The first year of the second Trump administration isn’t over, and it’s already sunk into premeditated murder and death threats against members of Congress. If the USA were at all sane, Trump would long since have been impeached, convicted, and kicked out of the White House. Where we’ll be by the 2028 election is depressing to think about.
The US government has conducted extrajudicial killings of the crews of several boats in the name of stopping the drug trade, and recent disclosures show that survivors were slaughtered without cause on orders by Pete Hegseth:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to a report that he ordered the military to kill all passengers aboard a boat suspected of ferrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea in September.
According to The Washington Post, the Sept. 2 boat strike initially left two survivors clinging to the boat. The Post alleges Adm. Mitch Bradley, head of Special Operations Command, then ordered a second strike in order to comply with Hegseth’s orders and to ensure the survivors couldn’t call on other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.
In a post on X on Friday, Hegseth said the strikes were intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.”
Killing based on suspicion, without an arrest or trial, is bad enough. Coming back to murder those who survived the initial strike is sheer brutality. Even, if the administration pretends, this were a military combat situation, killing shipwrecked survivors is a war crime. Hegseth and Trump should be prosecuted for ordering murders. However, the Supreme Court has decreed that Trump can commit all the crimes he wants, as long as they’re official acts, and remain above the law. It should still be possible to prosecute Hegseth, but Trump would doubtless pardon him.
The ABC News article says, “Critics of the Trump administration and some legal experts have questioned the legality of the strikes.” That’s like “questioning the legality” of the Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has threatened the lives of members of Congress for objecting to the murders the government is committing. Donald Trump wrote:
It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand — We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.
Later he wrote:
SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!
It’s that straightforward. For affirming the long-established principle that members of the military should not obey illegal orders to murder, he wants members of Congress put on trial, jailed, and executed. He is the one who should be on trial before the U.S. Senate. He should be removed from office. If he can’t be put on trial for his crimes, an informal tarring and feathering might have to do.
But the Republicans in Congress are dreaming of the power they’ll have under his tyranny, and the Democrats don’t care (with a few brave exceptions on both sides). It’s only going to get worse.