The Trump administration’s policy of deadly U.S. military strikes against civilian boats in international waters has been a global controversy for months, but the burgeoning scandal took on even greater significance two weeks ago, when The Washington Post reported on the administration targeting and killing a pair of survivors after a strike in early September.
Almost immediately after the allegations reached the public, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a challenge to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “[R]elease the full, unedited tapes of the strikes so the American people can see for themselves,” the New York Democrat wrote in an online statement. “Your recklessness demands full transparency.”
The release of the video has quickly become a key point of contention in the larger debate over the alleged war crime.
As recently as Wednesday, after a reporter asked about releasing the full video of what transpired in the Caribbean on Sept. 2, Donald Trump said, “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.”
Three days later, Hegseth was pressed on the same point and offered a very different answer. “We’re reviewing the process, and we’ll see,” the beleaguered Pentagon chief said when pressed on whether he’d choose transparency.
On Monday, the president abandoned his previous position. The New York Times reported:
Days after President Trump declared he had ‘no problem’ releasing a video of a second strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 that killed two alleged drug smugglers hanging to remnants of the hull, he reversed himself on Monday and said he would let Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decide whether to make it public.
It’s easy to imagine a president saying, “Upon further reflection, I answered the question last week a bit too hastily,” or perhaps even claiming, “After I last addressed this issue, I received an intelligence briefing that brought new concerns to my attention.”
But that’s not what Trump did. Rather, he pretended he didn’t say what Americans heard him say — out loud, on the record and in public — just five days earlier.
“Mr. President, you said you would have ‘no problem’ with releasing the full video of that strike on Sept. 2 off the coast of Venezuela,” a reporter reminded Trump.
He immediately interrupted, “I didn’t say that. You said that. I didn’t say that.”
He did say that. Maybe Trump doesn’t remember the position he took five days earlier? Or maybe he thinks he can rewrite recent history and bully our memories into submission. Either way, when the president starts changing his story about an intensifying scandal, it tends to reflect a White House with a serious problem. For context, remember that Hegseth didn’t have any qualms about releasing the video of the initial Sept. 2 strike soon after it happened. Now, however, he and the president are hedging about releasing the part of the footage that makes their operation appear even more scandalous. Imagine that. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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