A kid’s book press had to tell Pete Hegseth to not depict their turtle committing murder.

If you’re a fan of Kids Can Press or Canadian writer Paulette Bourgeois’s Franklin the Turtle, you may have come across this statement on social media yesterday:

— Kids Can Press (@kidscanpress.bsky.social) 2025-12-01T23:18:59.601Z

Why is a kids book publisher “condemn[ing] any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image”? Who would imagine violence in the hands of a kind, child turtle whose adventures include returning a camera to its owner, learning to share with his little sister, and striving to find a gift that show his mom how much he cares?

The answer is Defense Secretary and whiskey-soaked action figure Pete Hegseth, who tweeted an AI generated cover for a fake Franklin book called “Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.” The cover features a cartoon image of Franklin wearing a helmet and flak jacket (under his shell, weirdly) while firing a rocket propelled grenade from the open door of a military helicopter. Below, boats filled with cargo and gunmen explode from the assault by a children’s character. Hegseth also tagged U.S. Southern Command in the post.

The impulse to post is always the first tool Trump and his hogmen reach for, and this post is part of a current scramble to contain the fallout from The Washington Post’s report that Hegseth gave the order to “kill everybody” on a boat the U.S. attacked in the Caribbean. It tends to be easiest to understand Trump’s goons as content creators and degenerate podcasters, so a spree of 83 murders and counting is just more grist for their posts. (And I’m sorry but these aren’t war crimes, they’re murders. We’re not at war in any real sense with any Latin American country, or drug dealers, or fisherman.)

So much of Hegseth’s post is fictional. This book will never exist, and the crimes it depicts might not even be accurate either. The U.S. has provided no compelling evidence or justification that these attacks are killing who they claim. We don’t really know who is on these boats, and a Times investigation determined that some of the identified victims seem to be innocent fishermen. We haven’t even been searching for survivors, but thankfully others have been searching for those who we’ve stranded at sea.

Posting something like this is obscene stuff, freak behavior that in any normal context would warrant an HR meeting or a call home from the principal. It also speaks to a profound loneliness and isolation. I almost pity Hegseth for having no one who can tell him that he shouldn’t post generated slop of a kids cartoon doing the same crimes he’s been accused of.

Hegseth and his co-conspirators don’t encounter resistance from any conscience when they act cruelly and inhumanely. But a publisher of books that enrich the lives of children does have values and a moral sense. I’m going to trust them more than a failed Fox News anchor.

Images from The New York Times and The Globe And Mail.