Claim:
Following reporting that the Department of Defense executed a likely illegal follow-up strike to kill survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug boat, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said in a December 2025 podcast episode that she’d want to see the survivors “killed in the water” and that “I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.”
Rating:
Context
Kelly prefaced her defense of the strikes by saying that “the armed forces should not commit war crimes.”
In December 2025, social media users widely shared a clip of Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host, talking on a podcast about a reported strike by the U.S. military on an alleged drug boat. One post on X (archived) said:
Megyn Kelly on alleged war crimes: “I really do kind of not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like [President Donald] Trump and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.”
The comment appeared to be in response to recent scrutiny of Hegseth over a report that the military carried out a likely illegal follow-up strike to kill survivors of an initial attack in the Caribbean.
Users also shared the quote on Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived).
The quote about seeing “them killed in the water” and suffering was correctly attributed to Kelly, who was commenting on reports that the Department of Defense carried out a follow-up strike on survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug boat.
Kelly discussed the reported strike on the Dec. 1, 2025, episode of her podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show.” The quote widely shared across social media came at about 37:17 in the YouTube video of the episode, as she spoke with commentator Mark Halperin.
The full context of Kelly’s quote, including the commentary on scrutiny around the strikes that the quote was a part of, was as followed (emphasis ours):
In any event, it’s like to me it’s kind of annoying to even debate it. I do think our soldiers and, you know, all armed forces should not commit war crimes. Definitely on team, don’t commit a war crime. But I also feel like I object to even the scrutiny of this event because it’s all manufactured. It’s only being done to retroactively justify this, you know, Seditious Six and their — that’s what Hegseth is calling them — and their video which was based on nothing. They’re just now digging. It’s a fishing expedition and it does feel a little, you know, Stalin’s right-hand man-eqsue like, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
That’s how it feels to me, so I’m really not that into it, nor do I really care that we’re killing the drug boat guys trying to kill my kids and yours right now by bringing their fentanyl to the United States to try to get our kids when they go to college with, you know, some drug in some moment of weakness where they think they’re taking a Xanax like what happened to poor Eric Bowling’s child, and instead it’s laced with fentanyl.
So, I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little — like I’m really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who 10 seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon had to be taken out in the water. I realize legally it may make a difference, but truly, Mark, this is a tough case to really gin up the sympathies of the American people.
Since September 2025, the Trump administration has carried out a number of strikes in South American waters of the Caribbean Sea against what it has alleged are drug-trafficking boats.
In late November, The Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave the order to “kill everybody” on a boat the military targeted in the strike in question in September. Once it became evident that two people had survived the initial strike, the commander of the operation “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions,” according to the Post.
Since then, Hegseth has acknowledged that U.S. armed forces carried out a follow-up strike on survivors of that initial strike, claiming it occurred due to the “fog of war.” Members of Congress have scrutinizedHegseth and his role in the reported strikes.
The Associated Press reported that several legal experts “believed the second strike violated peacetime laws and those governing armed conflict.” It also reported that the Department of Defense’s manual on the laws of armed conflict specifically cites striking survivors of a sunken ship as being illegal.
Under a subsection on the duty of individual members of the armed forces to refuse to comply with “clearly illegal orders” to commit war crimes, the manual at the time of the strikes said (Page 1088, emphasis ours): “The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
