Pete Hegseth Is Trump's Choice For Siccing The Military On 'The Enemy Within' (AKA Americans)

You didn't think it was about his brains, did you?

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In typical Donald Trump fashion, the chaotic bullshit is already flying so fast it’s becoming difficult to keep up with the atrocities. And he’s not even president yet! But his nominees are so horrifying, so un-American, so democracy-ending, and every time people start getting aware of how evil and/or unqualified one of them is, he throws another one into the pool.

Matt Gaetz as attorney general? Russian lie-propaganda-spouting Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence? Vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his deranged brainworm for secretary of health and human services? Fuuuuuuck.

The horrific nominees Trump announced three days ago are already starting to feel like old news, but we need to talk some more about a couple of them, especially in context of the Christian nationalist fascist project to steal the United States by force, with Donald Trump as their King Cyrus.

Let's Meet J.D. Vance's Creepy Crawly Christian Fascist Friends!

There’s Mike Huckabee, who Trump has tapped as ambassador to Israel. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the other day that there’s “no greater supporter” of Israel than her father. Of course, Huckabee is a white conservative fundamentalist Christian, a former Southern Baptist preacher, who believes that the 1948 creation of Israel started the End Times hourglass running, and that one day very soon Jesus will come back and throw all the Jews who refuse to convert into a fiery eternal hell.

Seen in that light, it becomes obvious that fundamentalist Christians love Israel like pedophiles love children.

And of course, Huckabee doesn’t believe in a two-state solution, or that Palestinians even exist. “There really isn’t such a thing,” he has said. In 2008, he said the term was a “political tool to force land away from Israel.” He believes the West Bank should be annexed by Israel, and that moreover, the “West Bank” doesn’t exist either. He said he finds the term “offensive,” and that “we’re talking about Judea and Samaria!”

The extremist settler movement in Israel is jizzing itself over Huckabee’s appointment, naturally. (People who voted for Trump or Jill Stein instead of Kamala Harris over the Gaza war, in order to teach Democrats for being too nice to Israel, they just really nailed it, didn’t they?)

So that’s Huckabee.

But who I really want to talk about today is Trump Defense secretary nominee and weekend “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth. You want to talk about a dangerous freak you wouldn’t trust to protect your kids? You want to talk about somebody who is the absolute embodiment of the white conservative Christian fascist tantrum that’s holding the world hostage, and which is the focus of this newsletter?

Pete Hegseth is that guy.

Pete Hegseth Is The Conservative White Guy You Hated Most In College

Consider these words:

“The movement to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriages is strong and must be vigorously opposed. […] Homosexuals themselves should not be demonized; however, their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status.” 

“The New York Times recently announced that homosexual ‘marriage’ announcements would start appearing in its pages. Other regional papers have also followed suit. The basic logic is that if individuals love each other, and want to get married, then it is sufficiently newsworthy to warrant an announcement in the papers. (Last time we checked, homosexual marriage was illegal, but that’s beside the point.) The explanation sounds nice on the surface, but its logic is dangerous,” the column said. “At what point does the paper deem a ‘relationship’ unfit for publication? What if we ‘loved’ our sister and wanted to marry her? Or maybe two women at the same time? A 13-year-old? The family dog?” 

“Hey, boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral,” it said.

Talking Points Memo found those quotes from the Princeton Tory, a conservative magazine Hegseth wrote for, and for a time was the publisher of, when he went there.

Yes, Pete Hegseth is one of those white conservative guys who was booksmart enough to get into Princeton and Harvard, but while he was there he just became a stupider, more hardened bigot, a whinyass white conservative male grievance machine.

He was already whining back then in the Tory about “atheist public schools” and saying people were becoming terrorist sympathizers due to the “absence of a male disciplinary figure.” (Always with the daddy issues, white conservative men.)

He was already upset about diversity, which he felt detracted from “excellence” and “truth.” And he was extremely upset about homosexuality. The quotes above are from a feature called “The Rant,” which was actually unsigned, but it was pretty clear that he supported its anti-gay sentiments.

It’s also extremely clear that Pete Hegseth’s little brain hasn’t matured one iota in the 20 years since. If anything, he’s become more of a damaged white conservative Christian extremist.

And now Donald Trump wants him to run the military.

