Franklin Commits Atrocities At Sea

Pete Hegseth drags beloved turtle into the culture wars.

We may never know if alcohol played a role in Pete Hegseth’s decision to tweet the image above of Franklin the Turtle firing shells at suspected drug smugglers as a reply to the growing consensus he’s become a full-blown war criminal for his new habit of blowing up boats in the Caribbean. Hopefully it’ll come up at his trial at the Hague.

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Even some Republicans are repulsed by reports of a second missile strike on two survivors clinging to the wreckage of their vessel sunk as a distraction from the Epstein Files for bringing wrongdrugs to America like a common president of Honduras. And dragging a globally adored kidlit character into it seems a choice someone allegedly on the wagon might not have made.

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The Franklin franchise figures around a young talking turtle who lives with furry friends in a village named Woodland hinted to be somewhere in Manitoba, where series creator Paulette Bourgeois was born. A more obvious pick for an origin story on the prairies might’ve been the pride of the city of Regina’s own Wade “Deadpool” Wilson, but it’s easy to see why the SecDef wouldn’t want to risk going to war with Marvel. Word is they have a Hulk.

Not that Kids Can Press saw the funny side of their trademarked material being used without permission by an alcoholic sex pest to laugh off summarily executing brown people on the high seas without evidence.

Even the trademark icon is about to be stepped on.

Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity. We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell disagrees, telling CBS News: “We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels … or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists.”

It’s worth pointing out the turtle wouldn’t have been hatched in the first place if it hadn’t been for the Department of Defense, if only in a roundabout way for the fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital made famous after the Korean War.

Bourgeois was watching an episode of M*A*S*H one night with her newborn daughter where a panicking Hawkeye revealed he’s claustrophobic and unable to hide out in a nearby cave during a bombardment. “If I were a turtle, I would be afraid of my own shell,” he confessed to Colonel Potter.

“It was one of those lightbulb moments,” Bourgeois said. “I remember looking down at this baby of mine and saying, ‘You know, Natalie, that’s a great idea for a story!’” Her debut Franklin in the Dark, illustrated by Brenda Clark, led to a series now including more than two dozen books translated into 38 languages along with the “Franklin and Friends” online juggernaut that’s presumably how the former Fox and Friends host first found the franchise. Dude seems the type to prefer his cartoon tortoises feistier, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Oogway from Kung-Fu Panda.

But it’s at least within the realm of possibility Whiskyleaks Pete, who so far hasn’t signalled anything other than utter incompetence, is playing four-dimensional chess, because the man who wrote Franklin’s theme song also happens to be famous for expressing the damage he’d do if he somehow ever got his hands on an RPG.

No, really.

Bruce Cockburn wrote his hit “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” after visiting refugee camps in Mexico in the early ‘80s and fantasizing about shooting down the Guatemalan military helicopters that were firing on indigenous Mayan children. Although the closing line about how “some son-of-a-bitch would die” is likely the only part of the song Hegseth remembers.

[CBC / CBS / Wonkette Bluesky]