Sen. Tom Cotton let his imagination run wild as he offered a series of justifications for Pete Hegseth’s deadly strike on a suspected drug trafficking boat near Trinidad.

Cotton backed the defense secretary’s second strike on the two remaining survivors of the initial Sept. 2 attack, insisting they were “valid targets” because they were “not incapacitated.”

“They were sitting on that boat. They were clearly moving around on it,” Cotton said on Meet the Press Sunday,

“Maybe they were signaling to other drug cartels. At one point the guy takes off his t-shirt, maybe he was trying to get a sun tan,” he said of the actions of two initial survivors, who were then hit by a second missile.

The Arkansas senator disputed guidance in the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which suggeste

See Full Page