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Some Holiday Media Leftovers About Drug Boat Strikes, and Blaming Anything but a Shooter for an Attack

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Dec 01, 2025
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Given that we were off for the Thanksgiving stretch, we have a batch of media leftovers to serve up.

Artisanally-Crafted Narratives – WASHINGTON POST

  • Your exposé is just a little bit TOO on the nose.

As the press is running through a routine of one-week news cycles these days (remember when the Epstein emails were all the rage?), the latest outrage has been over some Democrats putting out a video imploring troops to ignore illegal orders. Small problem; these Dems had to admit there were no actual illegal orders they could cite, which made the entire intent of the video asinine and worthless.

Then in comes the Washington Post with a bailout story. The site claimed that, according to anonymous sources (naturally), there was an incident where a drug cartel boat had been struck, but there were survivors. Those, according to WaPo, were then killed by the U.S. military in a second strike. This would violate international law and would also serve as a prime example of what the Democrats were incapable of showing.

Small matter that Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell, the Department of War Press Office, and Secretary Hegseth himself came out to say the entire report was not accurate in any manner. Nah, just run with the anonymous sources accusing war crimes took place.

Low-Octane Gaslighting – CNN

  • We get that you want to slam him, yet you gave us the denial you said he ducked from giving…

The reliably flawed Pentagon correspondent Natasha Bertrand gives a quixotic dose of coverage on the drug boat flap. She claims that Secretary Hegseth is avoiding comment on the report from the Washington Post, and yet, she says so in response to his very post that calls the report "fraudulent."

Pre-Written Field Reports – MS NOW

  • Uniforms, Ken? They were killed for wearing uniforms?!

After word broke that a pair of National Guard troops were ambushed and shot in D.C., there was a familiar approach to the story in the press. There was very little in the way of exhaustive investigation into who this individual was, and that is a familiar tell.

Of course, we eventually learned this was an Afghan immigrant, and as such, it means the press focus had to be on anything but the shooter. And there was Ken Dilanian, exploring possible motives for this attack and straining to come up with a way to steer the focus onto the Trump administration.

News Avoidance Syndrome – ABC NEWS

  • Exploring for reasons while ignoring the details.

Aaron Katersky was certainly desperate to find a motivation for the shooting of two National Guard troops. Maybe "find" is the wrong word; "deflect" certainly feels more likely, as the newsman gives a speculative list of things that could have inspired this ambush attack, but he fails to explore one of the reported details of the attack.

That being the shooter was from Afghanistan and shouted "Allahu Akbar" during his assault.

Matching Media Memorandum – VARIOUS OUTLETS

  • You know, maybe Americans have a more valid reason to be concerned?

You truly have to wonder how so many in the press fail to recognize when they lapse into tropes that are long known to exist. Anytime there has been a violent attack instigated by a protected social group, the punchline is how that group will be looked at more sympathetically over projected possible backlash than the actual victims of the actual crime.

And yet, just like clockwork, after the Afghan attack on the National Guard troops, here came the press with their concerns that Afghan residents are now going to be fearful that they could become targets of…some sort of perceived negative reactions.

Border-Line Obsession – ABC NEWS

  • Not even co-eds on holiday break are safe from ICE detention efforts!

The network has the galling report of ICE officials crudely taking a college student into custody as she was about to fly home for Thanksgiving. We get the usual blather from a lawyer declaring how this was all overly aggressive and in violation of a court order that a federal judge issued to block her removal.

Far less important – based on the fact that the network did not include this until the final paragraph – was that this individual had a standing deportation order that was a decade old.