Hegseth under fire as boat strike scandal widens

Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Burlington knows you cannot forget Mother's Day. And be real, texting your sibling to add your name to their card isn't enough. Instead, head to your newly refreshed Burlington, where it's easier to shop for deals that'll make Mom proud. Find fragrances from perfume to candles or opt for a brand name bag. Plus, your store had a glow-up, so it's more fun to shop for those special women in your life. Mom is Wow upside down after all. Burlington, deals, brands, wow.

Tonight on All-LAM. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people. I wasn't involved. President Trump says, ask Pete. So you didn't see any survivors to be clear after that first strike. I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire. This is called the fog of war. Tonight, Senator Mark Kelly on the growing calls for investigation as the boat strikes scandal transcends politics. This is an act of a war crime, ordering survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered. Then the polls are closed in Tennessee. No rational person believes this district should be competitive. Republicans have already lost. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on tonight's big election, the Pete Hegseth scandal, and the Dem push to save health care. And after a wild night of social media posting, Donald Trump's sleeper issue of 2025. He has an ability to fall asleep while on camera. But all in starts right now.

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. The polls have now closed in Tennessee in a special election to fill an open seat in Congress. It's a race everyone's watching for clues about the national mood because it is a deep southern district that went for Donald Trump by 22 points last year. Yet this vote comes a month after that brutal election day for Republicans, and they've been struggling ever since. Republicans have sent the vice president down to the district, Tennessee 7, a campaign. They sent the Speaker of the House, along with the president himself calling in on a speakerphone with Mike Johnson held up the microphone. They have spent millions of dollars in campaign funds. All this because Republicans are not entirely certain at this moment that they can hold a plus 22 Trump seat. So we're going to have the latest from Tennessee as more of those results rolling. It's an incredible place to be for an administration that has spent its first year trying to unshackle themselves from any legal, political, or moral restraints, projecting this error of invincibility. That project is now looking like way less of a sure bet, wouldn't you say? I mean, look at the big story out of Washington today. where Donald Trump's administration is embroiled in a genuine scandal and kind of fighting for their lives. They are facing questions about their military campaign to blow up small boats and the people on them in international waters in the guise of an undeclared drug war, strikes that have now killed more than 80 people so far. Many of these questions culminated after an unbelievably upsetting New Washington Post report about the very first of those boat strikes back in September. Two people familiar say Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a direct order to kill everybody on that boat. But after the first missile strike, two survivors were seen clinging to the wreckage. Quote, the Special Operations Commander overseeing that attack in September reportedly ordered a second strike to comply with Pete Hegseth's instructions, and the two men were blown apart in the water. Pete Hegseth has told Trump he never gave the order to kill everyone, but he has essentially confirmed how the attack went down. Do you remember the controversy last week over that video of House and Semit Democrats telling members of the military intelligence communities not to obey clearly illegal orders? Trump responded to that video, calling those members' traders, suggesting they were worthy of execution, reposting people saying they had to be hanged. They got death threats, predictably. One of them, of course, was Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, who is now under some formal investigation by Pete Hegseth Pentagon. And at every step along the way, Republicans said, illegal orders. What do you mean illegal orders? Well, here's one. Killing survivors of a naval attack who are clinging to their life in the water, even in a war, is a crime. You know how I know that? Well, because it is literally in the Pentagon's manual on the laws of war.

under the heading, clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations. Quote, the requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders the subordinate knows in fact are illegal. And then they come up with an example. For example, what's an example that's the most obvious use? For example, orders to fire upon the shipwreck would clearly be clearly illegal. Now, it's not a weird coincidence. This type of killing is explicitly mentioned in the manual. It is the quintessential war crime. Literally take no prisoners. War crimes codes exist to prevent and punish the killing of defenseless people. But that is exactly what Trump and Pete Hegseth were promising. promising the American people before this reporting. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters. I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be like dead. But after the first strike on the two defenseless men in the water. The DOD stopped killing survivors if it strikes as far as we can tell. In fact, we know reporting that some have been returned to their homes in Ecuador and Colombia after they survive strikes. It's almost as if the administration knew killing them was illegal and had to stop. And since this new reporting, they have been circling the wagons and trading on their bravado and ignorance. The president put it on his secretary of defense. As far as the attack is concerned, I still haven't gotten a lot of information because I rely on being. But to me, it was an attack. It wasn't one strike, two strikes, three strikes. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know about the second strike. I didn't know anything about people. I wasn't involved. I knew they took out of home. I wasn't involved, right? So commander-in-chief, unified executive, all-powerful when he wants to be. But when something goes around, I don't know. So, okay, let's go down the chain of command. Back in September, Pete Hegseth boasted of watching the strike live as it happened. Live as it happened. He said, I watched it. What does he say now? I watched that first strike lot. As you can imagine at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.

Who is Admiral Bradley, who made this decision? That's Frank Bradley, the head of the U.S. Special Operations Command. He reportedly gave the order to strike the men in the wreckage to comply with Pete Hegseth's initial order to kill everyone. Everyone from Trump to Pete Hegseth, to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, has singled Bradley out as a man who gave the order. So much so that, according to the Post, officials in Congress and the Pentagon are increasingly concerned that Trump administration attempts to scapegoat Bradley, the military officer who directed U.S. forces to kill those two survivors. Let's be clear about this. If Bradley commanded his silencers to kill those two men, he should be held responsible, even if he was following Pete Hegseth orders, but he should not be the sole scapegoat for doing exactly what Pete Hegseth wanted. The secretary looks like he bears criminal responsibility here. And you don't have to take this primetime cable host's word for it. Just ask Judge Andrew Napolitano, the conservative Republican legal analyst. It gives me no pleasure to say what I'm about to say because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News. This is an act of a war crime ordering survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered. There's absolutely no legal basis for it. Everybody along the line who did it. From the Secretary of Defense to the Admiral, to the people who actually pulled the trigger, should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people. Now, even many Republicans in Congress, including Senators Thom Tillis, Rand Paul, Roger Wicker, Mike Rounds, are joining their Democratic counterparts in calling for hearings investigations into possible war crimes committed by and for the Trump administration. Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, who appeared in that video telling troops not to follow illegal orders, joins me now. Senator, first, I want to get your sense if you, do you have a clear sense or a clear story from the Pentagon about what happened here or do you need to know more? Oh, we need to know a lot more, Chris, and thank you for having me on. I went back and listened to some of the tape where I was asking some questions in the secure facility about those strikes. And there was a lot of holes, and they could not give us a lot of information, and I felt they were being rather evasive. And it was not a... a compelling brief. So there needs to be an investigation. But I also want to comment on some of the video you showed of President Trump and Pete Hegseth. I mean, this is not leadership. We've never seen presidents, secretaries of defense that have acted in this way. The president is blaming Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth is blaming the admiral. You know, Pete Hegseth is

basically turned around and doing the 100-yard dash in the opposite direction. This is exactly not the kind of leaders you ever want running any organization. Yeah, I want to read for you. I mean, this was, this caught a lot of people's attention in the last few days when as this story was developing, Pete Hegseth posts on X. Let's make one thing crystal clear. Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional. He has my 100% support. I stand by him in the convent decisions. He has made. On the September 2nd mission and all of their sins, America is fortunate to have such men protecting us when this department says we have the backs of our warriors, we mean it. A lot of people interpreted this as a very obvious attempt to pin this entirely on the advert. 100%. But is anybody surprised by this guy? I mean, this is the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we've ever had in the history of our country by far. I mean, he runs around on a stage talking about lethality and hunting and killing people. He's working for a president that says, hey, we're just going to, you know, we're going to go out and kill people. This is... This is kind of the environment that these folks have created at the Department of Defense, and it has serious, serious consequences. Now, there needs to be an investigation. I don't want to prejudge anything, but we need to get the facts. We need to see the video. And we need to call Pete Hegseth, you know, certainly in front of the committee, and ask him, you know, some serious questions about his leadership, the orders he gave. what he, the environment that he has created in the department. Roger Wicker, the senator from, Republican Center from Mississippi is the chair of Armed Services Committee. Senator Reid from Rhode Island is the Democratic ranking member. And it was striking. They put out a statement saying, we want an investigation here. And I've talked to some people about. Is this real or not? Like, are we actually going to see genuine oversight and investigation from Senate Republicans on this? You're much closer to them than I am. Do you have confidence this is real? Well, I have confidence in the chairman of the Armed Services Committee that he's going to try. But are we really going to get transparency from a Department of Defense that has fired inspectors general and JAG officers, the lawyers? They're not looking for transparency. I think they're going to do everything they possibly can to make sure that the real story doesn't get out. But I will say this. There's video.

And that video should be shared. They shared the first part of it with the American people. There's also a legal analysis that I think needs to be made public as well, which is it's got a lot of holes in it, a lot of circular logic on why this entire operation has been conducted. And I still have a lot of questions about it. Yeah, let's stay on that for a second because I think there's some senses in which. It's been my view just watching this. It seemed to me that the legal predicate or rationale for these strikes is incredibly thin and amounts to essentially killing civilians using wartime powers and authorities that are undeclared, unsought from Congress, and not publicly argued for. Now, in this case, the killing of two survivors is so clearly something that's outpast what's legally allowable. It seems to have captured people's attention. Do you think we should be having oversight of the entire operation as well, even if they are, you know, they are drug runners or they are smuggling drugs or whatever is being alleged here? Well, yeah, we don't want drugs coming into our country, but this appears to me and I think many others to be a law enforcement problem. And we have to do a better job interdicting, you know, these drugs coming into the country. A lot of this stuff goes to Caribbean Islands first. Some of it goes on to Europe. Some of it goes into Mexico and through the southern border. But this is a job for the Coast Guard or sometimes a joint operation with the Navy. But Coast Guard does the law enforcement operation here. And, you know, they have taken our country, you know, in a direction that now we have members of the United States military that have been put in an impossible situation because they're given... in the case of what we've seen here over the last couple days, clearly unlawful, illegal orders. And there's tremendous pressure on them. And that was the point, you know, of our video is just to remind, you know, members of the military that they have an obligation to follow the law. Wasn't specific to this case, but when you consider who this Secretary of Defense is and who this president is, we felt it was a very important message to get to our warfighters. There was a very strange moment today in which the president was having a cabinet meeting where Pete Hegseth was sort of once again kind of reiterating his distance from the ultimate decision on the second strike. And at the same time, or roughly contemporaneously, there was a press conference at the Pentagon who, you know, they've basically kicked all the...

traditional, let's say, reporters out because they wouldn't sign this somewhat ludicrous agreement to basically allow the penning on a vet. So it's now filled with a very strange group of characters. And your name came up. There were some questions about the investigation. You just want to play you a little bit and get your response. Take a listen. Okay. If Secretary Phelan were to recommend court-martial, that could be an option on the table. All options are on the table at this moment in time, and we look forward to getting the Secretary of the Navy's review. And the Secretary of War has been very clear in his statements as well that he takes this extremely seriously, and it is unacceptable. What is your response to that? I haven't even been notified by the Navy. The only notification I've received of any investigation under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for basically saying what's in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, that's how ridiculous this is. But the only notification I've received is a tweet from Pete Hegseth. And that says everything you need to know about our Secretary of Defense, that he cares a lot about his Twitter account, how many views. Who's following him on Twitter? That's the only notification I've received. These are not serious people. I can't imagine the Secretary of Defense. If he wants to come across as somebody who, or the Secretary of the Navy, if he wants to come across as a professional that he'll pursue this because it's so patently ridiculous. But I'll tell you what, Chris. It doesn't matter to me what they decide to do. It really doesn't because I'm not backing down. I'm not being intimidated because this isn't really about me. It's not about those other five people. It's about the president of the United States and his desire to intimidate people, service members, retired members of the military, government employees, American citizens. He didn't like what I said. And because that, he wanted me killed. And now he wants me court-martialed. And he's going to force his Secretary of Defense to try to do it. They know where to find me. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you. Coming up, as Donald Trump and Peakseth try to pass the blame for what appear to be extrajudicial killings, the bipartisan effort to possibly hold them accountable. Next. Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now, we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line. On the line with Alicia Menendez. Weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MS now.

