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Pete Hegseth, the nation’s defense secretary, sparked a firestorm this week after sharing a doctored image of Franklin the Turtle as a battlefield caricature — a faux “Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists” cover showing the beloved children’s character firing on drug boats. He posted the image to social media with a flippant “For your Christmas wish list” caption, turning a symbol of childhood into a blunt statement that America will not cower while narco-traffickers flood our shores.
Senator Mark Kelly wasted no time blasting Hegseth as “not a serious person,” saying the meme was one more reason the defense secretary should be removed from office and deriding his behavior as embarrassing for someone in the national command authority. Kelly’s grandstanding is predictable from a Democratic senator who wants all the headlines and none of the hard choices that come with defending the Republic.
The Canadian publisher that owns Franklin, Kids Can Press, understandably objected to the violent, unauthorized use of a children’s icon and issued a sharp rebuke calling the image inconsistent with the character’s values of kindness and empathy. Publishers can protect their intellectual property and moral brand while the rest of us recognize that political theater on social media does not cancel the very real threats we face on the high seas.
This controversy isn’t taking place in a vacuum — it follows reporting on U.S. strikes against suspected drug-smuggling vessels that have produced serious questions about the conduct and consequences of those operations, including allegations that follow-up strikes killed survivors. Those grave reports deserve investigation, but the weaponization of outrage by partisans should not be mistaken for patriotism.
What most Americans care about is whether our leaders will stop the drugs, the cartels, and the violence pouring into our neighborhoods. The administration, and Secretary Hegseth in particular, have publicly said they back commanders taking action against narcotics networks that threaten our security — a tough stance that some pundits refuse to call anything but necessary.
So where is the consistency from Senator Kelly and his allies? Kelly himself has been loudly sparring with the Pentagon and demanding accountability while simultaneously mobilizing performative outrage for cameras — a posture that looks more like partisan scoring than sober statesmanship. If critics want to build credibility, they should do the hard work of litigating facts and following formal inquiries instead of picking fights over memes.
Hardworking Americans know the difference between a crude joke and a dereliction of duty. We can condemn sloppy taste without surrendering to the lawlessness that narco-terrorists and open-border ideologues cheer for. If defending the country means making enemies of smugglers and those who enable them, then give us leaders who are willing to act, not senators who prefer virtue-signaling headlines.
