Republicans left Democrats on Capitol Hill frustrated this week after a pair of controversies surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued to dominate the headlines, but the president’s party was seemingly unwilling to hold Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretary to any public accountability.
Lawmakers from both parties on the committees overseeing the armed forces and intelligence sectors huddled with Adm. Frank Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday. The briefing focused on a Sept. 2 military strike on a vessel the Trump administration says was ferrying drugs in the Caribbean. In that now heavily-scrutinized mission, Navy SEALs under Bradley’s direction conducted a second strike on the burning wreckage of the vessel as at least two survivors clung to it in desperation.
Committees in both chambers, led by Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate, announced plans to investigate the strike after news reports generated criticism from experts including former JAG officers claiming that those involved were complicit in a war crime, pointing to language in the military code of conduct and international law forbidding the targeting of survivors who do not pose an imminent threat.
The results of another investigation into Hegseth were released publicly on Thursday as well. A review of Hegseth’s actions in “Signalgate” found that the Fox News host-turned-commander was at fault for putting classified information at risk when he shared it in a Signal thread with Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and others, including a reporter who was added by Waltz by accident to the group chat.
But the Republicans and Democrats who emerged from Thursday’s briefing on the Hill did so saying very different things. The responses from the president’s allies ranged from silence to outright support for their man’s man, while Democrats accused their GOP foes of covering up bad behavior.
On Thursday, Democrats, including Sens. Jack Reed and Tim Kaine, Reps. Jim Himes and Adam Smith all released statements calling the strikes disturbing, unjustified and potentially unlawful.
“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors,” said Himes.
Roger Wicker, the Republican who heads up the Senate Armed Services Committee, only repeated to the press that he would “withhold comment” on matters related to Hegseth, including whether he had confidence in the secretary, as he hurried into an elevator following the briefing on Thursday. His noncommittal, still an evolution in itself given his previous call for an investigation and accountability, matched his House colleague Mike Rogers, who declined to comment.
Other Republican committee leaders were, meanwhile, ready to exonerate the secretary altogether.
Tom Cotton, GOP chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the strikes “righteous” and “entirely lawful” in a gaggle afterwards. He thanked Bradley, whom some speculated the White House was trying to attach blame for the controversy, and added of the targeting of survivors: “I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs, bound for the United States, so they could stay in the fight.”
Adm. Bradley was “very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all. He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail,” said Cotton.
His House colleague, chairman Rick Crawford, also defended the strikes. In private, however, things were an entirely different story. The Washington Post reported this week that a similar briefing last month on the boat strikes included Rogers dressing down Pentagon officials who were in the room for supposedly keeping Congress in the dark; multiple Republicans in that meeting were reportedly upset at the officials for failing to turn up with a lawyer in tow to explain the legal justification for the strikes in detail.
It’s not just the issue of Trump’s escalating military campaign in the Caribbean — which his critics call illegal murders — on which Republicans are privately reported to be taking things much more seriously than they are in public.
On the issue of Hegseth’s use of a Signal chat chain to share classified information about imminent strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, the president is calling on his allies to circle the wagons once again.
The publication of a report on Thursday revealed that an official investigation headed by the Pentagon’s inspector general found Hegseth had risked “potential compromise of sensitive DOD information, which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objectives.”
“If this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report concluded.
Even with that level of certainty, Republicans like Wicker were backtracking. The Kansas senator said in March that it was “clear” there were “mistakes” made in the process of sharing the intel over Signal. On Thursday, he’d changed his tune and claimed that Hegseth “acted within his authority”.
“It is also clear to me that our senior leaders need more tools available to them to communicate classified information in real time and a variety of environments,” Wicker said in a statement. “I think we have some work to do in providing those tools to our national security leaders.”
Hegseth himself was overjoyed to not be facing a stronger condemnation: “No classified information. Total exoneration. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report,” he wrote on X.
But two Republicans who are both retiring and have broken allegiances with the president were not willing to spin the situation to save the defense secretary.
Thom Tillis, a senator, and Don Bacon, a congressman, appeared at different times on CNN on Thursday to summarily reject Hegseth’s claims of competence and good stewardship of his position. Both called B.S. on the secretary’s claim that the Signalgate report “exonerated” him.
“No, that is total baloney,” said Bacon. “I have better words for it, but you can’t say it on TV.”
“The report makes clear that the secretary put sensitive information that would ordinarily be classified,” he added.
Tillis echoed Bacon’s derision over the response to the Signalgate report. He separately said that he thought whoever authorized the U.S. military to target survivors needed to “get the hell out” of D.C.
As usual, some of the most revealing comments about Trump-era Republicans come from the spurned members of that coalition. The broader reaction from the Hill today, however, was a sign that while the MAGA brand may be at its weakest point in years, the party’s especially battle-worn caucuses on the Hill still detest the idea of giving Democrats a single inch.
