They Won’t Show You the Tape

210 dead. Zero names. Zero evidence. And a buried video the government will do anything except let you watch. Today we do the math nobody else will.

Author’s Note:

Paid subscribers received this article at 7:00 a.m. this morning.

Normally, pieces like this remain behind the paywall. That’s one of the benefits of supporting this work.

But…after sitting with it for a few hours, I made a different decision.

I want as many people as possible to read this one.

Because this isn’t just another political story.

It’s a story about evidence.

It’s a story about accountability.

And…it’s a story…about what happens when governments ask citizens to accept extraordinary claims…while providing remarkably little proof.

So today, I’m opening it up to everyone.

Share it.

Forward it.

Post it.

The more people who see it, the better.

210 dead.

Zero names.

Zero evidence.

And…a buried video the government seems willing to do almost anything except let the public watch.

Today we’re going to do the math nobody else will.

They Won’t Show You the Tape

210 dead. Zero names. Zero evidence. And a buried video the government will do anything except let you watch. Today we do the math nobody else will.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #942: Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026.

Let me start with a number.

Two hundred and ten.

That’s how many human beings the United States military has killed since early September. Not in a war anybody declared. Not on a battlefield anybody can point to.On boats. Small ones. In the open ocean.

Two hundred and ten.

Now let me hand you a second number.

Zero.

That’s how many of them have been publicly named…by the government that killed them.

That’s how much hard evidence has been shown that a single one of those boats carried a single gram of anything illegal. That’s how many of these strikes you…the citizen footing the bill… have been allowed to watch from start to finish, unedited.

Two hundred and ten dead. Zero shown.

I want you to sit in the space between those two numbers. Because that space…is the whole story. And almost nobody in this country is doing the arithmetic.

So today, we do it.

First, the Magic Words

Every good con needs a phrase. A few words you can say that make the mark stop asking questions.

The administration’s phrase is “narco-terrorists.”

Beautiful piece of work, that phrase. Say it…and a picture snaps into your head before you’ve drawn a breath; tattoos, gold-plated pistols, a cartel kingpin carving up a speedboat full of poison aimed straight at your kid’s middle school.

Say it, and the killing stops sounding like killing.

It starts sounding like cleaning.

That’s the entire job of the phrase. It is not a description of who died. It is a permission slip for not caring that they did.

And…here’s the tell. A real description invites you to look closer. A permission slip needs you not to. Watch which one this is.

What Happened When Somebody Actually Looked

Reporters did the thing the Pentagon is praying you never do.

They went and found the names.

A cross-border alliance of journalists…coordinated out of Latin America…with forensic help from a UK conflict-monitoring group…ran an investigation they titled, roughly, Bombed, Without the Right to a Defense.

They went to the poorest coastal towns in the hemisphere. They interviewed the families. They named the dead.

And the picture they built…is not the picture in the phrase.

The people on those boats turned out to be, over and over…the poorest and least important men in the chain. Day laborers.

Guys taking a one-time job on the water …because there was no other work in a town where nearly everyone’s been classified “food insecure.” Some had loose…survival-level ties to the trade. Others had no connection at all.

The Associated Press did its own version. Went to the stretch of Venezuelan coast some of the boats left from. Identified men who’d been killed. Talked to the people who buried them.

You know what the AP found those “narco-terrorists” were paid?

Around five hundred dollars a trip.

Five hundred dollars. That’s not a kingpin’s cut. That’s a deckhand’s wage. That’s a man so far down the ladder he’s standing in the water that gets his Fruit of the Looms wet.

The British paper that first put names to the dead reached the same conclusion months earlier: no evidence of trafficking involvement among the men they identified…almost all of them from poor families, many of them…by the accounts of governments and grieving relatives…simply fishermen.

Fishermen.

Read that word slowly…because the government would very much prefer you read it fast…and move on.

The most powerful military in human history has been pointing missiles at men in small boats…calling them terrorists…refusing to prove it…and when independent reporters finally checked the names, the “terrorists” kept turning out to be the guys mending nets.

Now Here’s the Part That Should Stop Your Heart Cold

Go back to the very first strike. September 2nd.

They hit a boat. People died. But not everyone. Two men survived the blast and ended up in the water…wounded…clinging to what was left of the wreckage…going absolutely nowhere.

And then there was a second strike.

The survivors were killed.

I want to be careful and precise here, because the precise version is the one that can’t be waved away. The White House has confirmed there were two strikes.

A source told PBS the military knew there were survivors in the water when the second one came.

The Washington Post reported the second strike followed a two-word verbal order from the Secretary of War himself: kill everybody. The administration flatly denies he said it.

Fine. Let them deny the quote.

Here is what nobody is denying: men survived the first hit. They were alive…in the open ocean…no threat to anyone. And a follow-up strike finished them off.

