war, Hegseth is still a murderer. Hegseth and MAGA keep trying to throw up justifications to allow them to kill 83 defenseless people without evidence, and I’m telling you that the laws are designed specifically to prevent that from being OK.
Having established that the law regards Hegseth’s actions as murder, the next obvious question is, what is the law going to do about it? The immediate way to hold Hegseth accountable for his extrajudicial murders would be for Congress to impeach and remove him. Politicians from both parties have talked about conducting congressional oversight of the boat-strike operation, but given that Mike Johnson is in charge of the House, I can’t imagine those hearings going anywhere. Still, there are midterm elections coming up, and should Democrats retake the House, impeaching Hegseth must be a priority for the Democratic caucus. He’s out there murdering people, and removing him from office might be the only way to make him stop.
In a normal country, the Department of Justice would also get involved. But in our country, the DOJ is run by the same fascist stans who are praising the murders. Sadly, we can’t expect Pam Bondi’s DOJ to enforce the law.
Outside the United States, Hegseth could be held accountable by the International Criminal Court, which is responsible for prosecuting war criminals. The problem is, the US is not a party to the ICC. The US signed but never ratified the “Rome Statute,” which established the court. That decision was made by the George W. Bush administration, but successive administrations have refused to sign on, unwilling to put Americans at risk of international judgment. Hell of a “world’s greatest democracy” we’ve got going here. I would vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, who thought that perhaps the United States should be a party to international treaties. That being said, if I were Hegseth’s lawyer, I’d advise him to not travel to any law-abiding country.
Another option would be to use international tort law. The family of Alejandro Carranza, a Columbian fisherman who was a victim of Hegseth’s strikes, has filed a formal complaint against the United States—in which Hegseth is named as the perpetrator—under the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a treaty to which the US is a party. Unfortunately, that commission does not have the authority to impose penalties on bad actors—like fines or, what is needed most, imprisonment.
Domestically, the Uniform Code of Military Justice would have more teeth when it comes to holding Hegseth accountable. Again, even during actual wars, killing unarmed civilians is a crime. I have some hope that the military will do something to rein Hegseth in because, while Hegseth is primarily responsible for these killings, his orders put other military personnel at risk. Hegseth might be politically protected (for now), but every single service member involved in killing unarmed civilians (I’m looking under the bus at you, Admiral Bradley) could also be charged with a crime.
In fact, these military courts are my best bet for accountability for Hegseth and all his willing underlings—once there is a change in our regime. That is what happens (at least sometimes, on rare occasions) when crimes are committed. The regime that authorizes the war crimes never self-police. We have to wait until that regime is out of power.
When people like Senator Mark Kelly remind soldiers that they are not supposed to follow illegal orders, they are trying to help those soldiers. They are trying to save those underlings. They’re trying to remind them that “I was just following orders” is not a legal defense. Of course, we’d like to hold the commanders responsible. But each individual is also responsible for their actions. If you’re ordered to kill a defenseless person clinging to the wreckage of their boat that you just bombed, and you do it, you too can face justice, even when all the political appointees who ordered you to do it are back in their jobs on Fox News.
Pete Hegseth is putting everybody in the US military in a terrible position, including himself.
He is a murderer. The law might not be able to do anything about it now, but the law has a long memory. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, both published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” here.
A Desperate Trump Is Stirring Up Race Hatred
A barrage of bad economic news has spurred Trump to unleash his hate-infested id on any nonwhite target that flits through his overtaxed brainpan.
by Chris Lehmann
December 4, 2025
The Nation
Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House, on December 2, 2025.(Yuri Gripas / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Remember “economic anxiety”? That was the central concept in an all-too-representative Democratic effort to explain away the mass movement aligning behind Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Back then, the liberal commentariat was mocking the notion that Trump’s supporters were motivated by questions of economic policy like trade and globalization. What really mattered to the MAGA faithful, in this overconfident diagnosis, was pure race hatred; the alleged economic worries fueling the Trump phenomenon were really only a fig leaf for a resurgence of white supremacist rancor on the right.