We've only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they've been poisoning the American people. And President Trump said, no, we're taking the gloves off. We're taking the fight to these designated terror organizations. And it's exactly what we're doing. Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are boasting about their boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela, with remarks like those from Pete Hegseth as well as this meme involving a character from a children's book. But they're also at the same time completely dissembling over allegations they violated the laws of war, specifically as it relates to that very first boat they struck twice, killing two survivors at the first strike, trying to have it both ways, bragging about how they're going after so-called narco-terrorists, also denying they did anything wrong and pointing fingers over who actually ordered the strikes in the first place. Spencer Ackerman is a publisher of the indispensable Forever Wars newsletter, also author of the equally indispensable reign of terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump, and he joins me now. It's good to have you here. Let's talk first about, you know, I've had you on the program to talk about these strikes before. It's something we've covered in depth and you've been writing a lot about. And I've had some sense for much of it of like, I can't believe this is happening. This is so wildly illegal and messed up. What is it about the latest developments that seem to kind of kick this into a new gear, produced bipartisan concern, all that stuff? So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. What kicked it into full gear is that this latest revelation is that they conducted a double-tap strike on this boat, and once they had firm visual identification that there were survivors, they killed the survivors. That's a really bright line, unambiguous war crime. The double-edged sword part of it is that it risks obscuring what, you know, you had me on this show three months ago when these strikes started, and I said right then, this is murder on the high seas. Just because the double tap is so egregious, we shouldn't allow ourselves to essentially normalize these strikes that have killed 82, 83 people. And I think, yeah, there's two ways I think that this could go, right? One this gets cordoned off is like, this was the line. The other is that we start to actually have oversight of the entire operation. And on the entire operation, I mean, the just manifest pretextual nature of it. Absolutely. Inventive. And so if anyone thought, well, they really want to go out for drugs. Then amidst this, in the middle of the scandal, the president announces that he's pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president, convicted in a New York, in a trial on the federal government of drug trafficking, of saying he's going to shove the drugs up the gringo's nose of taking a million-dollar bribe from Al Chapo. I mean, this was like a very serious long case to build. In the midst of it, the guy who was basically running essentially a narco state. gets bailed out by Trump with a pardon released today from West Virginia while they're saying that this is, they have a causeless belly for war in Venezuela. Right. Well, as everyone knows, right-wing cocaine is good for you.

It's very clear to anyone even remotely paying attention that this isn't about drugs at all. They tried to overthrow Maduro in the first Trump administration. They had a failed coup there. That's what they're trying to do here. It so happens that the country Maduro rules over is sitting atop the greatest oil reserves in the world. This is pretextually... Sometimes they say that. Yeah. Sometimes they do. Sometimes their supporters say it pretty plainly. Sometimes those who advocate for this war, as we saw also when this happened a generation ago with Iraq, occasionally. The real reason kind of pokes its head in here. They are trying to start a war with Venezuela. They will settle for a coup overthrowing Maduro and then having American oil companies go in and exploit the oil wealth there. The note about cocaine also strikes me as relevant here. Because again, in the beginning, there was this thing they were doing that this was about fentanyl. And like, you know, there is a lot of fentanyl that comes to US. The fentanyl is incredibly deadly. The spike we've seen in overdoses has been horrific. It's, I mean, truly the numbers are just like head snapping. And then people started to point out, like, wait a second, that's not the route for fentanyl. It's not going to Trinidad and Tobago on some little boat. Now it's, I guess, about cocaine. But again, like, any time you poke at any of this, you can't make any sense of it. You can make sense of it in terms of understanding this is simply pretextual aggression. There is an agenda under... You know, there's an agenda unfolding here. It has nothing to do with protecting the American people from drugs. What is it now? 40 years of drug war has shown that this is just simply not how you address the scourge of drugs in the United States, and it's not going to do anything for the appetite of drugs in the United States. These are different problems. What's happening instead is that the United States military is engaged in... essentially three months of murder operations. One of two things will happen. Either that will stop, that will be stopped through political will and then actual criminal penalty, or this will be normalized. And this will happen again and again under ever more absurd pretexts until it happens here in the United States. And you will start seeing lethal military action on American soil against American citizens. I mean, and people have pointed out this logic, which again, in your excellent book when you talk about the war on terror, I mean, it's not an accident, they're using narco-terrorist, right? This is a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. And if they're terrorists, then we can do whatever we want. Now on the high seas, who knows later on. In terms of Admiral Bradley, we talk about, you know, how this will happen. I mean, I think everyone with any sense read that tweet from Pete Hegseth and was like, Admiral, call your lawyer. Because the degree to which they are so clearly going to try. to pin it solely on him, could not be more obvious. Absolutely. This is Hegesith's order. This is Trump's directive. Bradley wouldn't have done this on its own. However, we have to understand that the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command unambiguously committed a war crime. If anything, even in the neighborhood of what the Washington Post reported.