A former Secretary of Defense…a man who once sat in the exact chair Pete Hegseth sits in now…looked at that and used the words “war crime.”

Legal scholars said the killing of helpless survivors would be illegal under any framework you choose, war or no war.

Time reported experts believe Hegseth himself could be exposed…under the military justice code…or the War Crimes Act of 1996. And the United Nations’ own legal experts have a phrase for it too, and theirs isn’t as friendly as “narco-terrorist.”

Theirs is “extrajudicial executions.”

These are not protesters with poster board. These are the people who write the rules of war saying, on the record…that the rules got broken.

So Naturally, There’s an Easy Way Out

Think about it from the government’s side for a second.

You’ve got two hundred and ten bodies. You’ve got a war-crime accusation from a former Defense Secretary. You’ve got the UN using the word “executions.” You’ve got a country slowly starting to turn its head and squint.

And you are holding the one thing that could make all of it disappear in an afternoon.

The tape.

Release the unedited video of that first strike. Show the boat. Show the cargo. Show the drugs that supposedly justified all of this. Show that the men you killed were exactly who you swore they were. Lay it on the table and watch every accusation die on the spot.

They won’t.

Last Thursday, senators…Democrats and some Republicans…stood up and demanded precisely that: the unedited footage.

The Pentagon said no. Wouldn’t release the tape. Won’t name the dead. Won’t produce the drugs. Has been releasing only short, tidy clips…boat speeding along…boat erupting in flames…roll credits…and nothing of what came before or after.

Now stop…and feel that in your gut, because your gut already knows the answer.

The innocent man does not hide the security footage.

The man with nothing to hide sprints to the camera. He can’t get it in front of you fast enough. The only human being who buries the tape…is the one who already knows what’s on it.

That is not a left-wing observation or a right-wing observation. That is just how people work…and you’ve known it since you were nine years old and watched somebody’s story fall apart.

“But Isn’t This Old News?”

I can hear it, because it’s a smart question and most people never even think to ask it.

So let me answer it straight.

The scandal is old. The truth is not. And confusing the two is exactly the mistake you’re being counted on to make.

The strikes never stopped. There were fresh ones just last week…June 18th, June 21st …each killing people…each leaving survivors bobbing in the water for the Coast Guard to chase down.

The death toll crossed two hundred while the country was looking at something shinier.

The Inspector General’s review is still open…though, notice…it’s only examining whether the military followed its own targeting checklist, not whether any of it was legal. The tape is still buried. The names are still secret.

Here’s the mechanism, and a reader of this very newsletter named it perfectly just last week: when a fresh outrage detonates every eighteen hours…the last one never gets to finish.

It doesn’t deepen into meaning. It dissolves. And…the people with the most to hide are precisely the ones who profit from a public…that can’t hold a single thought across a single week.

So, no. You are not late to this story.

Everyone else is just early to forgetting it.

That’s the gap. Stand in it.

The Lie Underneath the Lie

Here’s the foundation the whole thing is built on, and it’s rotten.

We’re told this is about saving American lives from drugs. Fentanyl. Overdoses. Trump has claimed some of these boats were “loaded up with mostly fentanyl,” that each destroyed vessel saved tens of thousands of American lives.

There’s a problem with that. A big one.

The fentanyl killing Americans doesn’t come up the ocean on fast boats from South America. It comes overland. Through Mexico.

Cooked from chemicals shipped in from China and India. Every serious counter-narcotics expert knows this.

The boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific carry cocaine, not fentanyl. So the central justification…we’re stopping the fentanyl…collides head-on with the geography.

And…the other claim, that interdiction “doesn’t work” so we had to start blowing boats out of the water?

In 2024…the last year before all this…the U.S. Coast Guard set a record for cocaine seizures. Hundreds of metric tons. Caught, not cremated. Crews arrested, not executed.Evidence preserved, prosecutions possible.

Even the analysts tracking the drug flow say the same thing the seizure numbers say: conventional interdiction stops more cocaine than the missiles do. The boat strikes have rearranged some routes and killed a couple hundred poor men. They have not meaningfully dented the supply.

So…if it’s not stopping the fentanyl…and it’s not even the most effective way to stop the cocaine…what is it for?

That’s the question. And the fact that the administration would rather scream “fake news” at honest reporters than answer it…the fact that they’ll do anything on God’s green earth except…show you thirty seconds of unedited videotape…tells you they already know you wouldn’t like the answer.

What This Actually Is, With the Magic Words Removed

Strip out the phrase. Strip out “narco-terrorist” and “kinetic strike” and “armed conflict with the cartels.” Strip out every word that was engineered to keep you from picturing the thing itself.

Here’s the bare sentence that’s left:

A government is killing people it will not name…for crimes it will not prove…on the word of officials who will not show their evidence…finishing the wounded survivors in the water…and refusing to release the footage.