Of course, things weren’t that simple, as Brian Beutler, who had pioneered the ironic online usage of “economic anxiety” to underline the racial animus of MAGA insurgents, admitted in August 2016:
Trump’s racism explains why he has essentially no support from poor minorities but, at a time of stagnant wages and high inequality, it doesn’t necessarily explain his appeal entirely. Even if, as I suspect, his stated empathy for the white working class is purely affected, some white workers believe it is sincere and support him for it…. Liberals should be interested in improving economic conditions for everyone, even the most loathsome racists in the Trump coalition, but if we overinterpret racism’s role in Trump’s support, and then find that 40 percent of Americans support him, we will draw inaccurate conclusions about the extent of racial discord in our society, and our inclination to work in tandem with chastened Republicans to lift up downscale whites will start to diminish.
Certainly, Trump’s strong showing among key non-white constituencies in the 2024 election confirmed the broad contours of this argument. He nearly doubled his support among African American voters over his 2020 showing; Asian voters supported him by a 40 percent plurality, and he almost won a majority of the Hispanic vote—a landmark no other GOP presidential candidate has come close to reaching. Economic anxiety was definitely the dominant theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign; he hammered away at the scourge of inflation under Joe Biden’s presidency, even as he continued to tout an aggressive new regime of mass deportation, demonize immigrants, and decry the “left-wing lunacy” of DEI policies and critical race theory. This time, in other words, Trump was able to exploit the zero-sum race-versus-class theorizing of the liberal punditocracy to his advantage, and contrive an appeal to many of the constituencies he often dismissed in his bigoted rally outbursts, based on his promises to usher in a new “golden age” of unprecedented mass prosperity.
Yet there’s a big problem when the premise of that pitch implodes on contact, as we’re now seeing. Trump is presiding over a sluggish, top-heavy economy, with energy and food costs continuing to spike. ADP payroll figures—the only reliable current employment measure since Trump’s White House has used this fall’s government shutdown as an alibi to stop publicizing job numbers—showed an overall decline of 32,000 private-sector jobs in November, with small businesses shedding 120,000 jobs, continuing a trend of significant losses over four of the past six months. And Trump’s numbers on the question of rising prices—his signature campaign issue—are toxic, with two out of three respondents saying the president has done more to raise prices than to lower them.
So, as Trump becomes increasingly desperate to reverse his free fall in public approval, we’re witnessing a striking, if far from surprising, inversion of the old “economic anxiety” saw: in an effort to distract Americans from the economic anxiety he is responsible for generating, Trump is keen to further sow race hatred across the MAGAsphere.
This reflex is of course never far from Trump’s lizard brain; he engineered his first foray into political debate by buying full-page ads in New York newspapers demanding the reinstatement of the death penalty in order to execute the since-exonerated Black and Hispanic defendants in the Central Park jogger case. And even amid his 2024 assault on the failures of Bidenomics, Trump found ample time to boost the false racist claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of their neighbors. Yet the barrage of bad economic news for the White House has spurred Trump to unleash his hate-infested id on any non-white target that flits through his overtaxed brainpan. In response to the shooting of two National Guard troops near the White House by an Afghan immigrant, Trump announced a halt on processing immigrants from all “Third World countries”—a sweeping racist imputation of group responsibility for the shooting that has since metastasized into a 30-country travel ban and a cruel and disastrous cessation of decisions on asylum claims.
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And in a televised cabinet meeting this week, Trump let loose a stream of ugly attacks on Somali immigrants, whom he called “garbage,” and then proceeded to insult with well-worn anti-Black stereotypes:
"These are people who do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing. When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it."
In the supine authoritarian messaging complex of the MAGA movement, this was a barely coded cry of “Everybody into the pool!” for Trump’s vast supporting cast of racist demagogues. That message was conveyed in real time by reliable MAGA toady Vice President JD Vance, who “banged the table in encouragement,” per The New York Times’ writeup of the meeting’s Klan-rally finish. (Trump, clearly pleased with this sort of response, followed up with an equally grotesque anti-Somali rant on Wednesday.)
The diffident, Trump-normalizing Gray Lady was provoked to observe, “Even for a president who has frequently made derogatory comments about immigrants, the rant against Somalis was an alarming use of vulgarity from the White House against an entire community.”
