MS-NOW’s Joe Scarborough theorizes that the video featuring Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, urging service members to disobey illegal orders, must have been related to early knowledge of the now-controversial airstrike, reported by the Washington Post, in which a second U.S. strike reportedly killed survivors of an initial attack on a suspected Venezuelan drug-smuggling boat. Scarborough says the Post’s report that Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth delivered a “no survivors” order makes joking about it with this cartoon particularly alarming:

For your Christmas wish list… pic.twitter.com/pLXzg20SaL

– Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) December 1, 2025

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MS-NOW: Just put the cartoon back up. MIKE BRZEZINSKI, MS-NOW: I can’t. JOE SCARBOROUGH, MS-NOW: Just put the cartoon back up. I mean- This comes from the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense, at a time when subordinates, based on-reportedly-his orders, could be facing war-crime investigations, are facing war-crime investigations. And as Andy McCarthy said, that’s the best-case scenario, because if it’s determined this is not actually warfare, then it could be murder charges. And this is what the Secretary of Defense does, while the Commander in Chief is saying he knew nothing about it. Just look at that and ask yourself: if you’re in uniform, serving this country, and this is how the Secretary of Defense responds to really one of the most critical questions that has faced the Pentagon since the beginning of this administration-just ask yourself what they’re thinking, and what parents of men and women in uniform, what spouses, what children, are thinking. If this is how unserious and clownish the Secretary of Defense is in the face of some of the most serious questions the Pentagon has faced over the past year. … Again, Pete Hegseth – Republicans bragging about the kill strikes, killing everybody in the waters right now. It’s a dangerous time legally for Pete Hegseth. It gets more dangerous if he is spending this time furiously going around trying to cover it up, trying to make phone calls. I’m not saying he is. I’m saying this is when people really get in trouble in his position, because he’s been exposed. He’s got the House Armed Services and Senate Armed Services – Republican chairmen – getting the evidence. There are five people that are already talking about this. This genie is out of the bottle. And that’s why nobody, nobody has said that President Trump knows what was going on. But they certainly have said Pete Hegseth delivered the kill orders. And so now, if Pete Hegseth is going around trying to cover this up, this is when a situation goes from being very dangerous for him to being even, even, even more dangerous. So it is there. The evidence is there, and there’s no circling back. Doesn’t matter that you now are only letting people like Chinese religious cults cover your Pentagon, and that you’ve kicked out all the real news services. The Washington Post – the much-maligned, let us say, Washington Post – over the past six months broke this story. And the evidence is there. The names are there. The House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee – they’ve got the details, getting the details. And how interesting: the Democrats, when they released that video a week or two ago, three months after these kill strikes and the kill orders – the alleged kill orders – they knew what was going on. And it’s hard not to believe that’s not the reason they put that out.

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