Bradley enthusiastically agreed to this. We are past a point of moral rot within the military, and frankly, within the special operations community in particular, because of how often... Throughout administration's Democratic and Republican in the war on terror, the Special Operations community was ordered to do precisely these sorts of missions. And you can clearly see this from the exact type of mission that this was, this was a double-tap drone strike. We've seen that again and again for 20 years normalized. It is only accordingly a small jump after that to start doing this against civilian boats in the middle of waters off Venezuela. Final question for you. The one shoe not to drop yet so far for me is Admiral Halsey, who is the commander of the Southern Command. Word came out that he was leaving. This was, and it seemed very clear just from the calendar. This has to have something to do with these strikes, which had been under Southern Command. The commander here was special operations, where they also thought was pretty notable. Yes, different chains of command, which Halsey would not have been in control. Exactly. It seems to me that Halsey... We're going to have to hear from Admiral Halsey at some point. Halsey's last day at Southcom is a week from Friday. He is the most important witness that this congressional investigation could call and that potential criminal investigations could call. Halsey would have been in the room as this happened. He would not necessarily have been in the chain, as we've apparently seen with this. But his voice and what he witnessed is crucial evidence going forward. Spencer Ackerman. Great to have you. Thank you. Still ahead. We're getting our first results in Tennessee and Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Be with me on the plan to take back the House. That's next.

All right, so we're starting to get some results in that special election in the 7th district in Tennessee. Now, it's a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points just last year. It is the deepest of red districts. It should be a cakewalk. You'll see now that Afton Bain right now is leading Matt Van Epps. That's the Democrat there on the left, Afton Bain, leading Matt Van Epps. Now, we should note, there's 37.5% in. And we just got a big vote dump from that blue panel you see up there at the top of the district. And that would be Davidson County, Davidson County, which is the most Democratic part of this district. It's a district sort of designed to be a Republican district. Take a bunch of votes from the Democratic voters around Nashville, which is Davidson, and sort of dilute them through the other counties around them, which are deep red. We have just gotten that, you see that dark blue Nashville. We just gotten some of those votes in. This is all very, very, very, very early, 37.5% in. It's going to come down a lot to what happens in Davidson, particularly in the Nashville area, and lower turnout, frankly, in some of the more exurban and rural areas in the district. But as you can see, at this point in the evening, you know, 35 minutes after poll closing, you have a... a race that is not called yet and is competitive in a district that's Trump plus 22, which says something about where things stand right now politically. And joining me now is House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Obviously, Congressman, it's too early to say anything definitively, but... What do you think about the run-up to this race, given the intensely unfavorable terrain it's being contested on for the Democratic Party and the amount of resources that the Republican Party put into it? Well, good evening, Chris, great to be with you. And I think intensely unfavorable terrain would be a very generous description of the hostility that the Democratic candidate faces deep in Trump country in the heart of Tennessee, right, a very red part of America, with Republicans, as you've pointed out, having spent millions of dollars to hold on to a seat. that Donald Trump just won by 22 points. So the fact that this is even a close race, potentially a single-digit race, whatever the outcome, in and of itself is extraordinary, and reinforces the point that Republicans are on the run because they've been complete and total failures, and the American people know it, and Democrats are continuing to lean in. to the fact that we want to solve real problems for the American people, drive down the high cost of living, deal with the affordability crisis, and certainly fix our broken health care system. I want to ask you about the health care system, but since you mentioned affordability, I want to play you what the president said about the word affordability, that it's a scam, I guess, concocted by Democrats. Take a lesson.

