That Pete Hegseth holds a job that’s far above his paygrade is self-evident on a daily basis. That he isn’t fit to lick the dogshit off the shoes of any of the men and women he commands is a given. He doesn’t understand the institution, indeed holds it in disdain, just as much as his pathetic surrogate father Donald Trump does.
LIKE SO.
He thinks he cares about the military, which makes his stewardship of it even more of a joke. But the military he cares about is the one he’s invented in his booze-damaged brain, and he views that make-believe military as a plaything. It’s not the real military, the one that never considered him all that impressive. That military, the real one, is where Whiskeydick honed his instincts blaming everybody but himself for his own pathetic mediocrity. That’s the military that made him jealous when it gave a woman a Silver Star for her actions in Iraq based on what he called “an agenda,” and you know what Pete doesn’t have? A Silver Star.
Pete has made his entire personality about projecting his silly masculine insecurities on to the military writ large, blaming the US’s losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other war since Korea on it being, in the words of Thomas Massie this week, too “fat and gay” and not tuff enough, instead of being man enough and smart enough to grapple with the notion that stupid warmongering policies are why the US hasn’t won a war in decades. (And now, under Pete, we’re losing them faster, and in more humiliating fashion!)
But then there are moments that really drive home how little Secretary Shitfaced cares about the sacrifices of the men and women he doesn’t deserve to serve alongside, much less command, and one of those was yesterday, when the bastard motherfuckers and his grifty babysitter wife and his garbage aides had to be loudly scolded by the guard on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because they were too busy yukking it up to show respect.
“ALL VISITORS WILL MAINTAIN AN ATMOSPHERE OF SILENCE AND RESPECT AT ALL TIMES!” the guard shouted, to the Fox News weekend host who the bootlicking Republicans in the Senate confirmed to run the most powerful military the world has ever known, who was giggling with his entourage and taking selfies.
Today’s vocabulary word is detritus. The people getting yelled at in that video are detritus.
Charlotte Clymer served in the Old Guard, out of which come the soldiers who are selected for the unbelievably high honor of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an unbroken, 24/7 vigil since 1937. As she notes, small children can figure out that this is not a place to misbehave — there are signs that serve as helpful reminders, if you’re dense! — but the ne’er-do-well credibly accused sexual predator Pete Hegseth isn’t capable of understanding it, and nor is his garbage wife or the people he surrounds himself with. (Specifically he was with that aforementioned wife, Jennifer, plus Chief of Staff Ricky Buria, Deputy Chief of Staff Patrick Weaver, and Senior Adviser Tami Radabaugh.)
We encourage you to read what Clymer wrote about the process of becoming one of the Sentinels of the Guard. We’d say Hegseth should read it, but he probably thinks reading is for girls and gays too.
It’s hard to overstate how disgusted people are by Hegseth’s actions here. It’s the top story on the Military Reddit right now, with active duty and retired servicemembers expressing their disgust at No Tab Pete. An example:
We are talking AROUND the point... No legitimate SECDEF in the history of our nation would ever find themselves in a situation where they lacked the proper military bearing or were not following necessary protocol for such an event.
FULL STOP
This dude is an embarrassment, to the Armed Forces, to Veterans, to the Country.
He is the shitbag I told my guys to not become. Don’t be THAT guy... well THAT guy is our SECDEF/SECWAR.
Did we mention this happened on Veterans Day? Yeeeeeeah.
You might be worried that Hegseth is such a malignant tumor that the job career of the brave man who did his job and put Hegseth in his place would be in danger. We wouldn’t put it past him — Hegseth might switch out the results of his mandatory testosterone test or something, try to get him fired on a technicality — but for now, Hegseth’s buttlicking spox Sean Parnell is being forced to back the soldier up, because again, that’s how appalled and disgusted everybody is.
“While commemorating this solemn day, a soldier correctly and respectfully reminded everyone to maintain decorum,” said the Pentagon’s statement.
Damn fucking right he did. It’s amazing that “everyone” in this case was the goddamned secretary of Defense and the other human turds who float around his punchbowl with him.
For the tiniest bit of levity in this post, we give you Pete Hegseth during the ceremony itself, doing his best impression of a Trump family member trying to learn to stand like a normal human being.
Did somebody tell him if he leans forward all weird like that people will think he has a big D? That people will think he’s front-heavy like a common Ossoff?
Because that is not what people think.
We will give the last word here to incoming Democratic Rep. Richard Ojeda. Hegseth might have skated out of impeachment this week, but in the new Congress, that ain’t gonna happen.
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The Sentinels do not stand down even in hurricanes or other dangerous life-threatening storms. They still post.
Preening Fucking Nazi!