Today's News: "this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans"

Of all the things Trump has destroyed that America used to be proud of - charity, fairness, openness, diplomacy, rule of law - it turns out to be the war crimes that are angering Americans the most. They used to take such pride in their military - "best in the world!" they always boast. 

Those times when the American military did not live up to the ideal - Abu Gharib, My Lai, Gitmo, Bagram (taxi to the dark side) - the American people were ashamed of what had been done.

Now the unprovoked bombing of Venezuelan fishing boats is another shameful chapter for Americans. 

The guys are feeling a little squirmy about war crimes…

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— @NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze) (@newsjennifer.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 11:30 AM

Gag limit has been reached:

This person who openly advocates war crimes, who lobbied for pardons for war criminals, and repeatedly disdains the laws and ethics of war, the one we confirmed as Secretary of Defense, turns out to have done war crimes. Shocking! (But hey, if they're finally coming around, better late than never.)

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— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 10:42 AM

America ostracized, because war crimes.

- The Dangerous Ones

Read on Substack

Ummmm, seems like whiskey Pete maybe shouldn’t have tweet about the war crimes.

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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) November 29, 2025 at 8:37 PM

Hegseth sent out a "funny" tweet about killing the so-called "narco-terrorists" and used a Canadian cartoon figure for it:

Whiskey Pete loves to tweet about war crimes

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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) November 30, 2025 at 7:42 PM

Canadians were NOT amused!

Please do not implicate Franklin in war crimes

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— Thor Benson (@thorbenson.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 9:45 AM

Hegseth and Trump are now underbussing an admiral. Real profiles in courage, guys:

I never thought the leopards would eat *my* face, sobs admiral who committed war crimes for leopards.

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— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 9:15 PM

Charlie Angus writes:

...Hegseth’s use of a child’s cartoon to brag about high seas murder was about feeding the MAGA base while attempting to desensitize the larger public to the fact that the Trump regime is engaged in very public crimes of murder.
Canada doesn’t get to sit this one out.
We are engaged in the offshore defence of the continent. We have intel obligations for dealing with gangs and drug smuggling. But we also have a duty to ensure that the rule of law is maintained.
We must speak up against the murder of civilians, whether in Gaza, Ukraine, or on fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela.
The murder of the nurses in the frigid waters off the coast of Ireland was a rallying moment for a young Canadian nation. We promised that there would be justice. And that means justice for all - whether on the high seas on in the burnt out tents of Gaza.

The US military will be taking note:

Imagine what it does to morale in the military to see the defense secretary hang an admiral out to dry to avoid responsibility for war crimes.

— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 8:29 PM

“Admiral Alvin Holsey, first witness for the war-crimes prosecution?”

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— Mickey Kuhns (@mickeykuhns.bsky.social) November 30, 2025 at 10:23 AM

Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of speaking with people who actually knew Holsey—two flag officers and a colonel. One of the former flag officers knew him personally; the others were offering background in light of the mess we’re now living through. First, they all have read what I’ve written, and they all expressed the same disgust: I’ve framed the issue exactly right. The United States is not in an armed conflict with Venezuela. The United States is not in an armed conflict with narco-terrorists. Period. Whatever else the White House may hallucinate on Truth Social, the law of armed conflict is not a choose-your-own-adventure pamphlet. They all expressed disgust—genuine, unvarnished shock—that such orders were given at all. Every one of them called them what they plainly are: manifestly unlawful. When I asked why Holsey walked, the story I got matched almost word for word this account. The man who relayed it was not in the room, but his former aide—now a senior officer himself—was. The versions align down to the emotional temperature. When Holsey retired, I said at the time: you don’t do this on a whim. A fracture that deep means the man looked at the board, weighed prison against pension, and decided that protecting his family beat serving as accessory to a presidential tantrum with body counts. I respect that. I’d respect him more if he’d stayed in the chair and refused the unlawful orders outright. But let’s be adults: disobeying a manifestly unlawful order doesn’t just put your own skin in the game—it involuntarily drafts your spouse, your kids, your entire financial future into the line of fire. If he were a bachelor with nothing to lose, I suspect we’d have watched him stand his ground and dare the regime to blink. What they also told me: senior officers are retiring across all the services. That absurd “NO FAT CHICKS!” tirade detonated a series of long-brewing conversations in the flag ranks. They’ve been waiting—grimly, quietly—for the moment a truly unlawful order landed on their desks. Now it’s here. And the danger is precisely what you’d expect: once the sane, seasoned adults leave, all that’s left are the phony-tough and the crazy-brave. The ones who will salute anything, shoot anything, burn anything, so long as the order comes stamped with the imprimatur of Adolph Trumpler and his DUI-hire Rasputin. When Milley said, “We do not swear allegiance to a king,” he was not being poetic. He was stating the core rule of the American military. And he was warning what happens when that rule is broken. I’ve met more officers than most Americans ever will, including those who served. They are—normally—the country’s best: thoughtful, trained, serious, sober in judgment. To become a three- or four-star like Holsey is to rise into a stratosphere most citizens will never even glimpse. It is the top 1/10,000th of 1% of the entire military ecosystem. Plenty more are qualified, but only a handful ever get the nod. Which is why I am merciless here. I do not expect the Marine on the .50 to parse international law while staring at a mob. He obeys orders; his life and the lives of his buddies depend on it. He is not the problem. But his team leader? His squad leader? His platoon commander, company commander, battalion commander, brigade commander, and ultimately the combatant commander? These people damn well know the law. They know what an unlawful order is. They know the politics; they understand the rules; they grasp the stakes. Holsey’s refusal to play executioner is admirable. But his departure leaves us with a new officer corps—one increasingly selected not for judgment, but for obedience; not for integrity, but for loyalty to the Leader. And that is how you wake up one morning to a military willing to shoot protestors, firebomb American cities, and train weapons on non-combatants because someone in the Oval Office decided the law was optional. That’s the actual threat. Not Venezuela. Not “narco-terrorists.” Not phantom enemies drifting somewhere off our shores. The threat is what remains of the United States once the last adults leave the room.

