Transcript: Trump Boat Bombings Darken as Official Suddenly Resigns

I actually did a little video today—to self-promote for the moment—talking about, you know, how Mike Johnson is effectively dissolving Congress and drawing a meme to the Star Wars line about how the Emperor has dissolved the Senate: “They will no longer be a worry for us. We are wiping away the last vestiges of the Republic.”

So we need to be worried about that, in my opinion.

Sargent: Well, to close this out, Congressman, is there more House Democrats can do? If you win the majority next year, what happens on this stuff since presumably Trump will continue with the illegal bombings? Do you defund the strikes? Do you impeach? What are the options?

Smith: All of those things are on the table—but just oversight as a starting point. Because let’s wrap up where we started, when you and I spoke earlier today, and that’s Karoline Leavitt’s press conference where she just lied about it.

And I think a lot of the American people are not paying attention to it. And to the extent they see, well, you know, the president said—they’re telling Congress they’ve been transparent—and then, you know, the Republicans who control Congress don’t say anything about that, don’t do anything about that.

If we were in charge of Congress, we could have hearings. We could actually exercise oversight and make it clearer to a wider swath of the American public what’s going on—and not so simply let the administration lie their way out of the authoritarian actions that they’re taking.

Sargent: Well, on that topic of oversight, I think it’s very likely that Trump is asking or commanding people to carry out illegal orders. Do House Democrats have a message to the people carrying out illegal orders for the president?

Smith: Yeah: Don’t. And I know it’s hard, but this has long been a cornerstone of the United States military, is you are not under any legal obligation or more to carry out an illegal order. And you can make that independent decision.

Sargent: And will those people be dragged before Congress and forced to testify about it under oath? Under a Democratic House?

Smith: That is, well—I don’t like your terminology, but we would suggest—and perhaps subpoena—and say we need to have a conversation about this for the sake of the Republic. So, yeah, no, I think we can do that.

And I think that’s why this Admiral Holsey story is so important. And I don’t know what’s going to come out in the next couple of days, but, like I said, the odds that this didn’t have anything to do with the strikes going on in the Caribbean are pretty close to zero, in my opinion.

So, I want to hear more, either from Admiral Holsey or from others around him, about exactly what happened here. But, yeah, I mean, you’re not supposed to carry out an illegal order and an extrajudicial killing—that’s what we’re talking about here.

This is the president of the United States unilaterally deciding to kill people who pose no direct threat to the United States of America. That’s something that no one in the United States military should be part of.

Sargent: So will House Democrats on your committee solicit testimony from the Admiral and try to get Republicans to agree to do that?

Smith: Absolutely. We have repeatedly, on a whole series of issues, asked for hearings—back in the Signalgate days, you know—to exercise more oversight. We’ve been rebuffed, but we’ll continue to do that, and we’ll make our public statements about it as well.

Again, this is all a battle of trying to educate the American people—or, educate is the wrong word—of trying to grow our coalition of people who are concerned about Trump.

And one editorial comment on that: as Democrats, if we’re going to do that, we can’t take all 80-plus million people who voted for Trump and say that they’re ignorant, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, horrible, awful, terrible people. We need some of them. And I don’t happen to believe that they’re all of those things, either.

So we need to do outreach. We need to grow our coalition. And again, I’ll come back—there’s a lot of things as a Democrat, you want this, you want that. No Republican should want an authoritarian president who can take away your liberty here in the United States of America.

I think that gives us a chance. And a lot of Republicans aren’t going to want a war with Venezuela. So let’s grow our coalition.

Sargent: Right. I think there’s a big opening to do that. And that’s really well said. Just to be absolutely clear, your committee will request or even demand the testimony from the admiral who’s now stepping down and you will try to press Republicans to join you.

Smith: We will do that.

Sargent: Congressman Adam Smith, thank you so much for coming on with us. Really illuminating. We appreciate it.

Smith: Thanks, Greg. Appreciate the chance.