Pete (Hic!) Hegseth Dreams Of Day When He Can Murder Thousands Without Reporters Making A Whole Big Thing Of It

He also dreams of a whiskey back with a vodka stinger. Lots of 'em.

Secretary of Defense and single biggest regret of every woman he’s ever dated or married Pete Hegseth was unhappy. It was the fall of his first year steering the Pentagon into a steep and unrecoverable dive, and the building’s press corps refused to tickle his balls while whispering compliments on his flying skills into his ear.

So Hegseth demanded all the reporters on the Pentagon beat adhere to some limiting rules that no self-respecting journalist would ever agree to, such as not publishing anything unless he had signed off on it. Those who would not sign this pledge were invited to get the fuck out.

The result was that any respectable journalist at the Pentagon got the fuck out. The new Pentagon press corps was made up of lickspittles from fringe right-wing news sites who would happily polish Pete’s shoes or tell his wife that was their pile of hundreds of PBR cans piled ankle-deep on the floor of his office in exchange for the right to ask him questions like Secretary Hegseth, how badass is America’s military and Secretary Hegseth, how are you so handsome?

That last one would be especially ironic since Hegseth reportedly banned still photographers from his briefings recently after they took pictures of him he deemed unflattering. Man, they’re photographers, not magicians.

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LIKE SO!

Pentagon Bans Outside Photographers Because Pete Hegseth Ugly

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But it is still a free-ish country where the media is concerned. Which means journalists can still report stuff Hegseth doesn’t like. And boy, does that make him whinier than a dog that can’t get its owner to toss a few scraps of roast beef into its dish.

Hegseth spent the first few minutes of a press conference on Friday bragging about all the badass warmaking and warfighting and warkilling the American military is currently doing in Iran, all the Iranian military capacity it has degraded and all the killing it has done and will do. He promised to give the enemy “no quarter,” which is a war crime in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In America’s new Hegseth-directed age of manliness, only pussies care about such civilizational guideposts.

Then he got to the heart of his complaint, which is that the media — not the awesome patriotic wingnut media, of course, but the mainstream — insists on reporting on stuff that doesn’t give Pete Hegseth a stiffy, such as that people are dying and the Trump administration seems to have done whatever the opposite of planning is for this war that it keeps saying is not a war.

“People look up at the TV and they see banners. They see headlines. I used to be in that business and I know that everything is written intentionally.”

My man, you were not in the news business, you worked for Fox. But yes, people generally intend to write what they write. For example, we assure you when we write that you are a slimy, smarmy, drunken gecko-brained fuckwit who couldn’t out-think the pull cord on a lightbulb, we absolutely intended to say that.

“Or more fake news from CNN reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. Patently ridiculous, of course. For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This is always what they do. Hold the Strait hostage. CNN doesn’t think we thought of that. It’s a fundamentally unserious report.”

CNN is not the only outlet that has reported that the Trump administration had zero plan for Iran maybe closing the Strait of Hormuz. And the administration’s actions in this regard — demanding sailors show some “guts” and sail through the Strait, scrambling to learn how the shipping insurance market works so it can underwrite policies as an incentive — suggest very strongly that Hegseth is lying here.

Also suggesting he’s lying? He’s Pete Hegseth. That’s another clue.

But it was the next bit that made people sit up.

“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Nothing says “free press” like a high-level political apparatchik all but jizzing his shorts at the idea of a wingnut billionaire taking over a major news network and turning it into a mouthpiece for the government. And that’s before you get to the wingnut billionaire already owning another major news network, which his hand-picked idiot is busy turning into Fox News without the charm.

We’re sure antitrust lawyers who may sue to prevent the Warner Discovery-Paramount merger appreciate a government official so publicly putting a finger on the scale, though. Hegseth’s statement could make a nice exhibit in a brief someday.

We have given CNN our share of crap over the years for its reporting and its personnel and its insistence on employing Scott Jennings. But still, it deserves better than to be sneered at and belittled by the likes of Pete Hegseth, an overgrown eight-year-old in a big-boy suit and a mediocrity the likes of which this country usually had the good sense to send to business school instead of occupations of some importance.

After he had finished trashing the media, Hegseth took questions from the real journalists at One America News Network, the Daily Wire, the Epoch Times, Real America’s Voice, and Mike Lindell’s TV channel.

One day someone competent will be back in charge. We just hope there’s anything left to oversee.

[YouTube]

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