I’m afraid I have bad news for the Paper of Record about the rest of the MAGAsphere. If you toggle over to the right’s coverage of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s murderous attacks on boats alleged, without evidence, to be transporting drugs to the United States—either fentanyl or cocaine, depending on which MAGA mouthpiece is whipping up the two-minute hate in question—you’ll find the same vicious race libels, only in more graphic terms. Megyn Kelly, a lawyer and self-professed Christian, announced on her Sirius XM show that she didn’t think Hegseth should be held accountable for the second strike he reportedly ordered on the first of the boats taken out in the administration’s Caribbean campaign—and that, indeed, the two survivors killed in that strike in defiance of the laws of warfare didn’t suffer nearly as much as she wanted them to:
I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer.… I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.
Like I’m really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb. But because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water.
This is also not much of a shock for the odious Kelly, who came to prime-time prominence on Fox News for touting lurid and baseless conspiracy theories about the New Black Panther Party and fervidly insisting on the caucasian bona fides of Santa Claus—thereby efficiently streamlining the network’s demented coverage of the phony “War on Christmas” into fodder for a race war. Yet, like Trump’s Somali outburst, Kelly’s performance was a repellent bid to dial up MAGA-branded race hatreds to 11, in the absence of any plausible program to alleviate the economic worries of working Americans.
We can expect a steady torrent of this obscene and inhumane posturing from a Trumpified GOP that is otherwise at a loss to govern effectively or deliver tangible material gains to its working-class supporters. To take yet another ready example from this week’s news cycle, the New York Young Republicans Club is hosting for its annual gala Markus Frohmaier, the deputy leader of Germany’s Alternatives for Deutschland (AfD) party, which celebrates the country’s Nazi heritage while promoting a draconian set of anti-immigrant policies; an August communiqué from the club contained the Nazified slogan “AfD über alles.” You might think that the New York City–based arm of the Young Republicans network would have been chastened by the fate of the rival New York State Republicans, which was forced to disband after a series of leaked group chats showcased the affinity that members and leaders of the group professed for Nazism, up to and including fantasies of consigning their political opponents to the gas chambers. But you would, of course, be wrong: Anything goes, it’s clear, in a MAGA movement untethered from expectations of economic improvement. Economic anxiety must succumb, under the direction of Trump and Vance, to the utmost impunity of the white volkisch Reich.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Lehmann
Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. He was formerly editor of The Baffler and The New Republic, and is the author, most recently, of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).
Ilhan Omar Responds to Trump's Racist "Somalians" Rant | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!
Streamed live 15 hours ago
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVTgKI-tePY
On tonight's episode of TJRS we sit down with Representative Ilhan Omar as she responds to Donald Trump's racist, anti-Somali rant. We also sit down with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to talk about the Trump administration's war crimes in the Caribbean and ask whether she also sees war crimes in Gaza; followed by a conversation with Dr. John Gartner about Trump's clear cognitive decline. Shawn Harris, who is running for congress in the seat being vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene, also joins us to talk "law of war" and whether we're even at war with fishing boats in the Caribbean sea.
ABOUT JOY REID:
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025. Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
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Website: https://www.joyannreid.com
Substack: https://substack.com/@joyannreid Facebook: / 61576759980854
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FOLLOW JOY ON SOCIAL:
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Trump’s Plan to Make America White Again (w/ Joy Reid)
Runaway Country with Alex Wagner and 2 more
December 4, 2025
VIDEO:
The Trump administration is using the tragic shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan national as justification to close the door on immigration, refugees, and asylum seekers trying to enter the US. SUBSCRIBE 👉 @RunawayCountrywithAlexWagner
This week, Alex speaks to an Afghan doctor who now fears for his family's safety, and then is joined by Joy Reid (@TheJoyReidShow) to talk about how this is all part of a larger MAGA plot to Make America White Again.
CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS: MIRACLE MADE - http://trymiracle.com/alex
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CODE: CROOKED15 WILD ALASKAN -
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Trump Halts Immigration in America
02:50 - Intro to Former Afghan Aid Worker
04:16 - Trump Targets Asylum Seekers
05:19 - Last Week’s Deadly Shooting
07:38 - Ad Break
10:42 - Intro to Joy Reid
12:00 - Trump’s Immigration Minions
13:40 - Trump Announces More Raids on Americans
15:32 - Is This Ethnic Cleansing?
19:03 - Stephen Miller on Fox News
21:38 - Make America White Again?
24:44 - Ad Break
28:34 - JD Vance & White Nationalism
31:05 - MAGA’s Rejection of American Ideals
34:25 - The Great Bleaching of America
36:41 - Trump Betrays American Allies
36:42 - Trump Admin’s Violence Toward Americans
43:20 - The Impact of Trump’s Draconian Immigration Policies
Photos courtesy of AP Photo Archive Being an American right now is a wild ride. Every day brings a new controversy, breathless media narratives and the same loud voices rushing in to score political points. Then another Truth Social post drops and the circus moves on. But all that noise is drowning out the actual story. On her new podcast Runaway Country, veteran journalist Alex Wagner talks to the voices at the center of the headlines: from the fringes of the resistance, to the marrow of MAGA, to the many people who’ve found themselves smack-dab in the crosshairs of a fight they never asked for. Because if you want to understand our unreal times, you’ve got to talk to the very real people who are experiencing it all first-hand. Join Alex as she brings together the stories of everyday Americans trapped in our national car with no brakes, alongside conversations with some of the smartest thinkers in politics. Buckle up, this road could lead anywhere.
https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/how-to-hold-trump-and-maga-accountable
NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW: How to Hold Trump & MAGA Accountable with JOYCE VANCE
Wajahat Ali
December 3, 2025
https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/how-to-hold-trump-and-maga-accountable
NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW: How to Hold Trump & MAGA Accountable with JOYCE VANCE
Wajahat Ali
December 3, 2025
#WajahatAli #JoyceVance #TrumpAccountability
Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have operated with near impunity for years — but the tide of accountability is rising. In this urgent and eye-opening conversation, Wajahat Ali sits down with former federal prosecutor and legal expert Joyce Vance to break down exactly how the law, courts, and civic pressure can hold MAGA leaders accountable for corruption, extremism, and criminality. Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney and host of The Joyce Vance Show, brings unmatched insight into the legal system, prosecutorial strategies, and the mechanisms that can finally bring justice to a movement that has repeatedly evaded consequences. Together, Wajahat and Joyce discuss: The real legal vulnerabilities of Trump and top MAGA figures How criminal investigations intersect with political accountability The power of civic engagement and public pressure in demanding justice What are the next steps for a democracy under threat? This episode is a roadmap to accountability, truth, and holding powerful figures responsible — no matter how entrenched they are.
Realistically, Donald Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell, & neither will his criminal accomplices. However, there are other ways for the majority, and Democrats, to hold MAGA accountable.
THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Joyce Vance
December 2, 2025
LeftHook
Substack
Accountability.
That’s the magic word of the decade.
When will it arrive, who will deliver it, and will the rest of us be alive to see Donald Trump and his international criminal syndicate, which includes his ne’er-do-well Administration, broligarchy buddies, and right-wing Reeks, finally receive their comeuppance?
So far, Trump and the world’s worst people continue failing up. Instead of being punished for inciting a violent insurrection, Trump, a convicted criminal, was re-elected as President and is the most powerful cankled man on Earth. His family has made nearly $5 billion in the ongoing Crypto grift, and he’s using his pardon power to free drug traffickers, liars, and a venture capitalist who stole more than $1 billion from thousands of Americans.
However, power tends to be blind to its own abuses and often becomes arrogant, reckless, and lazy. The lies and grift are so blatant and obvious that even MAGA can’t spin its way out. Trump is underwater on the economy, the Epstein files, and immigration. It seems that Pete Hegseth - among others - committed murder by firing on Venezuelan boats. They’re trying to blame everyone but themselves, but the evidence is so glaring that they’ve even lost Judge Napolitano, who said the Administration committed war crimes. Conservative RINO George Will was given space in The Washington Post to declare Hegseth a war criminal without a war.
