Any hope Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had that Navy Admiral Frank Bradley would quietly soak up the blame for what critics are calling a “war crime” was shattered on Tuesday’s MS NOW panel. The idea that Bradley alone would take the fall for the deadly September strike — which killed two alleged “narcoterrorists” clinging to a burning vessel in the Caribbean — is already collapsing, and the political shrapnel is now aimed at Hegseth himself.
Both Hegseth and the White House have been pointing to Bradley as the officer who made the final lethal call. But according to the Morning Joe crew, that defense isn’t just flimsy — it’s putting the Pentagon chief in deeper trouble.
Joe Scarborough noted that Hegseth isn’t exactly swimming in goodwill on Capitol Hill, even among Republicans. But what really signaled the shift, he said, was Fox News veteran Brit Hume joining the critics. When the calmest guy in conservative media unloads on you, Scarborough argued, something has seriously changed.
“It’s very interesting, Brit Hume proving once again that the administration, like in the Epstein files, finds themselves in a position where they’re not fighting lefties, right? They’re not going up against the most progressive voices in America, people they can call communists or Marxists,” Scarborough said. “It is Fox News contributors. It is [National Review’s] Andy McCarthy saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ This new excuse of pointing, you know, at somebody else.”
Then Willie Geist added the part the White House likely didn’t want said out loud.
“The White House was caught in this moment right now where they’re saying, ‘Well, yes, Defense Secretary Hegseth did order the second strike, but not to kill the people just to disable the boat. The decision to kill the people, allegedly, is that of Admiral Bradley, a decorated admiral in the Navy. So to push that admiral in front of the bus is not going to end well, probably for Defense Secretary Hegseth.’”
“He’s in a bind, he added. “The White House is in a bind.”
Hegseth’s attempt to pin the strike on a decorated Navy admiral isn’t shielding him — it’s backfiring. And if the political mood is already shifting this fast, the situation is, as Geist warned, “not going to end well.”
Watch the segment below from MS NOW:
