Well, well, well. In Biden’s America, we had a veteran named Pete in the Cabinet. It looks like in Trump’s America, so different, we’re going to have a veteran named Pete in the Cabinet. Both have uncommon last names. Both have last names that feature a complete word. Both frequently appear on Fox News. One Pete was about transportation, the other defense. One Pete is a gay, points for that. One is an alleged sex criminal. Oh.
At time of writing, I’ll be honest, it does not seem like Donald Trump’s current pick for Secretary of Defense is going to last long. I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time this video comes out, he is already withdrawing his name from consideration. If so, he would be the second Trump Cabinet pick to throw in the towel before 2025 and confirmation hearings after Matt Gaetz decided to not let the senate investigate and air out his own potential past as an alleged sex criminal.
If he hasn’t withdrawn yet, he should. The American people cannot accept this type of man in politics any longer.
One - War Crimes
Do you prefer when someone starts big or when they get big over time? This is a big argument in people who like male appendages circles. I’m agnostic on the issues. Narratively, though, you often want to punch the audience and then engage in some aftercare. So I’m going to enter my rarely used dom daddy era for you guys. Congratulations. Listen up, good boys.
You might be expected a manly man macho dude like Hegseth to be pro-locking bad boys up. It’s what brats have coming after all. Like, that is the face of a relatively boring man who walks around wearing your key on his necklace. Brats of any type are basically demon twinks and it’s a well-known fact that demon twinks are war criminals. Unfortunately for you, bad boy, and for the country, Pete Hegseth doesn’t like locking up war criminals.
In fact, Hegseth seems to have a certain affinity for war criminals. During Donald Trump’s first term, Hegseth took it upon himself to lobby for Trump to intervene in three specific cases. One, Clint Lorance, ordered soldiers to open fire on unarmed civilians. Another, Matthew Golsteyn, murdered an unarmed suspect. The third one, Edward Gallagher, according to Time, was charged with, “Shooting civilians in Iraq, using a knife to kill a teenage Islamic State prisoner in Iraq in 2017, and threatening to kill fellow SEALs if they reported him.”
Hegseth said, “They’re not war criminals; they’re warriors.”
You know, killing unarmed civilians, that thing warriors do. I mean, if your definition of warrior is unrestrained mongrel from before chivalry and the rules of war were drawn up, sure. What part of being a warrior is threatening to kill members of the US military as a member of the US military? Pete, can you tell me what says “warrior” about knifing a teenager already in custody? When you order others to gun down civilians, what qualities of a warrior are you exhibiting?
Now, what might lead a veteran to defending war crimes and calling them just what a warrior does? You might think Hegseth has some literal skeletons in his closet under his dog tags, but that would be taking it a step too far. Hegseth himself has not been accused of any such thing. But his unit sure was.
NDTV News says of his former unit, “The unit kept a tally of confirmed kills, including civilians, on a whiteboard, signalling a culture that, according to some accounts, blurred ethical lines.” They go on to describe Hegseth as having been uncomfortable with that. Good. He should have been. But apparently he nor anyone else were uncomfortable enough to enact change. After he was reassigned, members of his units released and then executed unarmed prisoners. That is, yes, a war crime. Since then, Hegseth has been a vehement defender of war criminals. I wonder why. Could it perhaps be that, despite being uncomfortable, the atmosphere of tracking and potentially celebrating murdering civilians fucked up his brain? Was it that his buddies got charged as war criminals and he took that personally?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that we cannot have someone in charge of our armed forces who defends the murder of civilians. Perhaps more convincingly for conservatives, a man who advocates for someone like Gallagher who threatened fellow service members. The brave people who serve in our military should not have to put up with colleagues threatening their lives. They do not deserve that.
Two - Sex Crimes
But hey, our military doesn’t only have guys who do the occasional war crime. It also has a larger handful who go about doing sex crimes, primarily on their fellow service people. But hey, at least those sex criminals who make our military worse can have an brother in spirit in Pete Hegseth, allegedly.
Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman during a convention of Californian Republican women in 2017. In early 2018, the DA declined to charge Hegseth with assault or rape. He would go on to pay hush money settlement to the woman under the condition of secrecy because, in his mind, if he got #MeToo’d, he would lose his Fox News job like other prominent figures of the media before him who were also, allegedly, sex fiends.
I read CNN’s report over the event. Conservatives might be quick to dismiss CNN but in this case, CNN employs Hegseth’s lawyer as a legal consultant, and I’m not entirely sure the company would be willing to trash one of their employees for no reason. For instance, that lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, insists that police found the allegations to be false. CNN points out there is no statement or evidence of that. In fact, when they mention how the DA didn’t charge Hegseth, it’s specifically that the evidence doesn’t surpass that “beyond a reasonable doubt” bar to justify spending money on prosecution. That is not the same thing as calling the Jane Doe a liar.
