State Champ Radio Department of Defense
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is currently in the crosshairs of some members of the military and Congress after details of a September strike on alleged drug boats went wide. With President Donald Trump’s backing, SecWar Pete Hegseth appears shifty yet defiant on the orders to take out the boats, raising more questions than providing concrete answers.
At the root of the discussion is a September 2 operation near Venezuela involving alleged drug trafficking boats that was struck once, with some surviving the hit. It was reported by the Washington Post that a “kill them all” order came from Hegseth, which some consider a violation of international convention.
In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (December 2), Hegseth spoke with confidence that the strikes will continue under his orders, but curiously wouldn’t pin the aforementioned order to his vest. In fact, Hegseth said he wasn’t present for the second strike that killed the survivors, adding that he entrusted Admiral Mitch Bradley’s leadership on the matter in a social media post on Monday (December 1).
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Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.
America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptofWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it.
During the Cabinet meeting, Hegseth clarified his position.
“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting,” Hegseth said to reporters as reported by The Hill.
Hegseth claims Bradley made the kill order to take out the survivors, despite it going against the very laws in a manual first administered by the Department of Defense (now War).
Republican Party Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Party Senator Jack Reed issued a joint statment last weekend stating that they will investigate the order.
According to reports, 11 people were killed in the September 2 strikes, according to the Trump administration, an operation that was widely shared on the president’s social media accounts as a show of might.
While it appears that SecWar Pete Hegseth is attempting to move beyond the controversy and forge ahead, former military members such as Sen. Mark Kelly, who has drawn the ire of Trump and other GOP members for telling military members to deny illegal orders.
Further, many see Hegseth’s words as an attempt to pin the strike on Bradley to avoid international war crime charges. Adding to this, Admiral Alvin Hosley, who is Black, announced that he was retiring in October amid tensions with Hegseth over the drug boat strike operation and will leave his post at the end of 2025.
On social media, some are looking at the maneuvers of the Department of War and Hegseth in particular. We’ve got some of those reactions below.
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Source: Bettmann / Getty
Jackie Robinson is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, who also happened to break the color barrier in the MLB in 1947. Another fact is that he served in the military (more on that interesting tale later), but yet the Department of Defense recently deemed it necessary to remove his story from its website.
https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1902402644372529166
On Wednesday, March 19, the disrespect was noted by various news outlets and Robinson’s name has since been trending on social media. Nevertheless, the Department of Defense is blaming the headass move on wokeness and DEI.
This is where we remind you that when such terms are floated out haphazardly in 2025, it’s just a proxy for the N-word.
Robinson was drafted (and didn’t dodge) to serve in World War II in 1942. However, he was court-martialed for refusing to sit in the rear of a segregated Army bus, but he was eventually honorably discharged in 1944. Oh yeah, during his trial, he was acquitted by an all-white jury. He served his country, period. But clearly being a Black man was too much for the Department of Defense (DOD).
ESPN reached out to the DOD for an explanation and promptly got the MAGA talking point, white supremacy-friendly word salad run around. “DEI is dead at the Defense Department,” read part of the statement from Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot. “Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military.”
https://x.com/JeffPassan/status/1902429003467628585
For the record DEI—read: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion—has nothing to do with detailing the military service of an icon like Jackie Robinson. They just don’t want to big any Black people under any circumstances.
Social media is going in on the latest tomfoolery, quickly noting that even the new URL has “DEI.” Someone, please tell Chuck Schumer this is only going to keep happening unless you put up a fight. Respectfully.
See the reactions in the gallery.
2. An update statement…
Still trash.
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