WaPo’s Latest Hegseth Hoax Is So Weak Even NYT Can See Through It

The Federalist

Last week The Washington Post launched yet another anti-Trump hoax, portraying Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as the perpetrator of ruthless war crimes based on anonymous sources. Now The New York Times is debunking the Post’s information operation.

On Friday, the Post’s Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima claimed that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “gave a spoken directive” to “kill everybody” after a Sept. 2 strike left two smugglers “clinging to the smoldering wreck.” According to the Post — which cited two unnamed sources — “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.”

As The Federalist’s Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway pointed out, there’s nothing unexpected about The Washington Post — the paper behind the Russia-collusion hoax, the Kavanaugh rape hoax, and the first Trump impeachment hoax — perpetrating yet another hoax, this time claiming that Hegseth ordered survivors of a strike to be executed. But what is surprising is that the Times isn’t going along in its usual fashion.

Yes, the story is so flimsy that even The New York Times called it out (the same Times that once earned a Pulitzer Prize for peddling the Russia-collusion hoax).

The Times’ Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and John Ismay reported that Hegseth “ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs,” according to five anonymous U.S. officials. According to the report, Admiral Frank M. Bradley ordered the “several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat.” Hegseth “did not give any further orders to him,” according to the anonymous sources.

“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,” the Times reported, before mentioning The Washington Post and the “uproar” it catalyzed with its initial story about the matter.

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

The Times, perhaps unintentionally, explained why the Post’s flimsy story was even published: “The suggestion that Mr. Hegseth, Admiral Bradley or both targeted shipwrecked survivors has been galvanizing because that would apparently be a war crime even if one accepts the Trump administration’s disputed argument for why its boat attacks have been lawful.”

In other words, the shock value of the story alone was enough to make it publishable because of the “uproar” that it would — and ultimately did — cause. The Post was deliberately trying to manufacture outrage by portraying Hegseth and the administration as committing a war crime. The Times’ reporting — uncharacteristically — exposed the strategy.