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For Trump, Hegseth’s Take-No-Prisoners Approach Is a Growing Liability

Investigations are mounting into the legality of strikes that have killed scores of people in the waters off Venezuela


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with President Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year. Doug Mills/The New York Times

By David E. Sanger and Helene Cooper
David E. Sanger has covered five presidents in more than four decades at The Times, writing often about national security and issues of superpower conflict. Helene Cooper has covered the Pentagon for more than a decade, and written about national security issues for more than 30 years.

Dec. 1, 2025
Updated 6:50 p.m. ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been a political problem for President Trump since his confirmation in the Senate early this year, which he survived thanks to a single, tiebreaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance. ... He survived the leaked Signal chat episode, even when it became clear he had copied classified battle plans and pasted them into an encrypted, but unclassified, messaging chain. He blamed the press, began kicking news organizations out of the Pentagon press room and insisted they sign a pledge never to seek news not approved by his public affairs office. Almost no one signed, not even his previous employer Fox News.

Now, the political price of Mr. Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon has increased. As investigations mount into the legality of strikes that have killed scores of people in the waters off Venezuela, his take-no-prisoners, leave-no-survivors approach has led even Republican supporters to demand answers. So far, few have been forthcoming. ... With claims flying that Mr. Hegseth’s orders might have led to the commission of war crimes — if not by the secretary, then by senior commanders following his general orders — Mr. Trump sounded over the weekend like he was putting some distance between himself and his defense secretary.

With claims flying that Mr. Hegseth’s orders might have led to the commission of war crimes — if not by the secretary, then by senior commanders following his general orders — Mr. Trump sounded over the weekend like he was putting some distance between himself and his defense secretary. ... On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump said he would not have been comfortable with orders to kill the survivors of the first strike on the fast-running boat. “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” the president said. He added, “I believe him, 100 percent.” Mr. Trump also said: “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike.”

But even as Mr. Trump was answering questions aboard Air Force One about whether his defense secretary had stepped over the legal lines with the Venezuela killings, the same defense secretary was on social media cracking jokes about the affair. Mr. Hegseth posted a meme on Sunday depicting Franklin, the turtle from a children’s book series, firing a weapon at a vessel laden with cargo from a helicopter. ... “For your Christmas wish list,” Mr. Hegseth wrote on social media. ... The joke fell flat, eliciting a storm of criticism, including from conservative social media users. “A civilized people respect life given by God and don’t treat lightly taking of life no matter how vile that life was used,” one user wrote replied to Mr. Hegseth’s post. “That meme was far from Christian. It was bloodlust.”

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David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-e-sanger

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/helene-cooper