New York Times Calls Timeout on Washington Post’s Hegseth Narrative

New York Times Calls Timeout on Washington Post’s Hegseth Narrative

I recently came across an amusing meme: President Donald Trump, dressed as a magician, lifts his wand and declares, “For my next trick, I’ll make Democrats support the drug cartels.” And, indeed, he has.

On Friday, in an article titled, Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all, The Washington Post reported that, according to two people with direct knowledge of the first U.S. military strike on a drug boat in the Caribbean Sea on September 2, War Secretary Pete Hegseth “gave a spoken directive. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

CNN correspondent Natasha Bertrand — long known for playing fast and loose with the truth — quickly piled on. According to her sources, “The U.S. military was aware there were survivors in the water following the first strike on September 2 and carried out another to both sink the vessel and kill the remaining crew, the sources said.” I addressed her claims on Sunday.

Who would have guessed that The New York Times would emerge as the voice of reason? Without explicitly calling the Washington Post writers liars, the Times effectively called them liars.

On Monday, the Times reported, “The Post article did not provide context on when Mr. Hegseth gave what its sources described as a spoken order to kill everyone.”

From the Times:

According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.

Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him.

🚨 BREAKING: The New York Times reports that the story from The Washington Post that alleged that @PeteHegseth ordered narcoterrorists who survived an attack to be killed is *false*

From the article: "The Post article did not provide context on when Mr. Hegseth gave what its… pic.twitter.com/2XThgkYwC0

— Ryan Saavedra (@RyanSaavedra) December 2, 2025

It wouldn’t take long to find a senior Pentagon official willing — even eager — to trash Hegseth anonymously. His shake-up of the status quo has left the old guard itching for a chance to throw him under the bus.

Finally, after living through an endless string of Democratic hoaxes over the past decade — each following the same unmistakable pattern — we’ve gotten good at spotting them early. They always feature obvious coordination between Democratic lawmakers and the legacy media. So when the Post and CNN pushed their stories, many readers concluded that the “Seditious Six” lawmakers’ sudden reminder that service members must refuse unlawful orders wasn’t some random public-service announcement at all, but the opening act of their latest fabrication.

The only real surprise was that the Times stepped in to correct the record. Maybe the paper is finally trying to claw back some of the credibility its own false reporting has squandered.

People keep posting this all over X and it's hilarious and TRUE 🤣 pic.twitter.com/cErwDfWcO7

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 6, 2025

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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