Jane Doe’s testimony indicates that she doesn’t recall much of the incident. She was unsure of whether or not she and Hegseth had intercourse but believed it might have and so asked for a rape kit. Hegseth said they had unprotected sex.
I cannot comment on whether or not he raped this woman. What I can say is often assault allegations are dismissed because the person doesn’t recall all of the details. I was assaulted by three men during my senior year of college. For about five months, I managed to block those events out of my memory. I knew, vaguely, that they happened, but they weren’t memories. Then I got a boyfriend. And the first time we had intercourse, I had a panic attack and had to hide for a bit in his bathroom because I suddenly started remembering these things I pushed away. I did my best to convince myself that I made them up. That I actually consented. That I was sober. That it didn’t hurt. That because I didn’t put up a fight, it didn’t count.
I, personally, have no interest in going after any of them. Two were strangers and I couldn’t describe them to you. One was a country dude with a hairy chest. We were watching that animated movie Klaus when he got to work. The brain does funny things.
Should we give Hegseth the benefit of the doubt?
Well, maybe we need to think about some of his other actions.
The New York Times published an email Hegseth’s mother sent him while he was busy divorcing his second wife. Here are a few choice highlights.
You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.…
Sam is a good mother and a good person… For you to try to label her as “unstable” for your own advantage is despicable and abusive.
It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women
We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character.
You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But… On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…
According to CNN, his mother has sense claimed she sent that in an emotional state she later apologized for. But let’s look at it. Do you accuse your son of sleeping around unless there’s a history of cheating there? Well, cheating is skeezy, but it doesn’t mean someone’s going to assault people. “Uses women” is a bit concerning. But she accuses him of being, in general, an abusive person, not just to women. Well, that sort of checks with his whole “war crimes are fine, actually” attitude. What I want to focus on is the claim that he belittles women and then calls them some form of crazy. That’s classic misogyny, and it is a form of emotional abuse.
“I’m going to cheat on you. Then I’m going to demean you. Then I’m going to call you crazy when you react to it.” That is abusive. That would indicate a man who treats women in despicable ways.
But okay, okay, that doesn’t necessarily indicate that he might assault a woman.
Hegseth was a publisher of a conservative paper when he was in college. One of the columns he published argued that raping an unconscious woman doesn’t count because she isn’t conscious and therefore can’t be in distress. No distress, no assault. That’s a disgusting piece. His paper is disgusting for having published it. The question that Snopes has not currently answered is whether or not Hegseth knew anything about the articles he published. Either way, having his name attached in any way to a rape defense article, especially as a man accused of assault, is not a good look. It doesn’t make it easier to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But we can say, without a doubt, that Hegseth is filled with one thing, and that’s…
Three - Misogyny
“During his term as Tory publisher, Hegseth was critical of the Organization of Women Leaders (OWL) on campus, even running a cover story featuring an illustration of an owl in a gun's crosshairs.” (Snopes)
Uh-oh, looks like Hegseth oversaw some not-so-subtle threats to women on his campus. Whoever would have guessed the man accused of being abusive towards women by his mother might have a problem with women?
So, here’s the thing, you can technically be a sex criminal without being a misogynist. I mean, the guys who assaulted me weren’t doing a misogyny. But it seems like Hegseth might be a bit of a sexist.
Hegseth claims that having women in combat roles makes the military less effective. It’s implied that he thinks standards are lowered to allow women in. As NPR points out though, “Legally, the standards for combat jobs are the same for any gender. Right now about 70% of men pass them, and about 50% of women do.”
Some women actually pass more grueling standards than Hegseth did during his time in the military, including Ranger School graduate Captain Charlie Faletta. She talked to NPR about Hegseth’s “no women in combat” thing, and she “points out Pete Hegseth doesn't have a Ranger tab, which she says makes it pretty rich for Hegseth to say she wasn't qualified to do her job.”
Huh. So when he says having women in combat makes it more complicated, one has to wonder what he means by that. Is he denigrating female service members who are currently in or have seen active combat? Or is he saying that having women around men makes it complicated because he has a history of allegedly being abusive towards women and assumes that’s the typical male attitude? It is, of course, more complicated when abusers are around people they don’t consider human.
It’s like when advocates of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would defend the ban on out gay people serving. There was no evidence that sexuality had any effect on one’s capability in wartime. But these people hated and feared homosexuals and therefore couldn’t imagine serving with them because they didn’t consider us fully human. Women who pass combat standards and tests only serve a problem for lethality and coherence if you assume women are lesser than men. Is this a biological essentialism that says “women are nurturers so they’re bad at the war crimes my old unit liked to do?” Women. Can. Do. Warcrimes. Feminist win.
