The Washington Post’s bombshell reporting that top Pentagon officials quietly launched a lethal campaign against narco-trafficking boats — and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly ordered a follow-up strike after two survivors were seen in the water — should make every American demand answers from the brass and the media alike. The Post says surveillance shows a second strike killed survivors and that internal officials are scrambling to justify a new posture that looks more like warfare than law enforcement.
On Monday’s episode of The View the panel predictably seized on the story and leapt to call the strikes “flat-out murder,” with co-host Sunny Hostin insisting multiple sources say Hegseth said “kill them all” and lecturing viewers about international law. The televised armchair legalism was theatrical but shallow — the kind of moral grandstanding the coastal pundit class excels at when it suits their narrative.
Then came Dave Rubin’s clip — the one he shared from a DM exchange in which Hostin appears to admit she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about on the international-law specifics before denouncing Hegseth on live television. If true, that admission is the sort of media malpractice conservatives have been warning about for years: pundits who posture as experts while lacking the facts, then use their platform to ruin reputations and pressure the military.
Let’s be blunt: our country is under assault from cartels and narco-terror networks that operate with impunity in the Western Hemisphere, and the men and women who wear our uniform deserve a presumption of competence, not an immediate indictment from celebrity hosts. Conservatives don’t cheer death or loose talk, but we also refuse to let media elites weaponize ignorance to kneecap national security tools before Congress even gets the chance to see the evidence. The push to criminalize decisive action without context is political theater, not oversight.
That said, no one is above the law — which is why transparent oversight matters more than performative gasps from daytime TV. Congress and the Department of Defense owe the public a clear accounting: release the full surveillance, the legal memos, and the chain of command explanations so Americans can judge for themselves rather than rely on off-the-cuff moralizing. Until that happens, the default reaction should be to back our military personnel while demanding the same evidence and standards the media pretends to uphold.
The real story here isn’t a single gaffe on a studio couch, it’s a broader collapse of competence among our cultural elite who think virtue-signaling replaces fact-checking. Sunny Hostin’s moment of admission — whether leapt upon by Dave Rubin or spun by rival outlets — is emblematic of a press that too often values outrage over accuracy. For hardworking Americans watching from the heartland, that betrayal cuts deep: we expect our institutions to protect us, and we expect the media to report, not to pre-judge.
Patriots should want a full, sober accounting of how and why these strikes were authorized, and they should demand that networks stop turning national security into a late-morning morality play. If Democrats and their media allies truly care about the rule of law, they will champion transparency and due process instead of reflexive trials-by-television. In the meantime, stand with the people who protect our borders and our communities, and refuse to let celebrity scolds rewrite the story without facing scrutiny themselves.
