Our chronicle continues of what absolutely should be the last week of Pete Hegseth’s career in public service, before he tries to escape to a non-extradition country to avoid war crimes tribunals and vicious public mockery until the day he dies.
But it probably won’t be.
Where were we the other day? Army Secretary Dan Driscoll was resigning after trying to explain in vain to Donald Trump’s dementia care workers that he’s extremely worried about the future of the military, what with Secretary Shitfaced firing everybody who outranks him and/or threatens his barely-hanging-on sense of his own masculinity (that’d be everybody), plus the way Shitfaced is tying up military resources in his forever-lost war, which is leaving literally everything else vulnerable, including the homeland.
Also we were learning that the generals and other high-ups at the Pentagon have been trying to tell Shitfaced the same thing. In response Shitfaced decided to call some Canadians fat chicks on Twitter. (Yet another thing Canada is rightfully pissed off about.)
Two days later, here are some new Hegseth failures in a wasted and worthless life full of them:
Tillis Calls (Again) For Trump To Fire The Motherfucker
Yes, Thom Tillis is leaving the Senate, which means he suddenly is acting like he has a backbone, and no, we’re not necessarily expecting this to mean a bunch of Republican senators will suddenly develop courage or care enough about the United States or the strength and safety of its military or its territory to do anything about it. We/ve been reading articles for months that say Republican senators think Hegseth is a weakass loser and a failure.
But it still seems like a big thing that Tillis is on the record louder than ever, and right in this moment, saying fire the motherfucker. (He’s actually been saying it since May.)
“I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country. He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force,” said Tillis on the Twitter machine.
“Intimidated by competence,” well that’s just hurtful.
Tillis closed his post by saying, “I urge the President to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it.”
Careful readers will remember that Tillis was the one who could have prevented all of this, before he caved like a coward. But he didn’t, and now here we are.
Then Republican Rep. Don Bacon added to the pile-on, saying he hates to tell Trump how to do his job (somebody besides Natalie should), but if it were him making the decisions, Shitfaced “would not be on my team.”
And Republican Senator Mike Rounds, a prominent member of the Armed Services Committee, expressed a lot of disappointment about Driscoll’s resignation and Hegseth’s firing of all the generals who have more expertise than he does (all of them). When asked if he has confidence in Hegseth, he said, “it’s a matter of whether the president” does or doesn’t. Note how he got out of saying “yes.”
That’s not all the quotes The Hill has either.
From a “former senior Republican Armed Services staffer”:
“Hegseth has treated the Pentagon like his own personal playground in the culture wars. He’s driven out over two dozen senior leaders, including Driscoll, and ignored the chain of command by intervening personally in official investigations,” the former GOP aide said.
The former staffer said Hegseth is “an absolute train wreck for Republicans headed into the midterms but they are too scared to do anything about it,” noting they are relying on Trump to turn out voters and spend big on behalf of GOP candidates.
“If they had a spine, instead of wringing their hands and holding closed-door hearings, the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees would say on the record what just about every voter knows, which is that Hegseth is unqualified for the job and never should have accepted the position when President Trump offered it to him,” the source added.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (Ala.) is lightly talking shit, saying he’s “tired of all the churn” and “wants to see some stability.”
The White House has responded by saying it has total confidence in Hegseth, which can mean everything or nothing at all in the backstabbing Trump regime.
‘It’s Not Passive. It’s Active Harm.’
That’s what former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Wednesday night.
The former secretary accused the Pentagon chief of doing “active harm” to the department.
“In a word, it’s dysfunctional,” Kendall continued. “I’ve worked with and had a chance to work for maybe a dozen secretaries of Defense. He’s doing active harm to the Department of Defense. It’s not passive. It’s active harm.”
The ex-official said the “enormous damage” to the department will take several years “or decades to go repair this and restore the type of system that we have had traditionally.”
“Right now, in our competition, brain power is just as important as how big somebody’s biceps are,” Kendall added later. “We need people with intellectual capital just as much as we need people who are physically capable. He’s overemphasizing this kind of, you know, ‘bro thing’ with the testosterone thing you mentioned, as well as many other things.”
“That’s not what the secretary of Defense should be worrying about. What he should be worried about is not getting us into a conflict that we have no obvious way out of.”
Wait, the Defense secretary needs to be smart? And he should not be worried about testing all the (white) men’s testosterone levels? How else can Pete win the war he lost in Iran, if not by rubbing testosterone gel all over all the the (white) warfighters’ glistening chests with his bare hands, in their bunks?
Answer us that one, why don’t you!
YAY, THE TESTOSTERONE GEL HAS ARRIVED! WARFIGHTERS, GO TO YOUR BUNKS AND WAIT FOR SECRETARY PETE!
In related news, it’s being reported today that the Pentagon is right now rolling out its new testosterone testing policies, so that all the (white) guys can be as manly as Pete. Yes, this week, in the middle of all these other headlines.
Is that bad timing?
OPEN THREAD.
[The Hill]
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“Intimidated by competence” describes everyone in Trump's administration.
Guess who has two thumbs and is a victim of SNAP fraud? If you guessed me, here’s your prize!
It is helping my crip ass file a police report online, because nobody gives a fuck.
This is unsustainable.