Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, currently serving as the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, also known as SOCOM, shot down far-left claims that War Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a follow-up strike on “survivors” of an airstrike that took out a drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean in September 2025.
Bradley, who is a highly decorated Navy SEAL with three decades of military service, provided testimony during a closed-door hearing before leaders of both the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees concerning current operations being carried out against drug-trafficking groups. These organizations have, for many years now, been smuggling drugs like fentanyl into the U.S., leading to thousands of addiction-related deaths.
The hearing, and Bradley’s testimony come after a story was published by the ever Trump-hating Washington Post — which was anonymously sourced — claimed that unnamed military attorneys and other personnel alleged that Hegseth told them to “kill them all” during a September 2 strike.
During his testimony, Bradley denied ever receiving any such “kill them all” or give “no quarter” order from the war secretary to terminate all of the survivors on the boat. He went on to describe receiving a detailed directive that authorized kinetic strikes against the vessel and those inside it. The order referred to the occupants of the boat as real threats under the rules of engagement, however, it did not include any specific protocols for how to deal with survivors.
During closed-door briefings following the strike, video footage of a second strike was shown. Democrats referred to what they saw as “horrific” and “deeply troubling.” This comes as no surprise. Democrats have been lobbing accusations against members of the military and the Trump administration as a whole for perpetrating “war crimes” daring to take the fight to targeted drug-trafficking vessels packed with deadly substances.
Hegseth and the military have been supported by lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) who defended the actions taken against these vessels as both lawful and justified, within the “fog of war.” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), however, called the incident one of the most “disturbing” events during his public service career, bizarrely insisting that using the military to stop an enemy nation from flooding our country with poison is somehow beyond the pale and reprehensible. Strangely, Himes did his best to make the shipwrecked drug-traffickers seem sympathetic, demanding the footage of the attack be released to the public.
Watch the admiral here:
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So far, a total of 20 strikes have been carried out, resulting in 83 deaths since September. President Trump has dropped hints these strikes may go from strictly destroying boats on the open sea to land-based strikes against drug-trafficking groups in the future. To showcase how much liberal media is trying to twist the narrative, ABC News referred to two drug-traffickers involved in a strike as “shipwrecked sailors.”
And yet, they reported that these individuals were still communicating with other traffickers and trying to save some of the drugs. Republicans have argued this proves that the traffickers were “still in the fight.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video