Was it a mistake to appoint a morning TV show host with various personal problems and a blasé attitude toward war crimes as secretary of defense? It is possible that Donald Trump may be having some second thoughts.

While the president and plenty of members of his administration seem to be willing to push the law to its limits and beyond, the personal consequences they are facing have been fairly limited so far.

In part, that’s because Trump has fired most inspectors general, his Department of Justice has become a purely political operation, and the GOP majority in Congress has so far shown no appetite to conduct any kind of oversight. As we have seen in the aftermath of Trump’s first presidency and his attempted coup, the system is just not set up to hold government officials to account.

Therefore, knowing that the risks to them personally are fairly low, the president and his team are doing a bunch of things of questionable legality, seeing if they can get away with them, and then waiting for the courts to sort things out.

But if allegations from a Washington Post report published this weekend turn out to be correct, that approach likely won’t work for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

According to the article, the former Fox News morning show host gave a spoken order to “kill everybody” on board of a ship that US authorities believed was carrying drugs.

This led to an attack on the vessel — the first of its kind — on September 2.

Trump himself published a video of that strike.

It’s important to point out that many legal experts believe that these operations in international waters are themselves illegal.

However, what set the first attack apart from the others, according to the article, is that two occupants of the boat survived the initial strike. Then, based on Hegseth’s order to kill everybody, Admiral Frank Bradley ordered a second strike on the defenseless targets.

If that turns out to be true, it’s tough to argue that this isn’t a war crime.

It’s important to note that this is playing out against the backdrop of a debate over a video in which six Democratic lawmakers who served in the military and the intelligence community reminded soldiers that they do not have to follow illegal orders.

This would be an example of that. But don’t just take our word for it.

Here is what DOD’s “Law of War Manual” says under the header “Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations”:

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.

In other words, this is the very example DOD uses to explain to members of the armed forces what constitutes an illegal order.

And, since Trump already published a clip of the attack, we know that there is drone footage out there showing exactly what happened.

Of course, that would require somebody to take an interest in the incident.

Well, guess what; this case is so egregious that Congress seems to have an appetite for getting to the bottom of it.

The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA), vowed to do just that.

“This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean,” the lawmakers said in a rare joint statement. “We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”

Their Senate colleagues also issued a similar statement.

That’s not good news for Hegseth, who issued a non-denial statement in response to the Washington Post story.

But if the allegations are true, which should be pretty easy to figure out if the “most transparent administration in history” simply makes the entire drone footage available, then his faux bravado won’t help the “secretary of war.”

Trump, who has a pretty good sense of when to distance himself from real trouble, seems to realize that.

Speaking to reporters on his way back from an extended weekend getaway to Florida, the president weighed in on the issue and left himself plenty of room to throw Hegseth under the bus if necessary.

“Number one, I don’t know that that happened, … and Pete said he did not even know what people were talking about,” Trump said, adding that he would look into it (which seems doubtful).

Then, however, came the key sentence.

“I wouldn’t have wanted that, the second strike,” the president stated. “The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. But Pete said that didn’t happen, the second strike.”

Trump added that he has “great confidence” in Hegseth.

That, however, may change if the report turns out to be accurate.