TOPSHOT – (L/R) US President Donald Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth du…
TOPSHOT – (L/R) US President Donald Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a Cabinet Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC on December 2, 2025. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images)
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This is your TPM evening briefing.
Expressing Distress
This week, Republicans in Congress are furrowing their brows very strongly about the Department of War’s approach to menacing Venezuela, including reporting from the Washington Post that found Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reportedly gave a verbal order to “kill everybody” aboard a vessel that the Trump administration attacked in September. Whether he spoke those words or not remains the subject of some mystery, but it is also largely beside the point. What is clear is that the boat was struck multiple times in almost-certain violation of international law amid a broader campaign that is an almost-certain violation of international law. Hegseth shifted blame to the admiral in charge.
The Washington Post piece, however, did spark the most uniform wave of concern we’ve seen expressed yet from congressional Republicans in the face of atrocity after atrocity committed by the second Trump administration. Multiple Republican senators spoke to the press this week, expressing distress over the apparent lethal targeting of defenseless survivors of the U.S.’s strike on Venezuelan boat that the administration suspected of carrying drugs. The survivors were reportedly in the water clinging to the shipwrecked vessel when additional strikes rained down on them. Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have said they want answers about who at Pentagon ordered the second strike on survivors after the first attack.
“My understanding is that we may have a problem if you’re killing survivors in water after a strike,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said earlier this week. “But I want to see the actual stuff within the [military] codes. We’re just going to get the facts first.”
“I’m not comfortable with the two blow,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) said Tuesday. “You know, if that really happened. And I’m not comfortable; I just think it’s unacceptable.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has suggested that a “violation of moral, ethical and legal requirements” may have taken place. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has categorized the incident as “wrong.”
The language is about as strong as it gets at this point in the disintegration of the Republican-controlled legislative branch into a husk that has, this year, served as little other than a vessel for President Trump’s whims and wishes. Now, more evidence of Hegseth’s recklessness is headed their way.
The Pentagon Inspector General’s report on SignalGate is complete, and headed to Congress. This, you will recall, is the scandal during which Hegseth used the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive attack plans targeting members of the Houthi rebellion in Yemen.