Pete Hegseth Is The Conservative White Guy You Hate The Most Right Now

I wrote this week at Wonkette about Hegseth, covering a lot of the important bases. (Especially the important fact that he looks like a Pepé Le Pew drag impersonator. He looks like an oil spill. Hey, did you know he doesn’t wash his hands, because he’s too stupid to believe in germs? Yeah.)

As I explained there:

“[W]oke” is Hegseth’s obsessive fuck-chicken. […] The military, the artist formerly known as the Boy Scouts, everything.

Hegseth is a really weird conservative Christian type, the kind whose identity is very wrapped up in feeling threatened by the spiritual warfare the Devil is waging on Good Christian Patriarchal Families like his own. (Obviously his own personal story involves a lot of adultery, because he’s That Guy.)

Comically, Hegseth wrote an entire book on the “betrayal” of our men in uniform, and how they were tricked into “going woke.” He was in the Army himself (he’d be upset if we didn’t mention) and he’s very, very, very triggered by things like this.

Know who really loves Hegseth? Those gross, performatively bearded “TheoBros,” the fascist white Christian man movement that also happens to idolize JD Vance. You know, in case you want to understand exactly who’s getting their anus tickled with this nomination.

As it happens, right around the same time I published this, Kiera Butler from Mother Jones published an excellent and deeply researched piece on Hegseth’s connections to the TheoBros and his perverted obsession with the Crusades.

And speaking of the adultery, you’re not gonna believe this, but news is breaking that Hegseth was also investigated in 2017 for alleged sexual assault. Does anyone really have true MAGA bona fides if they haven’t been?

The Washington Post has a good roundup on what an extremist little creep this guy is. He’s a veteran, but we don’t see anybody regaling us with stories about what a great or brilliant soldier he was. He wants to fire all the same military grownups Trump wants to fire — you know, the ones who say Trump is a fascist and a dictator wannabe. He specifically said last week on a weird conservative podcast hosted by former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan that he wants to fire the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown Jr. (Surprise, he doesn’t like a Black guy.)

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said, referring to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Any general, any admiral, whatever,” who was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs or “woke s---” has “got to go,” Hegseth said.

He says he wants to fire C.Q. Brown for “woke,” but to our trained ears it sounds more like Hegseth is saying he wants to him because he’s a Black guy who doesn’t know his place in Trump’s America. (That’s a link to a video of Brown talking about his experiences of race in military and how he felt after the George Floyd murder. You can see why a white MAGA man would be upset.)

Hegseth wrote a stupid fucking book called War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Surprise, it’s some whiny professional victim shit about “woke.” (In his statement announcing Hegseth, Trump said the book was about the “left-wing betrayal of our warriors, and how we must return our military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence.”)

Hegseth is very exercised about women in combat, though our strongest allies — even big tough Israel — allow women in combat. He’s cool with them being pilots, though!

More from WaPo:

Hegseth also has blamed the military’s current culture for its ongoing recruiting challenges and said personnel with views like his were routinely sidelined.

“We can no longer expect to win the wars our nation sends us to fight if the sniper fire is coming from inside our ranks, and straight from the front of our formations,” he wrote.

Jesus, the whining. Again, does this guy sound like he was particularly good at “military”? Do people who are really great at things end up with chips on their shoulders like that? Dunno, let’s ask Olympic swimming gold medalist Riley Gaines.

This loser thinks he’s Braveheart, sent by Jesus to save the military from “woke.” Fucking clown.

(By the way, in this clip he whines that he left the military after he was “deemed an extremist” because of the tattoo on his chest. Read more about Hegseth’s creepy, violent tattoos here. J.D. Vance, Trump’s deputy white Christian nationalist enforcer, is now getting in on defending Hegseth from the “anti-Christian” attacks on Hegseth’s extremist tattoos.)

Trump Didn’t Pick Hegseth Because He Cares About The Military

As I wrote at Wonkette this week, “Donald Trump despises the military and thinks people who give their lives for this country or are grievously injured in war are suckers and losers. Nominating Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense is just a demonstration of that belief.”

Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon isn’t about putting a qualified person in to manage the largest and most powerful military on the globe. This is about putting somebody in who has the same white masculine insecurity issues Tucker Carlson has, that J. D. Vance has, that Alex Jones has, that Tommy Tuberville has, that Trump himself has.

