ABC Hosts Push Washington Post Attack on Hegseth While Ignoring Key Facts

ABC News proved again this weekend why Americans are losing faith in legacy media.

During Sunday’s broadcast of “This Week,” anchor Jonathan Karl and global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz seized on a Washington Post hit piece targeting War Secretary Pete Hegseth. The story accused Hegseth of ordering a lethal follow-up strike on two survivors of a narco-terrorist boat destroyed in a previous operation.

But in their rush to amplify a narrative clearly crafted to discredit Hegseth, ABC News ignored his full-throated defense, which laid out not only the mission’s intent but also the real-life stakes of allowing drug traffickers aligned with terrorist groups to slip away.

Hegseth responded forcefully to the report in a statement posted to X:

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors... Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”

Hegseth made it clear that the strike’s mission was precise and legal: stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and eliminate those waging a chemical war on the American people. Every target was tied to terror.

But Karl ignored all of that. Instead, he handed the narrative over to Raddatz a longtime reporter with zero military experience who parroted the Post’s talking points and posed a disingenuous question: “Did those two men clinging to the side of the boat pose an imminent threat?”

That’s not just a media cheap shot. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding willful or not of how threats operate in a battlefield environment, especially when drug cartels and terror groups merge operations across international waters.

As Marine Corps veteran and Fox News host Joey Jones noted, “imminent threat” doesn’t always mean someone’s holding a rifle. Survivors of a targeted strike can still radio reinforcements, call in cartel militias, or reroute drug shipments actions that can get Americans killed.

Let’s not forget what these narco-terrorists are actually doing:

• Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45, with more than 100,000 overdose deaths annually.

• Cartels, increasingly backed by foreign powers like China, are operating as paramilitary organizations.

• The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that multiple terrorist-designated groups are using trafficking networks to move drugs and money across U.S. borders.

That’s the battlefield Hegseth is operating in and the one media outlets like ABC are choosing to ignore.

Raddatz questioned whether “lawyers had been consulted” before the second strike, as if battlefield commanders need to pause for legal memos while taking out terrorists poisoning our citizens. The “rules of war” argument is a red herring when you’re dealing with stateless combatants using civilian infrastructure for covert military operations.

It’s classic corporate media framing twist the story to fit a pre-written anti-military, anti-Trump narrative, all while pretending to care about the ethics of warfare. The real motive is simpler take down a Trump ally who’s dared to fight back.

Meanwhile, Hegseth is doing the job most politicians won’t: going straight at the cartels with lethal force and unapologetic clarity. His actions have saved lives, disrupted enemy logistics, and signaled that America isn’t backing down.

That’s why the leftist media is coming after him. Because the real scandal isn’t what Hegseth did it’s that he’s doing what Biden won’t.

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