‘Is That a Yes or No?’ Hegseth Waffles When Asked If He’ll Release The Second-Tap Airstrike Video

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth waffled when asked if he would make good on President Donald Trump’s vow to release the video of the controversial double-tap airstrike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.

Hegseth spoke at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.

During a question and answer session, moderator Lucas Tomlinson with Fox News asked, “After Admiral [Frank ‘Mitch’] Bradley’s meetings from Capitol Hill with joint chiefs, President Trump said he would have no problem if the full video of the strike is released. When can we see that video? When will you release it?”

“We are reviewing it right now to make sure sources, methods — I mean, it’s an ongoing operation right now, TTPs,” Hegseth said. “We have operators out there doing this now. Whatever we decide, we have to be responsible and we are reviewing it.”

Tomlinson next referred to a Washington Post report that Hegseth ordered, “Kill them all,” even the survivors of the first strike.

“Is anybody here from The Washington Post? I don’t know where you get your sources, but they suck.”

Hegseth continued, “Of course not! Anybody that has been in this situation room, or has been in the war room there, the secretary’s office, know you don’t walk in and say, ‘Kill them all —’ It’s patently ridiculous. It’s meant to create a cartoon of me.”

Hegseth continued:

What people think is cavalier or cowboy about it is the opposite. These are the most professional Americans going through specific processes about what they can and cannot do, understanding all the authorities, all the laws of war, all the capabilities, and applying it to deter our adversaries.

And by the way, there are not many people getting in boats right now running drugs, which is the whole point. We want to stop the poisoning of the American people. The catch and release program of the “pat them on the head and release them so they can go back to the fight” did not work in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s not gonna work in the Caribbean. So, we’re putting them at the bottom of the Caribbean, which forces them to change the way they operate, and hopefully it makes the American people safer — not hopefully, it will make the American people safer in the process.

“So, Mr. Secretary, you will be releasing that full video?”

“We are reviewing it right now.”

“Is that a yes or no?”

Hegseth sputtered when answering, “That is — We’re — The most important thing to me are the ongoing operations in the Caribbean with our folks that use bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures in the process. I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else. So, we’re reviewing the process and we’ll see.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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