Watch Tucker Carlson rant about how the Covid vaccine was a conspiracy to root white, high-testosterone Christians out of the military. Then watch him rant some more about how girly Joe Biden made the military. Watch cornpone Alabama GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville jerk off while strumming his banjo while whining that the US military is weaker than it’s ever been because of diversity training.

That’s the context we’re in here, and the proper lens for looking at the Hegseth nomination.

These white Christian fascist men don’t understand why normal people now view them as mediocre and insignificant, now that the intelligent world has passed them by. They rage at the fact that nobody with any education, nobody who’s ever traveled further than the Walmart Supercenter in the next town, thinks they have anything to offer the world. So they have to seize the power back by force.

And for that, well, he’s probably the perfect nominee.

Trump Views Decent, Good Americans As The Enemy

Does anybody think Pete Hegseth would be a strong SecDef if America was attacked by an enemy from abroad? Hahahahahaha, that was hard to type with a straight face.

But remember who incoming Stupid Hitler Donald Trump views as the real “enemy within” — it’s American citizens. It’s elected Democrats who dare oppose Dear Leader. It’s the media. It’s ordinary citizens who mock him and loathe him, members of the giant majority of Americans who have never voted and would never vote for the man. Trump wants to use the military against Americans.

Has Trump found the perfect asslicking sycophant for that job? I’m not saying he hasn’t.

A lot of people have been making fun of the Hegseth pick, saying this is what happens when Trump tries to staff his administration while he watches TV. But Hegseth is actually more than some stupid son-of-a-bitch Trump saw on TV. He says Trump considered him to lead the VA for his last term, but he thought he was too young.

Mother Jones has a good piece detailing how Hegseth is the exact person Trump would want to implement Project 2025’s plans for the military. There’s the woke shit, of course — Hegseth once told Hugh Hewitt that “There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the 82nd Airborne. You’re going to need to go to guys in Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the country.” Isn’t he charming?

But it also talks about his broadcasts on “Fox & Friends” helped bring down a Biden initiative to root out white supremacists and other extremists from the military.

Hegseth wants to get rid of wokeness and trans people in the military, but he gets mad when you try to root out the white supremacists. Isn’t that basically the MAGA Nazi platform for everything?

He also appears not to like it when white conservative members of the military get convicted of war crimes for little things like murder, and directly intervened with Trump in 2019 to get several murderers pardoned.

Again, Trump wants to use the military against the American people. Do you trust that Pete Hegseth wouldn’t obey an unlawful order? You think this man has honor in him? LOL fuck off.

The internet is full of evidence of what a vile extremist douchebro Pete Hegseth is. Look at his creepy Instagram. Go to YouTube and go down a rabbithole of videos of Hegseth with the absolute most disgusting Christian nationalists in the country. He’s one of them. Wanna watch him circlejerk with Kirk Cameron for 20 minutes? Yes, freaking Kirk Cameron.

Watch the full podcast with Shawn Ryan (it’s below), where he spouts enough Russian propaganda about the war against Ukraine to make Vladimir Putin cream himself. “I’ve always felt like it was, from the beginning, like a couple days in, like this feels like Putin’s ‘give me my shit back’ war. It kinda feels like, I feel like you’ve been pushing pretty hard, and we used to have the former Soviet Union, and we were pretty proud of that, and Ukraine was a part of it, and all these other countries, and I want my shit back.”

That’s definitely Putin’s fake version of history. Pete Hegseth isn’t a bright enough boy to figure out that it’s bullshit.

That’s your entirely unqualified, thoroughly damaged sick fuck SecDef nominee, America.

And as much as everybody laughed at it on the first day, and despite all the articles about how freaked out the Pentagon is by the prospect of having such a barkfucking loser at its helm, we have a feeling the Republican Senate will roll over and die to confirm this one.

Call it a hunch.

Again, we doubt Hegseth would refuse an illegal order from traitor Trump, but anyone in the military who takes their oath seriously probably needs to start preparing themselves to do so if it becomes necessary.

Either that or they need to perfect Mel Brooks’s art of maliciously saying “Sir, yes sir!” and proceeding to ignore whatever the pissant little tyrant HEREBY ORDERS.

[Talking Points Memo / Washington Post]

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