A few months back there was a funny and wonderful story that illustrated just how fragile Pete Hegseth’s undeserved, unearned authority really is, and the degree to which everybody in power in the military understands that he is temporary.
CNN reported that Hegseth had recently boarded a naval ship and was furious to observe that nobody had been taking seriously the edicts handed down by He, The Secretary of Hairstyles. Lo and forsooth upon that ship he saw beardos and he saw weirdos. He saw an entire ship of people who heard all his prissy hairstyle regulations and promptly told them to pound sand. And why? Likely because the chain of command on that ship is more concerned about its men and women, and less concerned about the temper tantrums of the least qualified Defense secretary in American history, who they know is highly, incredibly temporary.
We were reminded of that story when we read this much more serious story in the New York Times that says that some military boards are flat-out ignoring Secretary Shitfaced and Donald Trump’s bigoted dumbass transgender bans.
The Times remind us that along with Hegseth’s “no beardos” and “no weirdos” proclamations, he has declared that the military would also have “no tr*nnies.” He set up boards to get rid of trans troops and everything. Alas:
The Pentagon had set up review boards at bases around the globe, manned by everyday uniformed service members with narrow orders that all but ensured that the trans troops appearing before them would be voted out.
But just steps from the auditorium where Mr. Hegseth spoke, at Marine Corps Base Quantico, boards assigned to carry out those orders were doing the opposite. Instead of firing trans Marines, the boards were voting to keep them.
The same was happening in the Navy: Boards given strict rules instructing them to force out sailors were rebelling and voting to let them stay.
You can’t “all but ensure” anything when they’ve already decided that the answer is Fuck Off, Secretary No Tab.
The Times makes clear that there have been 12 of these board votes with trans troops in the Navy and Marines. They voted to keep those troops nine times.
Now, to pour cold water on that good news, we should note that the boards for the Army and Air Force appear to be obeying Dear Leader and the belching red flag from Fox & Friends Weekend he chose to run the world’s most powerful military. The Times also notes that these decisions from these board are recommendations, not the final answer.
But it matters that the Navy and the Marines (which are technically part of the Navy) are telling him to eat shit.
“These boards are being told to do something that they know is wrong — to rubber-stamp a non-choice given to them by the administration,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and a professor at Southwestern Law School who has been tracking the cases. “We are seeing them say they’re not going to play that game. We are seeing them nullify a process they see as unjust.”
One of the Marines who had to go in front of one of these boards — and whom the board voted to keep — put it this way: “I was shocked at first, but when you come down to it, it makes sense. You have war fighters looking at war fighters. They see I’ve always done my job, I’ve deployed, I’ve mentored other Marines, followed the rules. They say, ‘Hey, this is a good Marine, why wouldn’t we retain him?’”
Those kinds of thought processes are way above the paygrade of the Christian Nationalist Secretary of Bigotry and Beard Maintenance.
The lawyer for many of these troops notes that there was a marked shift this summer in how these boards voted. She says the Army got started much earlier kicking out trans troops, back in February, that it’s held 50 boards, and voted to kick the servicemember out in 45 cases. The Air Force is six for six.
But then the Navy and Marines got started, and everything changed. One of her clients in the Army just won their case. She’s worried those in charge are going to notice.
Rachel VanLandingham, quoted above, suggests that “There’s been a chipping away at any kind of confidence that Hegseth actually cares about service members,” and adds that “I think that’s given the boards license.”
He’s temporary, they know he doesn’t know how to fight any war but a culture war, and perhaps they’ve heard that these MAGA losers are about to get their asses handed to them in the midterms, and that Pete Hegseth is the (hopefully!) new Democratic Congress’s first impeachment target.
About That Impeachment!
It was reported earlier this week that Democrats are raring to go on day one on Hegseth’s impeachment, we guess because you might as well start by kicking the weakest one while he’s down and work your way up from there. Reportedly current Pentagon officials are ready to “spill their guts” on what they know about him.
