Franklin the Turtle Becomes an AI Meme After Pete Hegseth Jokes About War Crimes

The Washington Post released a damning report over the holiday weekend that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been ordering the military to commit war crimes in the Caribbean. Hegseth responded by posting to X what appeared to be an AI-generated meme of the children’s book character Franklin shooting at people in boats. And now AI-generated Franklins have swamped social media, and they’re coming from both sides of the political aisle.

“For your Christmas wish list…†Hegseth wrote on X, with an image that showed the Franklin character firing from a helicopter at people in boats down below.

For your Christmas wish list… pic.twitter.com/pLXzg20SaL

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) December 1, 2025

The Franklin the Turtle books were written by Canadian author Paulette Bourgeois and illustrated by Brenda Clark, debuting in 1986. The character has also been adapted for TV movies and a series. In case it needs to be said: there is no book called “Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.â€

Hegseth’s use of the character is particularly disturbing when you look at the allegations surrounding what he’s actually done. The U.S. military has killed at least 80 people in 21 strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean since early September. President Donald Trump says they’re targeting drug dealers, which the American regime describes as “narcoterrorists.â€

But even if every single one of the people killed is a drug trafficker—and there’s serious doubt that they were—those people aren’t lawful combatants who can just be killed even if war had been properly declared. A Nov. 28 report from the Washington Post provided new details about the first of these strikes, on Sept. 2, which targeted 11 people and left two survivors clinging to a boat.

An unnamed source who spoke with the Post said the order from Hegseth was to “kill everyone,†so a second strike was ordered to murder the defenseless targets. The legal consensus seems to be that the first strike was only legal if the U.S. is properly at war, and the second strike is unlawful no matter what. You can’t kill people who are wounded and pose no threat to anyone. Those are war crimes.

The existence of survivors had previously been reported by The Intercept, but Hegseth’s order to kill everyone was not previously known to the public, and even some elected Republicans have called for an investigation. House and Senate committees have now launched inquiries. Trump himself was asked about the Sept. 2 incident on Sunday aboard Air Force One, and the president seemed to acknowledge that a second strike would be very problematic. But he insisted that Hegseth hadn’t given an order for a second strike.

“I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine,†said Trump.

The Washington Post spoke with several people within the military on the condition of anonymity, including at least one person who watched the killings in real time. “If the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were made public, people would be horrified, said one person who watched the live feed,†the Post quotes its source as saying.

Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense to ever serve in that role, is often combative on social media and clearly tried to lighten the mood about his potential crimes on X with this Franklin image. It’s unclear if he created the seemingly AI-generated image himself or if he found it somewhere else online. But it set off a wave of Turtle-based images from both left-wing critics and right-wing supporters.

Critics have created their own images showing Franklin at the Hague, where the International Criminal Court is based in the Netherlands.

https://t.co/mAAeuwSyNh pic.twitter.com/AUmUptdRyn

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) December 1, 2025

https://t.co/kqqaQ01NNH pic.twitter.com/XfBjpPsATd

— austerity is theft (@wideofthepost) December 1, 2025

Another fake book was titled “Franklin Learns About LOAC,†using the acronym for the Law of Armed Conflict.

https://t.co/JEDlWrOY1c pic.twitter.com/tjsEhzJ1X3

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) December 1, 2025

Hegseth supporters have also made their own Franklin memes. Some of the fake books include titles like “Franklin Defends the Border With Force†and “Franklin Questions Kentaji [sic] Brown’s Credentials.â€

Another fake book title called “Franklin Explains What Fauci Deserves†and included drawings of medieval torture devices. Right-wing extremists believe Anthony Fauci was somehow responsible for the covid-19 pandemic and is frequently the target of conspiracy theorists who want to harm him.

The new Franklin series is phenomenal: pic.twitter.com/4DeMG9JmFT

— Maverick Alexander (@MaverickDarby) December 1, 2025

Others animated the Franklin book covers, something that can be done just as quickly as creating 2D illustrations, thanks to AI software.

More like… 🔊 pic.twitter.com/7gijl9mToy

— Brick Suit (@Brick_Suit) December 1, 2025

The U.S. government’s pledge to target drug traffickers was made to look even more ridiculous over the Thanksgiving holiday when President Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would be pardoning Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras. Hernandez was convicted in a U.S. federal court for drug trafficking and has been serving a 45-year sentence for helping move over 400 tons of cocaine into the country.

Everyone seems to understand how serious the allegations against Hegseth are right now, with even some Republicans calling for investigations. But it remains to be seen whether the defense secretary will actually suffer any consequences. The Trump regime operates under a different standard than normal governments, and Hegseth paid no price for incidents like Signalgate, when he talked openly about highly sensitive military information while a journalist was present on the unencrypted chat.

But no matter how serious the charge, you can bet the internet will turn it into a meme. The weird part is that Hegseth himself is participating in the meme, something we’ve seen with other official government accounts like the Department of Homeland Security. Over the weekend, DHS posted a reaction meme showing the father character from the 1990s sitcom Dinosaurs.

https://t.co/NhEdvnUJ3H pic.twitter.com/moA5zbJXjo

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 29, 2025

The image has become a favorite on far-right social media to express amazement that extremist ideas were finally being adopted by the mainstream. And whether it’s anti-semitic slurs or Nazi dog-whistles, you can bet DHS will join in on the fun.

Honestly, the only thing that’s surprising about all of this is that DHS hasn’t yet made a Franklin meme. But it seems inevitable that we’ll see that sometime soon.