If you watched the clip circulating from CNN’s panel, you saw something the mainstream media won’t admit: a guest who had actually read the law and the reporting calmly dismantling the hysterical “war crimes” narrative while the host flailed for footing. Batya Ungar-Sargon pushed back hard on the framing, insisting that the key legal question is whether the burning vessel remained a lawful military target — not the performative moral outrage about survivors — and the exchange left Abby Phillip visibly on the defensive.
That discomfort is understandable once you read the underlying reporting that sparked the whole controversy: The Washington Post’s account suggested an order to leave no survivors after an initial strike, while the White House and the Pentagon have pushed back, saying Secretary Hegseth authorized strikes within his authority and did not personally give an instruction to execute survivors. Those are the competing narratives journalists should be parsing instead of screaming “war crime” before the facts are out.
The media’s rush to judgment also ignores the brutal reality lawmakers and military leaders have acknowledged: these operations were launched to stop criminal narco-networks that flood our communities with deadly fentanyl. The administration has publicly framed the strikes as lawful actions against designated narcoterrorist groups and has asserted legal cover for kinetic strikes in international waters when justified, a nuance the cable outrage machine is pretending not to understand.
Batya’s on-air point was simple and devastating to the bland, performative posturing from the left: if the boat retained military value — radios working, indicators of ongoing drug transfer or hostile intent — it remains a target; if not, that is a separate inquiry. That legal distinction matters, because equating every lethal targeting decision with a war crime without showing context is how you neuter commanders and surrender the fight to smugglers and cartels.
Conservatives aren’t arguing for no oversight — we want accountability and transparency — but we won’t sit quiet while the press convicts people in public and treats the rule of law as a slogan. Military law makes explicit distinctions about shipwrecked and incapacitated persons, and yes, those are serious legal issues that must be investigated; but the media’s joy at declaring a trial by cable before getting the facts is political theater, not journalism.
Meanwhile, Secretary Hegseth and others have defended the strikes as necessary and lawful, and notable figures on the right have emphasized the need to stop the poison heading into American towns. Democrats and their media allies have weaponized a single, messy episode into a moral cudgel to try to hobble a White House strategy that actually targets cartels rather than lecturing about them. If you want fewer dead Americans from overdoses and fewer narco-terrorist operations near our shores, you should want decisive action, not performative moralizing.
Dave Rubin’s show and others on the right rightly called out CNN’s selective outrage and highlighted Batya’s methodical takedown of the sloppy narrative, because honest debate requires wrestling with uncomfortable legal and tactical details instead of grandstanding. Americans deserve sober oversight, an honest accounting of the facts, and a media that stops treating political theater as the final verdict on matters of national security.