“There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to very quietly go to the chair of the armed [services] committee and are going to spill their guts, provide them with everything they can and leak everything they can,” said a well-connected source.
“It’ll be horrendous. It’ll be consistent embarrassment.”
“Hegseth has two huge problems,” said a former senior administration official. “Through his arrogance, he’s made many former allies willing to work with Democrats to hold his feet to the fire for all the damage he’s done to our military.”
That is what we like to hear, and it couldn’t be happening to a more deserving person.
Everybody hates him, and nobody who’s qualified to have an opinion thinks he deserves to be where he is.
He’s a bloodthirsty war criminal and an allegedly over-Botoxed dumbfuck with severe vanity and manhood issues. (No really, Zeteo reports he gets his Botox at the Defense Department’s Special Missions Auxiliary Clinic, which is a very manly way to go get your Botox constantly.) He’s driving the Pentagon into the ground; he’s lost the unnecessary Iran war in record time, but not without murdering over 100 little girls on the first day through his own vicious incompetence. He’s cleaned the Pentagon out of as many qualified people as he’s been able, because he’s a racist, sexist, homophobic holy warrior bigot whose sense of his own masculinity is threatened by non-white, non-straight, non-men who are clearly superior to him in every way.
And this is what he looks like doing pull-ups.
LOOK AT ALL THESE STORIES! YOU SHOULD RE-READ EVERY ONE!
It really is impossible to overstate how much Pete Hegseth has personally driven the military into the ground, with his humiliating testosterone crusades and his goddamned pathetic WARFIGHTER! shit and his firing of all the qualified people and replacing them with beardos and weirdos and goons like Newt Gingrich, Elon Musk, and Palmer Luckey. Also his new (acting) Army Secretary Adam Telle, whom Army staff is reportedly calling “Big Pussy,” because of how he’s never worn the uniform a day in his life.
Deus Ex Mommy Marsha Blackburn?
So it stands to reason that Pete would be angling to slide into another job he’s not qualified for, that of Tennessee Republican senator, so that he can hide from impeachment, hide from accountability, hide from having to force his true father Donald Trump into a position where he has to figuratively slap the shit out of his disappointing son in public like the story says Trump literally did with Don Jr. in college, by firing him.
Reports suggest that’s why Hegseth is all up Marsha Blackburn’s ass right now, following her around like a puppy dog to football games, hoping she’ll appoint him to her Senate seat if she wins the governorship next week. Secretary Shitfaced’s Pentagon spokespeople deny it, but they are brazen, pathological liars.
Is Marsha that stupid? OK, bad question. Is Marsha that politically stupid? And does Pete really think that would stop the humiliating revelations from coming out? Unclear. Obviously, Secretary Shitfaced becoming Senator Shitfaced would be awful for Tennessee, but we’re not sure it would be that much worse than Senator Marsha Blackburn becoming the governor. Plus, it would be fun to watch literally every Senate witness try to keep a straight face under “tough questioning” from Major Whiskeydick.
A new national poll commissioned by The Bulwark and Pablo Torre finds that only 28 percent of Americans think Hegseth is a good role model for men. In the 18-29 demo (you know, the age of young military recruits) that number slips to 18.
The only man who fared worse in the poll as a model of a strong American man was the guy whose balls Pete bathes every time he gets to sit next to Daddy in a Cabinet meeting.
Receiving top marks in that same poll? Barack Obama, who, when he’s not making Saddam Hussein at the Cheesecake Factory jokes about Donald Trump’s garish new money taste, is clowning on the loser Defense secretary.
Like so:
We’ll let that real man right there have the last word.
Best wishes to Pete or whatever, we’re sure it’ll all work out and he won’t end up in the Hague. Yet.
OPEN THREAD!
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I early voted today, got a ride from a friend to the polling place. There was a pretty good sized crowd there but they were well organized and it went smoothly. I think it took about 20 minutes to get through the line.
I took great joy in filling in the dots for Sherrod Brown and Dr. Amy Acton!
> to run the world’s most powerful military
Feels like the word "formerly" should fit in their somewhere