That’s it. That’s the whole machine…with the paint scraped off.

And the most dangerous part…isn’t even the killing. It’s the precedent…the quiet establishment of a rule that the government may declare a category of human being… refuse to define it…refuse to prove anyone belongs to it…and execute them at sea with no trial…no name…no tape…and no consequence.

Today the category is “narco-terrorist.” A SOUTHCOM spokesman has already widened it to include their “enablers” …a word a legal expert flagged as having no lawful limit at all.

Categories like that never shrink. They only grow. And the machinery built to kill the people outside the tent…has a funny way of still being there…fully assembled…the day the people running it decide the real problem is somebody inside it.

That’s why this isn’t a story about boats. It’s a story about whether evidence still gets a vote in who lives and who dies…or….whether a phrase and a missile are now enough.

The Bottom Line

Two hundred and ten dead.

No names. No evidence. No tape. Survivors finished in the water. Fishermen and five-hundred-dollar deckhands…by the only independent count anybody bothered to make.

And a government betting…betting the house…that the news cycle moves too fast for you to add it up before the next shiny thing comes along.

Prove them wrong. Don’t let this one dissolve. Remember the number. Remember the buried tape. Remember the word the United Nations used. Remember that the people who did this are counting, specifically and strategically…on your forgetting by Thursday.

Because reality doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t watch cable news. It doesn’t care what you believe or what phrase they wrapped it in.

It just waits.

And…eventually…it always, always shows everyone who was right.

BONUS: A Field Guide to the Magic Words

You’re going to be lied to again this week. Probably before lunch. So here’s a small gift: the four phrases to watch for…and what each one is really doing. Tape this to the inside of your skull.

“Narco-terrorist.” Translation: a person we have decided not to prove anything about. The word does the convicting so a courtroom doesn’t have to. When you can’t see the evidence, the label is the verdict…and that’s backwards.

“Kinetic strike.” Translation: we killed somebody and would rather you pictured a physics diagram than a body. Whenever a word makes a violent thing sound like an engineering term, somebody’s hoping you’ll feel less.

“Armed conflict with the cartels.” Translation: we’d like wartime powers without a war Congress ever voted on. The word “war” unlocks a whole cabinet of authorities. Notice who reaches for it…and notice that nobody asked you.

“Enablers.” Translation: the category is now whoever we say it is. This is the most dangerous word on the list…because it has no edge. “Terrorist” at least pretends to have a definition. “Enabler” is a door left deliberately open…and a door that opens that wide was built to let a lot of people through.

The rule that ties them all together: when the language is working overtime…it’s because the facts can’t pull the weight. Strong cases use plain words. They don’t need the fog. The moment the vocabulary gets fancy…reach for your wallet…or… in this case, reach for the tape.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S.

Here’s the thing about a buried tape. It doesn’t stay buried because the truth on it is small. Nobody fights this hard…burns this much credibility…and stiff-arms members of their own party…over thirty seconds of footage that helps their case.

People bury the tape for exactly one reason: what’s on it is worse than the accusation. Always has been. The cover-up is a confession with better lighting.

So…when they finally do show you something…and they will…eventually…when the pressure gets unbearable…watch closely for what’s been trimmed. The edit is the evidence.

Sources

• U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat kills 2, leaves 6 survivors in the eastern Pacific— NBC News / AP, June 21, 2026.

• U.S. kills 3 on alleged drug boat as senators demand to see unedited video of strikes — CBC News / AP, June 19, 2026.

• U.S. strike on an alleged drug boat kills 3 in the eastern Pacific Ocean — NPR, June 19, 2026.

• What to know about U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats — NPR, June 2, 2026. (Coast Guard seizure record; fentanyl-via-Mexico; AP’s $500-a-trip findings.)

• White House confirms U.S. fired twice at alleged drug boat — PBS NewsHour. (Second strike on survivors; “kill everybody” reporting and the administration’s denial.)

• Major investigation names 20 victims of U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats — Airwars / CLIP alliance, May 2026. (”Enablers” expansion; day-laborer profiles; stalled local investigations.)

• Timeline of U.S. strikes against alleged drug boats — InSight Crime. (Effectiveness analysis; Tren de Aragua trafficking claims; fentanyl geography.)

• United States strikes on alleged drug traffickers during Operation Southern Spear— Wikipedia (overview, casualty tally, international reaction, legal analysis). Use as a map to primary sources, not as a citation itself.

A note on care: the “kill everybody” order is the Washington Post’s reporting and is denied by the White House…it’s presented here as a serious allegation, not a settled fact. “War crime” and “extrajudicial executions” are the words of a former Defense Secretary, legal scholars, and UN experts, not a court ruling. No one has been charged. The precise version of this story is damning enough; it doesn’t need to be overstated to land.