Then there’s the matter of Kash Patel using FBI jets as his private Uber to pal around with his girlfriend, and Kristi Noem using taxpayer dollars to buy two private jets. We haven’t even touched upon the economic grift where Trump has passed a pro-Crypto legislation that benefits himself and pardoned his money launderer and business partner CZ. And then there’s the overreach on immigration, with ICE agents terrorizing American cities, deporting citizens, and National Guard members being illegally deployed and put in harm’s way.
That was just off the top of my head. I’m exceedingly confident there’s a lot more garbage barely concealed under the rugs in the gaudy, $300 million ballroom.
Thankfully, former US attorney, law professor, and author of the new book, Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual For Saving Democracy, gives us tools for how the majority can seek accountability, even though it won’t lead to these horrible people ever spending a day behind bars. After all, “The Town” protects its own, and it’s a big club where everyone fails up. Nonetheless, it’s up to us to keep up the pressure.
Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have operated with near impunity for years — but the tide of accountability is rising. In this urgent and eye-opening conversation, Wajahat Ali sits down with former federal prosecutor and legal expert Joyce Vance to break down exactly how the law, courts, and civic pressure can hold MAGA leaders accountable for corruption, extremism, and criminality. Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney and host of The Joyce Vance Show, brings unmatched insight into the legal system, prosecutorial strategies, and the mechanisms that can finally bring justice to a movement that has repeatedly evaded consequences. Together, Wajahat and Joyce discuss: The real legal vulnerabilities of Trump and top MAGA figures How criminal investigations intersect with political accountability The power of civic engagement and public pressure in demanding justice What are the next steps for a democracy under threat? This episode is a roadmap to accountability, truth, and holding powerful figures responsible — no matter how entrenched they are.
Realistically, Donald Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell, & neither will his criminal accomplices. However, there are other ways for the majority, and Democrats, to hold MAGA accountable.
THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Joyce Vance
December 2, 2025
LeftHook
Substack
Accountability.
That’s the magic word of the decade.
When will it arrive, who will deliver it, and will the rest of us be alive to see Donald Trump and his international criminal syndicate, which includes his ne’er-do-well Administration, broligarchy buddies, and right-wing Reeks, finally receive their comeuppance?
So far, Trump and the world’s worst people continue failing up. Instead of being punished for inciting a violent insurrection, Trump, a convicted criminal, was re-elected as President and is the most powerful cankled man on Earth. His family has made nearly $5 billion in the ongoing Crypto grift, and he’s using his pardon power to free drug traffickers, liars, and a venture capitalist who stole more than $1 billion from thousands of Americans.
However, power tends to be blind to its own abuses and often becomes arrogant, reckless, and lazy. The lies and grift are so blatant and obvious that even MAGA can’t spin its way out. Trump is underwater on the economy, the Epstein files, and immigration. It seems that Pete Hegseth - among others - committed murder by firing on Venezuelan boats. They’re trying to blame everyone but themselves, but the evidence is so glaring that they’ve even lost Judge Napolitano, who said the Administration committed war crimes. Conservative RINO George Will was given space in The Washington Post to declare Hegseth a war criminal without a war.
Then there’s the matter of Kash Patel using FBI jets as his private Uber to pal around with his girlfriend, and Kristi Noem using taxpayer dollars to buy two private jets. We haven’t even touched upon the economic grift where Trump has passed a pro-Crypto legislation that benefits himself and pardoned his money launderer and business partner CZ. And then there’s the overreach on immigration, with ICE agents terrorizing American cities, deporting citizens, and National Guard members being illegally deployed and put in harm’s way.
That was just off the top of my head. I’m exceedingly confident there’s a lot more garbage barely concealed under the rugs in the gaudy, $300 million ballroom.
Thankfully, former US attorney, law professor, and author of the new book, Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual For Saving Democracy, gives us tools for how the majority can seek accountability, even though it won’t lead to these horrible people ever spending a day behind bars. After all, “The Town” protects its own, and it’s a big club where everyone fails up. Nonetheless, it’s up to us to keep up the pressure.