There's this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. You just say it. The word affordability is a Democrat scam. I imagine you disagree, but what do you mean by that word when you say it? Well, listen, Donald Trump's whole life is a scam. The Trump administration is a scam. And certainly the so-called House Republican majority is a scam. These people promised that they were going to lower costs on day one. Right? They provided the measuring stick. They made that promise to the American people. And of course, costs aren't going down. Costs are going up. The Trump tariffs are creating a crisis in affordability. Thousands of dollars in additional expense for everyday Americans in terms of goods and groceries. We know that housing costs are through the roof. Electricity bills are skyrocketing. And now, because of the Republican refusal. To extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, tens of millions of Americans are about to experience dramatically increased health care costs. And what does that mean? In some cases, $1,000 or $2,000 per month. And as you know, Chris, these are working class Americans. The average income around $63,000 per year. This will make health care unaffordable. People will be unable to see a doctor when they need one. there was some discussion about after the shutdown resolve, would there be some path forward on extending those subsidies? There's, I think, about 12 Republican members who are going to be in very competitive districts who all right now are looking at these results in Tennessee. I guarantee you, they have them up on their phone and they're looking at them right now, talking about, well, we need to. They wrote a letter to Mike Johnson. We've got to extend them. You see there, that's the latest there, Afton Bain up by 8 points with 41% in. We're going to keep our eyes on that. That seems to have petered now? Like, what is the status of that? Is there any motion on the House side, at least, to extend these subsidies? Well, on the House side, of course, House Democrats have introduced a discharge petition. We now have 213 signatures, which basically means we just need a handful of these House Republicans, these so-called moderate Republicans, who spent months claiming that as soon as the Trump shutdown ended. They were prepared to work together with us to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, but we've heard nothing from them over the last several weeks. And it appears that they just talked to talk but are unwilling to walk the walk. We're going to continue to keep the pressure on them because the clock is ticking, and it's a very real crisis that the American people are going to face. And as you know, The majority of states that will be most adversely impacted are Republican-run states. We're talking about states like West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi, and Tennessee, it turns out, that will be impacted if Republicans refuse to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. And so...

You know, we'll see some action potentially in the Senate next week. We're going to continue to press the case to force an up or down vote on a straight three-year extension in the House. And we're in this fight until we win this fight on behalf of the American people. I want to ask you about the story we were covering in the earlier blocks, the reporting about that second strike on the survivors of an initial strike of a boat in the Caribbean. What do you want to see? The Senate has talked about conducting oversight, including Roger Wicker, who's the chair of armed services there. There's been a few Republican House members who have expressed their misgivings are concerned. What do you think should be happening in the House? Well, Chairman Mike Rogers of the Armed Services Committee in the House has jointly indicated with Adam Smith, the once and future chairman of the Armed Services Committee on the Democratic side, that there will be a investigation into potential illegality as it relates to the strikes that were ordered that clearly the so-called Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history. had knowledge of and was a part of. And that investigation is going to reveal some interesting things. It's clear that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are trying to throw the admiral under the bus. And, you know, we're not going to allow them to get away from that. It's a cowardly act. And we're going to follow this investigation as far as it needs to go. And hopefully our Republican colleagues won't continue to behave like... you know, sick offense, and we'll start acting like a separate and co-equal branch of government to serve as a check and balance on an out-of-control secretary of defense and an out-of-control executive branch. Do you agree with those who have said if the facts as reported, and it seems to me now basically uncontested about that second strike or true, it is a war crime? Yeah, if the facts appear to be as has been presented, I think there's no doubt that it's a war crime. It's a violation of U.S. law and a violation of international law at the same time. And there's got to be serious consequences for all involved. House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. Still to come as Donald Trump's cabinet members trip over themselves to lavish him with praise. Why was the president having such, such a hard time keeping his eyes open? Next. There's only one notes and pick. Oh. Hello, I'm Ozempic. Because this ad is 30 seconds, I can't get into everything I'm FDA-approved to do, so I'm just going to play my jingle again. But first, ask your doctor about which FDA-approved uses of me, the Ozempic, may be right for you. Call 1833 Ozemp or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic, semaglite injection, two milligrams. Only Novo Nordisk makes FDA-approved Ozempic. Now here's that jingle again. There's only one OZMPIC.

