Hegseth Now Distancing Self From Colossal F*ckup He Was Just Bragging About
Whoops!
What a difference 24 hours can make. One day you’re on top of the world, living your life. The next you are being crushed under the wheels of a bus driven by a brain-addled orange Cabbage Patch Doll and his sidekick, a drunk (allegedly!) extremist who likes to wander the halls of the Pentagon shouting “Pew pew! Pew pew!” while pointing finger guns at everyone he passes.
Or so it might feel to Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, commander of the military’s Special Operations Command and emerging fall guy for Donald Trump and his dipshit Defense secretary Pete Hegseth. Bradley is the military officer who was in charge of the mission to blow up a defenseless Venezuelan fishing boat on September 2, the first in a now three-month boat-exploding spree designed to defend America from the scourge of imported bonefish. In this, he had the wholehearted support of Trump and Hegseth, right up to the moment when they consulted their lawyers. Or, more likely, public opinion polls.
Bradley’s defenestration has been a particularly noticeable and awkward move by Whiskeydick Pete, who reportedly gave the order to the military to show no quarter and kill everyone on the boat. After The Washington Post broke the story this past Friday that the military executed a second strike on the blown-up boat to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage and floating helplessly in the Atlantic Ocean — a crime for which America shot Nazi U-boat captains after World War II — Hegseth could not have sounded less apologetic for it:
Those are a lot of words to admit to a crime. Next time, he could just sneer in his best Jack Nicholson voice, “You’re goddamn right I ordered the code red!” It would save us all some time.
Also, keep that last part about “ALWAYS” having our warriors’ backs in mind. It’s what you might call ironic foreshadowing.
Hegseth followed up on Sunday night by tweeting that “we have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” along with this fucking thing:
Franklin the Turtle is Canadian in origin. Have we not insulted the Canadians enough this year? (The publishers are pissed.)
Then the weekend passed, America emerged from its tryptophan coma to attack the leftovers in the national fridge, and suddenly there was actual bipartisan pushback from Congress. Pushback! Of the bipartisan sort! That’s a rarer sight these days than Melania.
The Republican chairs and Democratic ranking members of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees promised hearings on the matter. So by Sunday, the tunes, they were a-changin’.
First, Trump spent Sunday night distancing himself from the whole mess as he flew from Florida back to Washington DC. Asked by reporters on Air Force One about the story, the president, who has otherwise been a staunch supporter of Hegseth, said that he “wouldn’t have wanted a second strike” because the first one was “fine.” We’re not sure he understood the question. Maybe he thought the reporters were asking him how many slices of pie he ate on Thursday.
Then during her daily briefing on Monday, Press Dope Karoline Leavitt went into full-on ass-covering mode for the administration:
Bus, meet Admiral Bradley. Admiral Bradley, meet bus.
By Monday night, anonymous sources were telling The New York Times that Hegseth was innocent of the charge:
But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast.
Hegseth also hopped on that train, offering “support” to Bradley (throwing him directly under the bus), while taking zero responsibility or acknowledging the reports that he issued the “kill everyone” order, thus giving himself some space to deny doing so. Very macho. Real alpha male stuff there.
Meanwhile, anonymous sources were telling The Washington Post that Leavitt’s remarks had infuriated people in the Pentagon. These military leaders seem to think — and if you ask us, rightfully so — that Leavitt’s comments were a clear sign the administration wants to scapegoat Bradley by suggesting he went farther than Hegseth had told him to go. “This is protect Pete bullshit,” one person told the Post.
Let us see if we can now sum up the timeline here. First, yeah, Hegseth issued the kill order because he will always stand up to defend America. Then, he didn’t issue the kill order. But he totally supports the guy who killed all the people in the incident that, before Monday night, he was happily taking credit for but isn’t now but still he’s proud of America’s warriors. SO SHUT UP, FAKE NEWS.
Bradley hasn’t spoken publicly yet, but he’s reportedly going to be called up to Capitol Hill to answer questions. And to be clear, he should. He’s not innocent of committing a crime here if the reporting is correct. “I was only following orders” went out as an excuse at Nuremberg.
Let’s be clear about something else. Despite all the denials and Kabuki theater, of course Hegseth gave that “kill everyone” order. He’s a little boy play-acting at being some sort of tough-guy military leader who doesn’t give a damn what you sniveling civilian pussies think, which is the sort of thing you do when you’ve watched Patton a few hundred too many times. We imagine Hegseth was proud to give that order. It wouldn’t be surprising if he went home that night and entertained his seven kids with a bedtime story about how Daddy made the big, bad drug men go BOOM, and now everyone can sleep tight knowing that Daddy is protecting America.
Hooray?
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I said this yesterday and I'll say it again: The Franklin the Turtle book and video series teaches gentle, humane lessons to young children. We read and watched those stories together with my little girls. I hope the publishers and authors SUE THE SHIT out of Hegseth for posting that terrible, made up image.
Admiral Bradley was indeed responsible. He followed an illegal order.