Double-Amputee Marine Joey Jones Torches Hasan Piker for Laughing at Two Drowned Navy SEALs

Marine veteran Johnny “Joey” Jones, who lost both legs to an IED in Afghanistan, went after left-wing streamer Hasan Piker on Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show” for laughing about two Navy SEALs who drowned on a mission against Iranian weapons smuggling. Jones said that if Piker talked that way in front of a SEAL, he would get a beating, and that he deserved one.

The clip that set him off had been circulating on social media in late September 2026. In it, Piker jokes on a livestream about which SEALs actually have to swim, and laughs while describing the January 2024 deaths of Chief Special Warfare Operator Christopher J. Chambers, 37, and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Nathan Gage Ingram, 27, both of SEAL Team 3.

What Piker said

According to the Daily Wire, which transcribed the clip, Piker told his audience, “I think SEALs have to swim sometimes,” then described the two men as SEALs who “tripped and fell off the” ladder and “died and drowned in the Red Sea,” laughing as he said it, with a profanity in the middle. He followed with a crack about Navy SEALs only having to swim when they ride in an Osprey because the aircraft is going down. Then he added: “Well, they die anyway, but still.”

He did not even get the place right. The men were lost in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Somalia, not the Red Sea. But geography was never the point of the bit. The point was that two dead sailors were a punchline.

How the two SEALs actually died

The real story is the opposite of a joke. On the night of January 11, 2024, a SEAL team boarded an unflagged vessel off Somalia that was carrying Iranian-made weapons to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. According to Military Times’ account of the Navy’s investigation, a Defense Intelligence Agency report found the seized cargo included propulsion systems, guidance systems and warheads for medium-range ballistic missiles and antiship cruise missiles.

The team was working in 6- to 8-foot seas, and the ship’s rolling got worse as the boarding went on. Chambers slipped while climbing aboard and fell about 9 feet into the water. He caught a ladder rung but was swept under by a wave. Eleven seconds later, Ingram, on his first deployment according to the Daily Wire, jumped in after his teammate. Both men were weighed down by body armor, and Ingram was also carrying radio equipment.

Rear Adm. Michael DeVore, who led the investigation, found the deaths were preventable. He cited training gaps, unclear flotation guidance, and flotation gear that was not properly maintained or used. “Encumbered by the weight of each individual’s gear,” he wrote, neither the men’s strength nor their emergency flotation was enough to keep them at the surface. His summary of the whole event is hard to read: “The entire tragic event elapsed in just 47 seconds and two NSW warriors were lost to the sea.”

The search went on for 10 days. The water there is about 12,000 feet deep, and the two men were never recovered. The Daily Wire reports that the search covered 49,000 square nautical miles.

“That’s what he deserves”

Jones did not reach for nuance. “If he said anything like that in front of a Navy Seal, he’d get a bonafide a**-whooping,” he said on the show. “That’s what would happen. That’s what he deserves.”

You can argue about whether a TV host should talk about fists. What you can’t argue about is who has standing to say it. Jones enlisted in 2005 as a radio technician, deployed to Iraq in 2007 as a machine gunner, then became an explosive ordnance disposal technician. Military Times reports that in Afghanistan he disabled more than 85 IEDs before he stepped on one in August 2010 and lost both legs above the knee. The Daily Wire notes that the blast also killed fellow Marine Daniel Greer. Jones was medically retired, became a Fox News contributor in 2019, and now co-hosts “The Big Weekend Show.”

Then, in May 2026, he did something almost no one in his position does: he reenlisted. At a Pentagon Hall of Heroes ceremony held by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he rejoined the Marine Corps as a reservist. Of his earlier retirement, as quoted by the Marine Corps Reserve Association, he said “it was unfinished business,” and added, “The goal here is to open that door for anyone else that has something left to give.”

In a July 2025 speech, as quoted by the Daily Wire, Jones explained what he believes service means: “Patriotism is sacrifice.” He went on: “It is saying ‘I will give up all of my tomorrows for the chance that you may have one more.'” That is a fair description of what Nathan Ingram did when he went into the water after Christopher Chambers.

Why this matters beyond one streamer

Piker is not some fringe figure shouting into an empty room. He streams politics to a large, young audience on the left. When someone with that reach treats the deaths of two SEALs as comedy, he is telling a young audience that the people who stand between Iran’s missiles and their targets are a joke.

Two men went out at night, in rough seas, to stop Iranian weapons from reaching a terrorist militia. One fell. The other went in after him without hesitating. Neither came home.

Two SEALs gave everything to keep Iran’s missiles out of terrorist hands, and the only person laughing was a man who has never risked anything at all.

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