You better eat your Wheaties today because there's a lot of news to cover. Money. Time for the business. All eyes on the new Fed chair. The economic fallout from the war. Is it temporary power? The president is now a major crypto industry operator. Is this White House for sale? Politics. Is there an energy to respond to this aggressive gerrymandering? It has never been more important to be informed and engaged. Money power politics with Stephanie Rule. Weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern on MS now. We're continuing to follow the returns from that special election in the 7th District of Tennessee, where Democrat Afton Bain is now leading the Republican candidate Matt Van Epps. Now, I want to caution here, we've got 43% of the vote in more or less. There's still a lot of vote outstanding, particularly in areas. Most of the district is incredibly Republican. There is one county in the district that is Democratic. That's Davidson County where Nashville is. Bain will have to massively overperform there in order to... manage to sort of pull this out. It's unclear whether those are the number she has so far. But as you can see, she's up by four points now. Still more than half the vote out. It is not, I guess, what you could say at this point, a cakewalk, an obvious enormous victory for Matt Van Epps. The fact that Bain is even in this at this point is going to send chills up the spines of... I think probably dozens of Republican incumbents who are in districts that are way, way, way harder to defend than the 7th District of Tennessee. So we're going to keep watching that. Meanwhile today, Donald, and I want to bring in Claire McCaskill and Jeremy Corbyn Trent, Claire McCaskill, of course, who served at Center of Missouri, Jeremy Corbyn Trent, who was a Democratic operative from Tennessee. He was also one of the... original spokespeople for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Jeremy Corbyn, as a native Tennessean, let me ask you what you think of what we're seeing out of the election so far. You know, if something like this could happen in Tennessee, it can happen all across the country. I mean, for me, you know, I was... Single digits was going to be a huge win. If she closed the gap from 22 to single digits, that tells you that it's a different playing field out there for Democrats across this country in 2026. And if she closes it to five, I mean, you know, I think that is even more massive, obviously. I mean, if she does like an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and pulls off the unwinnable, then I think that really sends a message not only about what Democrats are capable of across the country. but then also what progressive Democrats are capable of, that's, I think, going to be the real lesson to learn from this year. This was not a, you know, an Abigail Spanberger, middle of the road. You know, this is not a Joe Manchin's, the only one that can win West Virginia. This is an actual, you know, old school Tennessee Democrat, you know, from back of my grandpa. This is like a Democrat like my papal would tell me about. I would love to see that Democratic Party be reborn, the one that I grew up hearing about and being proud of. It'd be great. Claire, you were there in the Senate, I think, when Scott Brown won that special for Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s own seat. And I remember being in Washington a day and just, I mean, obviously that was an actual victory. It wasn't just, well, we've narrowed the margin. But just.