But don’t you worry. I’m not just here to lob accusations of sexism at the guy whose mother called him an abuser of women. He’s also racist.
Four - Racism
Hegseth has openly wondered about whether CQ Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, only got the job because he’s Black. Hegseth said, “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We'll never know, but always doubt - which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn't really much matter.”
So he openly speculates that Brown is a token hire and then waves away any criticism of racism by going, “Brown talks about how racism is bad, so it’s fine to be racist to him.” Wow, it sounds like Hegseth might simply be a racist.
What’s that? Some… new, additional, funny context? Donald Trump appointed Brown as the US Air Force Chief of Staff? Wow. So here’s a question for Hegseth. Is he claiming that Donald Trump only promoted Brown because of his skin color? Is Trump the sort of “woke” Hegseth wants to root out of the military?
Like his racist forefathers, Brown has called racism in his field a lie, as reported by the Associated Press. I wonder why a man who’s accused a Black man of only being promoted for his skin color might be prompted to say racism doesn’t exist in the military. Perhaps could it be because he’s a racist? When he defends war crimes committed against Brown people in the Middle East, now we have to ask: Does he think they don’t count… because the victims don’t count?
Hegseth was pulled from serving during Biden’s inauguration because of tattoos brought to the military’s attention. Hegseth has a Jerusalem Cross on his chest and the words Deus Vult on his bicep. Now, there is a chance these are innocent tattoos simply declaring his faith and marking his body for God. No problem with that. Well, actually, we’ll get to it. It’s probably a bit hypocritical of him. But there’s a chance.
There’s also a chance it’s a declaration of white nationalism.
In an article discussing Tom Steyer’s use of the Jerusalem Cross and how it can be an innocent symbol, the BBC says that flags with both the cross and Deus Vult were present at… that’s right, the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville. Speaking about Charlottesville, NPR’s Neda Ulaby said, “Social media teems with homemade videos glorifying a time when heavily armored Christians fought for Europe against swarthy infidels. Racists online have adopted a crusader rallying cry, deus vult.”
Now. You could charitably assume that Hegseth isn’t incorporating this far-right appropriation of Crusader imagery. Or you could look at his history of defending war crimes, his recent history of lobbying racist conspiracies at CQ Brown, his history of misogyny, his mother calling him an abuser of women, his publishing of an article defending rape, and at the fact he’s been accused of rape and say maybe, just maybe, this bad person might be a bad person.
The Jerusalem Cross is also known as the Crusader Cross because a lot of these guys consider themselves warriors in a holy war. Teen Vogue wrote an article over the cross and its combination with Deus Vult after the January 6 failed insurrection because the two popped up a lot in images of people swarming and invading the capitol. It quotes Mark Pitcavage as saying the Crusader Cross and Deus Vult grew increasingly popular “after 9/11 and especially after the war in Iraq began.”
Guess who served in Iraq? That’s right. Hegseth. Is this an innocent tattoo or did he decide to get it while serving with Islamaphobic white supremacists in a unit that would go on to be known for celebrating its confirmed civilian kills?
But hey, there’s more to Hegseth than racism and misogyny.
Five - Homophobia
Remember that conservative outlet Hegseth published when he was in college? In 2002, a note from the editors said, “Hey, boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we're blue in the face, but it won't change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”
The magazine would later clarify its stance, writing that it doesn’t mean someone “is a bad person because they’re gay. It’s the lifestyle of homosexuality that we consider immoral.” Of course, we know that being gay isn’t a lifestyle. But in 2002 being a homophobic asshole was all the rage. When the magazine was critiqued for its rampant homophobia, Hegseth would go on to co-author a response that said, “Overwhelming majorities of Americans agree with the notion that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not moral equivalents.”
You might be asking, “Hey 2002 was like 57 years ago. You, you decrepit old man, were 4 years old when he was saying you’d grow up to an immoral reprobate. What if he’s groooooown?”
In an episode of Off the Wall on Fox News, Pete and co-host Will Cain decided to run some homophobia defense for the GOP. In part, they go on and on about Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill. Conservatives love to accuse opponents of that bill of not reading it. Well, luckily for you, I have a very long video which, in part, reads the entirety of the bill, looks at statements of the original sponsors, reads legal analysis, and does my own analysis of the actual words. Long story short: yeah, it was an anti-gay, anti-trans censorship bill that did have the effect of Don’t Say Gay. Of course, I don’t think conservatives who defend this bill are by and large morons incapable of understanding the words written and their implications. I do think they count on their viewers and supporters never reading the bill and taking their word on it. I had a family member vigorously defend the bill. I asked if they read it. They hadn’t. You know who had? I had. You know whose press secretary at the time pivoted immediately to calling critics of the bill groomers and thereby pedophiles? Ron DeSantis. Because he is a homophobe who was defending a homophobic bill because he is a personal little bigot so uncomfortable in his masculinity and own skin that he’s embarrassed of his height. Hi, short king here, get over yourself.
