Congress Just Put Pete Hegseth On Notice

This story is moving fast. Congress is now using every ounce of leverage it has to force Pete Hegseth to release the video of the second strike on September 2. Lawmakers intentionally placed a specific provision into the defense bill that will hit the Pentagon where it hurts. They plan to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget until the full footage is handed over. Not the edited version. The full unedited strike video that the Pentagon has refused to release.

Before even diving into the politics behind this power play, it is worth watching Donald Trump’s interview this morning with Dasha Burns. She pressed him on whether Pete Hegseth should testify under oath about the double strike and Trump’s response was one of the most chaotic ramblings you will hear from a sitting president. He repeatedly insisted he did not care whether Hegseth testified. He claimed he watches everything. He claimed the second strike looked fine because it appeared the people on the boat were trying to turn it over. Then he threw out an invented statistic that maritime drug trafficking has dropped by ninety two percent. None of this is real. None of it matches reports. None of it matches the facts.

The boat involved in the double strike controversy was not even headed to the United States. It was headed to Suriname. According to Coast Guard data, one in four of these vessels have no drugs on them at all. Yet Trump insists that blowing up these boats saves twenty five thousand American lives per hit. If he genuinely believes that number, he should explain why his pardon of Juan Orlando Hernandez would not then mathematically equal millions of lives lost. Trump’s drug war math changes when it becomes politically convenient.

When Dasha Burns confronted him on that pardon, Trump said he barely knew Hernandez. This is a person convicted by a United States jury for orchestrating years of violent cocaine trafficking. His indictment is public. It is available. It is not difficult to understand. Hernandez accepted cartel bribes, helped traffickers move tons of cocaine into the United States, rigged elections and enriched himself along the way. Trump still claims he does not really know much about him. There is no universe where that is believable.

There are growing rumors that Hernandez and his allies plan to move their money through crypto and through Trumpcoin. Trump shrugged off that possibility just like he shrugged off the strike footage. It is the same pattern every time. When something is politically inconvenient, he pretends it does not exist.

Now to Pete Hegseth’s team. One of the most damning clips circulating this week came from the Pentagon press room, where his acting chief of staff, Ricky Berea, sounded intoxicated during a conversation with Matt Gaetz. The slurred words, the meandering explanations, the nervous joking. It is not the demeanor of someone overseeing the most powerful military on Earth. It is the demeanor of someone who should not even be in the room.

People forget that Pete Hegseth used to understand war crimes. Years ago he spoke clearly about the need to refuse unlawful orders. He said this publicly. He explained that the military must uphold a standard above the whims of a president. He warned that a commander in chief could issue orders that violate the Constitution. He once believed this deeply. Now he pretends none of that is true and accuses anyone who disagrees of disloyalty to Donald Trump rather than loyalty to the law.

Congress finally stepped in. For the first time in a long time, lawmakers inserted a meaningful check on the Trump administration. The final draft of the defense bill forces the Pentagon to hand over the complete videos of all strikes conducted in the Southern Command region. This requirement is not symbolic. It has teeth. A quarter of Pete Hegseth’s travel budget will be frozen until he complies. This language passed the House and Senate committees. It is expected to become law without changes.

Hegseth claims releasing the footage would endanger troops. This argument falls apart instantly because the Pentagon already published a partial video of the first strike. There was no operational risk then. There is no operational risk now. And Pete Hegseth has leaked far more sensitive material in the past with zero hesitation.

The Biden era was filled with complaints from these same people about transparency. They demanded oversight. They demanded accountability. Today, those same people insist Congress has no right to see the video of a second strike that may have violated international law.

Congress is done playing games. They want the tapes. They are pulling the funding mechanism until they get them. And Pete Hegseth is now boxed in on every side.

This is one of the most serious checks Congress has placed on the Trump administration in months. They did not do it over tariffs. They did not do it over improper appointees. They did not do it over Venezuela. But they are finally putting a line in the sand on military accountability. It is long overdue.

Thank you to Dasha Burns for her sharp questioning and for not backing down when Trump tried to steer the conversation into nonsense. This interview is already sending shockwaves through Washington because it exposed exactly how flimsy the administration’s story is.

Pete Hegseth is running out of room. There is no spinning the footage once Congress gets it.

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