Democrats rush to impeach Hegseth for sinking a drug boat — you can’t make this up

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan has found a new way to get his name in the headlines: He is introducing articles of impeachment against War Secretary Pete Hegseth because the US military sank a known drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean and struck again when survivors clung to the wreckage.

Thanedar opened the curtains on this political theater at Union Station on Thursday morning, flanked by one of the many anti-Trump activist groups in Washington that now serve as the Democrats’ public-relations scaffolding.

It is a stunt, and everyone knows it. Even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has admitted the effort is going nowhere. But it speaks volumes about what the Democratic Party has become: a party that seems determined to preserve the status quo of illegal aliens, fentanyl, and cartel traffickers pouring into our country while punishing anyone who dares disrupt that deadly flow.

Thanedar has spent the past week on social media calling Hegseth “utterly incompetent, totally reckless, and a serious threat to US national security.”

What exactly is the threat? That our military took decisive action against a Venezuelan drug vessel? That the smugglers for organizations flooding our streets with poison didn’t receive due-process rights at sea?

The sharks can have them.

America’s military exists to protect Americans, not to run a rescue operation for narco-traffickers who operate as extensions of hostile regimes, including China’s chemical-precursor pipeline and its partnership with Latin American cartels.

The Washington Post rushed out a story claiming Hegseth personally ordered personnel to “kill everybody” aboard the vessel during the Sept. 2 strike. The White House itself has since said that Navy Adm. Mitch Bradley delivered the order for the follow-up strike on two survivors clinging to debris after the initial hit. Even that Post account has been contradicted by follow-up reporting in the Trump-hostile New York Times.

But accuracy is not the point here. Democrats, having lost interest in the Epstein Files, have discovered a new phrase: War crime. And they intend to use it as a political bludgeon against an administration finally taking border security and drug interdiction seriously.

Thanedar’s new articles accuse Hegseth of murder, conspiracy to murder, war crimes, and reckless handling of classified information. This is the same Thanedar who in just three years has run for governor, won a Detroit-based congressional seat once held by Rashida Tlaib, and has become one of the wealthiest and most flamboyant show horses in Congress. He files impeachment articles the way most members file constituent mail. He represents one of the safest Democratic districts in the country, a place where Biden and Harris each won by 60 points, and he behaves accordingly, immune from accountability and hungry for notoriety.

The Democrats’ obsession with criminalizing military action against drug traffickers raises a question they never answer: Who exactly are they siding with? Because it is not the American people who are burying their children after fentanyl overdoses. It is not the US Border Patrol agents overwhelmed every day by cartel operations the White House still refuses to classify as terrorist threats. And it is certainly not the sailors or aviators asked to interdict narco-boats in rough seas under hostile conditions.

What Democrats call a “war crime,” most Americans recognize as a wartime reality. Traffickers operating in international waters on cartel vessels are combatants in a multibillion-dollar drug war that has already killed more Americans than all our foreign wars combined. The idea that the US military must pause mid-operation to ensure the safety and comfort of cartel couriers is madness. Yet that is now the position of the Democratic Caucus, and, if recent comments are any indication, of Alaska’s own Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who seems more troubled by the fate of drug runners than by the fentanyl epidemic wiping out our young people.

Hegseth has said the on-scene commander made the correct call to eliminate the threat. The Pentagon has wisely refused to dignify Thanedar’s circus with comment. Let Congress debate this if it must, but Republicans control the House, and this resolution will die exactly where it deserves — in the first round bin.

In a sane world, any member of Congress would be thanking the US military for taking decisive action against a suspected narcotics vessel. Instead, we have Democratic officials desperately trying to criminalize the act of defending our borders and our people.

This is not just unserious; it is dangerous. It signals to our adversaries – China, Venezuela, the cartels – that America’s political class is willing to handcuff its own military if it means scoring points against President Trump.

Shri Thanedar may enjoy seeing his name in the papers for a day. But the American people are watching something else: a Democratic Party increasingly hostile to national security, eager to protect the anonymity of smugglers, and furious that anyone might disrupt the illicit river of human misery streaming across our borders. Alaska understands what is at stake. Washington, sadly, does not.

Suzanne Downing is editor of The Alaska Story.