- William A. Finnegan

Read on Substack

Remember Admiral Holsey? The WSJ says Holsey had concerns about the boat strikes long ago. He expressed his concerns. Hegseth “asked” him to step down. Hegseth, at the very least politically…will not survive this thing. He will not. It’s bigger than he OR Trump at this point.

- Jack Hopkins

Read on Substack

We are not at war with Venezuela, yet. The boats are civilian craft. The U.S. criminal code does not maintain a death penalty for drug smuggling. Due process is required before conviction or sentence. All of the 80 people killed thus far are wanton murders slain under illegal orders. All of them.

— David Simon (@audacityofdespair.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 7:47 AM

Dan Rather and Team Steady

Could The Boat Strikes Sink Hegseth?
Old-fashioned reporting is turning the screws on the Trump administration
If there was any doubt that this country desperately needs — now more than ever — a vigorous and unyielding press, look no further than the recent reporting on Pete Hegseth, the Fox TV weekend anchor turned Secretary of Defense.
The Washington Post has some serious editorial ownership issues with Trump sycophant Jeff Bezos, but kudos to its reporters who continue to fight the good fight.
Last week the paper broke the story that Hegseth verbally ordered the military to leave no survivors in its attacks on suspected drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela.
...Have we no shame? As a country, as a people, have we come to this?
Some on the Hill are deeply concerned. The reporting got the attention of Congress as lawmakers from both parties worried out loud about whether the attacks constitute war crimes.
In addition, Title 18 of the U.S. Code defines a war crime, among other illegal acts, as “the act of a person who intentionally kills [...] one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.”
And we would never have known about the incident if Hegseth had his way....
As hard as the Trump administration tries to suppress journalists, good reporting continues to find example after example of probable corruption — from pay-to-play pardons, to crypto schemes to enriching the family Trump. The White House press secretary denies it all, saying recently, “Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”
And the more the press digs, the angrier Donald Trump becomes....
Last week, the White House unveiled a new assault on freedom of the press: a page on its official government website that tracks supposed media bias. The oh-so-subtle tagline reads: “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.” It is the cyber equivalent of stamping one’s feet.
Seemingly for sport, the page names and shames news organizations for coverage the president doesn’t like....This week’s “Offenders of the Week” include CBS News, The Boston Globe, and The Independent for their coverage of Trump’s calls for the hanging of six Democratic members of Congress who posted a video reminding the military that they should not follow illegal orders.
An unintended consequence of this latest Trump tantrum is that now many of the well-reported articles about Trump and his illegal, unethical and democracy-eroding activities are easily found in one convenient place, at WhiteHouse.gov. And kudos to the journalists and media organizations that made the cut, they have skillfully touched a nerve.

It was also the Washington Post that published George F. Will's hell-dammer of a column this week. Will is one of America's "grand old men" of journalism and I have disliked his knee-jerk conservativism for years. But even he has reached his gag limit with the Trump administration and what he said is reverberating through Washington today:

A sickening moral slum of an administration
Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement....
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated....
The administration’s floundering might reflect more than its characteristic incompetence. In a darkening world, systemic weaknesses of prosperous democracies are becoming clearer...
Two weeks ago, the chief of staff of the French army said: “We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow. What we are lacking … is the spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are. If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.”
Putin has surely savored the French recoil from these words. And he has noticed that, concerning Ukraine and the attacks on boats near Venezuela, the Trump administration cannot keep its stories straight. This probably is for reasons Sir Walter Scott understood: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,/ when first we practise to deceive!” Americans are the deceived.