GOP starting to abandon Pete Hegseth over ‘illegal’ boat strike

Over the last few days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been taking shots from both sides. There are some very serious questions being asked about the first drug boat strike regarding a possible attack on survivors of the initial strike.

Hegseth says this is all fake news, and he did nothing wrong, but we are starting to see some Republicans run for cover, including some who had defended the strikes.

The fracture

I don’t believe Hegseth was ever truly supported by the entire GOP caucus, and I know for a fact some GOP members of Congress thought this was a joke when his appointment was first announced.

Hegseth left the service as a Major, so he never would have commanded more than about 200 troops, but now he was being asked to command millions as well as oversee a nearly $1 trillion budget.

Congress approved him out of loyalty to Trump, but now people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who served in the Air Force as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, are starting to waver.

Graham had defended the strikes, but even he is asking questions about the second strike that took place on September 2, 2025. Additionally, the Senate and House Armed Services committees are opening up investigations into the strike.

Senator Rand Paul

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has been against these attacks from the outset, and now he is really turning up the heat.

He stated, “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 of the White House, they’re saying it did happen.”

Paul continued, “So, either he was lying to us on Sunday, or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.”

I actually did a report on this earlier in the week for another publication, as I thought it was a horrible look for both Hegseth and the administration.

Charging war crimes

Former Fox News contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano is now working for Newsmax, and he thinks Hegseth could be staring down the barrel at war crime charges.

He stated, “It gives me no pleasure to say what I’m about to say, because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News. This is an act of a war crime -- ordering survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered, there’s absolutely no legal basis for it.”

He continued, “Everybody along the line who did it, from the secretary of Defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger should be prosecuted for a war crime, for killing these two people.”

I don’t really like Hegseth in this role, but for the sake of the country and the commanding officer overseeing this operation, I truly hope evidence supports the second strike. If not, that video the Democrats released about illegal orders takes on a whole new life, and Democrats will use this to destroy us in the 2026 midterm elections. Here’s hoping Hegseth is right when he calls all this “fake news.”