What Next | A Textbook Example of an Unlawful Order

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just after the Trump administration threw a fit over a video reminding the military that they have an obligation to refuse unlawful orders, the Washington Post published reporting alleging the orders to blow up a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2 were in fact patently unlawful. Guest: Steven J. Lepper, retired Air Force major general and former deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Remember back in September when President Trump unilaterally decided to blow up a Venezuelan
0:11.8	boat and then posted a video of it?
0:18.3	Breaking news.
0:19.2	Brand new video you're looking at the moment that President Trump said the U.S.
0:22.3	military struck a suspected drug boat tied to the cartan. It was the first of many deadly strikes,
0:29.6	each accompanied by jarring images of vessels and American crosshairs.
0:35.1	Trump said 11 people, drug traffickers, he says, were killed in the strike in international
0:40.3	waters.
0:41.3	These black and white pictures were meant to look like evidence, proof.
0:46.3	Trump posted this video of the strike on social media and claimed the vessel was trafficking
0:51.3	narcotics.
0:53.3	But I always wonder what's left out of videos like these.
0:58.0	And over the holiday weekend, it seems we began to find out.
1:04.4	A report in the Washington Post alleged the administration's very first strike,
1:10.0	the one on September 2nd, didn't go as planned,
1:13.8	that two people survived, and that Americans returned to kill them. Someone who watched it all go down
1:21.2	reportedly called what happened horrifying. In the day since, others have described it as unlawful, even a war crime.
1:30.4	So I called up an expert to walk me through what we know.
1:34.9	Steve, can I call you, Steve?
1:36.1	How should I address you?
1:37.6	Should I address you as retired Major General?
1:39.5	No, just call me Steve.
	...

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