professional politicians are going to look at these returns and they're going to index them against their own district to what Jeremy Corbyn was saying about what does the national environment look like and what does my district look like and what does that mean for my future, right? Oh, no question about it. And I'll tell you what keeps running through my mind is their whole redistricting strategy. keep in mind their whole redistricting strategy was they were going to do to every state what they did in tennessee and that is they split nashville up the major blue area of tennessee they split it in three districts and just swarmed it with rural red districts that's what they've done they've tried to do all over the country so and a lot of the ones they've drawn it's trump plus ten trump plus eleven So I'll tell you who's really worried right now are the people who have been redrawn into districts where they've had to give up five or six performance points in order to grab another district for the Republicans in places like Texas. Really, this whole redistricting thing is blowing up in their faces. And I don't, I've looked at all the data. I think she's going to come way closer than any Democrat has a right to there. But I do think it says a whole lot about Donald Trump right now. It says a whole lot about his failure and hats off to the Democrats versus messaging discipline on health care costs. Yeah, Jeremy Corbyn, let me ask you this. We've seen the beginnings of Republicans kind of turning against Trump a little bit. It happened with Epstein, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's in Georgia announcing that she's going to be leaving abruptly. We're seeing a little bit of signaling happening from Republicans on the boat strikes in the Senate and the House. How important do you think it is to the sort of political perceptions if Trump is actually getting criticism from within validated voices that people might be listening to in a district like Tennessee 7? I mean, if it's coming from within side MAGA, right? So obviously Marjorie Taylor Greene was that. Then I think it definitely breaks through more than if it's coming from, you know, what people would dismiss as the Republican sort of, you know, Uniparty. Right. So there was a very much an anti-establishment current running through MAGA. And it made sort of Donald Trump invincible to criticism from the, you know, the Jeb Bushes and those. Right. old school voices of the Republican Party. And I think if you start seeing more and more of the people that he brought along and uplifted in the voices that he raised turning on him or at least even criticizing him slightly, then yeah, it's definitely going to make a difference. But I think what's making a difference is people assumed that jobs would start coming back. They assumed that prices would go down.

You know, this to me is the same thing that people asked for when they voted for Obama. It's the same thing they asked for when they voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries. I think the American people have been asking for a very, very long time to please make our lives more livable. Please make our country more affordable, more equitable, and hold people accountable. And the problem is, is that each time they keep getting who-dood. Now, this time they got who-dood by Trump. You know, we've been who-dood by Democrats, too. Fara, do you think this sort of laser focus on health care and on affordability, do you think that ends up being the kind of key consistent theme through the year here as you start seeing candidates run in these primaries? There's going to be a lot of contested primaries and in these seats. Yeah, here's the thing. The one thing Trump can't do is he can't tell people that they're not hurting, that it's a hoax. The idea that he sits in that cabinet room and says affordability is a hoax, folks who are trying to make it come out even at the end of the month, folks that are scrambling to try to see if they can afford their rent or their medicine or even put food on the table, they know. that it is a problem. They know they're on the short end of the stick. And Trump can't do anything with his line to change how they feel. That's why this issue is going to be so powerful next year. That's why Democrats are going to have the advantage. Before you go, I just want to note that you will see that Matt Van Epps has moved ahead with 55% of the vote reported, just so people understand the dynamics here. Basically... Any vote that's coming in from any county that's not Davidson or maybe Montgomery is going to benefit Epps. We've had one big vote dump from Davidson. There's still a lot of vote out at Davidson, which is the national area. So it's going to be this sort of back and forth between any vote coming in getting reported from those other counties there that you see in red. They're going to increase Van Epps vote totals relatively when we get the next big Davidson vote dump. That will give us a clearer sense of when things stand. Jeremy Corbyn Trent, Claire McCaskill. Thanks so much for joining me. We'll be right back. Thanks for having me. We're going to have lots more coverage at MS now for updates on this Tennessee special election. That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.com slash all on with Chris. There's a pill version of Ozmpic. Hello, I'm Ozempic. And I'm other GLP ones, kind of like him. Hey, did I hear there's a pill version of Ozempic? Yep, you sure did. Ask your doctor about which FDA approved uses of the OZempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1833 Ozemp or visit OZempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about OZempic somaglite tablets, 9 milligrams. And OZempic somaglite injection, 2 milligrams. There's a pill version of those in pink.