But okay, okay. They start the segment off defending a Tennessee bill from Gavin Newsome’s attacks. Newsome claimed it banned being gay in public. Hegseth and Cain find this laughable. As they present it, it only outlawed obscene, sexual acts in public. Only, uh-oh, at the time, Murfreesboro included “homosexuality” in its city ordinances as something that qualifies as indecent sexual conduct. Now, you might be thinking, “If that’s just about public sex, why would they need to add homosexuality instead of simply saying sex in public and leaving it at that?” Why, that’s because, at the time, it meant any acts of homosexuality which would be why the city refused to grant permits for the annual pride festival, citing that new ordinance. Acts of homosexuality it so unbelievably broad that it can range from parades to holding hands to kissing your husband to getting married in public to the public library having queer books for adults as seen by the library in Murfreesboro where county officials voted to remove queer books that might violate the homophobic ordinance they passed.
Eventually, they got rid of the reference to homosexuality in the city ordinances. Great. It took a lot of backlash for that to happen, and it seems clear that if Hegseth got his way, it would have stayed on the books. He is dedicated to defending anti-gay policies and then throwing his hands up and going, “Noooooo I don’t think being gay is bad anymore. I’m just a sweet little birfday boy.” Except he has a history of homophobia that seems to continue into the modern day.
He already opposes trans people in the military. Would he support a reimplementation of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? I mean, what self-respecting homophobe wouldn’t?
Six - Policy
Anti-Ukraine, seemingly Pro-Putin
Hegseth is so anti-war criminals being prosecuted for war crimes, that it seems he’s the concept of rules of war at all. The Guardian says it seems like he is against the Geneva Conventions and thinks international law is holding our military back from, I guess, killing as many civilians as it wants and not getting in trouble for it. After saying we should let our soldiers rip the arms off of enemy combatants and feed them to hogs, assumedly an Islamaphobic dig similar to the coat bullets in pig’s blood thing, he apparently wrote, “If we’re going to send our boys to fight – and it should be boys – we need to unleash them to win.”
Boys is an interesting word choice there, isn’t it? Why not men? If we’re just saying we don’t want women in combat, why say boys instead of men? Because he wants to send 18 year-olds to do mass barbarism before their frontal developed so they have less ability to think things through and holds themselves back in protection of their humanity. But hey, at least they’ll develop crippling PTSD about all the horrors Hegseth wants them to commit while their brains are developing.
Hegseth seems to think Putin is rightfully conquering Ukraine, seeming to believe in the idea that Ukraine is not a legitimate country and is instead Russian territory in need of reconquering, calling Russia’s imperialistic war, Putin’s “give me back my shit” war. He thinks Putin will simply stop at Ukraine, a sentiment not really backed by, you know, that time he invaded Georgia. He seems to have expansionist aims. He’s currently against putting US troops in Ukraine which, at the moment, I happen to agree with. There’s not much common ground I can have with him, but aiding Ukraine via weaponry and humanitarian help is better than entering a hot war against Russia ourselves.
I’ll leave you with one last tidbit about Pete Hegseth. He once told his Fox colleagues, “I don’t really wash my hands ever. Germs aren’t real.” Hegseth is a bigoted moron. One might metaphorically compare him to a germ, and any United States Senator who does not vote to wash America’s hands clean of this vile man is a Senator who deserves to lose their seat.
Sources:
“Pete Hegseth’s Role in Trump’s Controversial Pardons of Men Accused of War Crimes” - Nik Popli | Time
“18 Years On, A War Crime Investigation Haunts Trump's Defence Secretary Pick” | NDTV News
“Police report reveals new details from sexual assault allegation against Trump’s defense secretary nominee” - Casey Tolan, Scott Glover and Sara Murray | CNN
“Text of the Email That Pete Hegseth’s Mother Sent Him” | The New York Times
“New York Times: Pete Hegseth’s mother wrote him an email in 2018 accusing him of mistreating women” - Kaanita Iyer | CNN
“Pete Hegseth Published Column Saying Sex with Unconscious Woman Isn't Rape” - Nur Ibrahim | Snopes
“Trump's defense pick says women shouldn't serve in combat. These veterans disagree” - Quil Lawrence | NPR
“Hegseth, advocate for firing 'woke' military leaders, picked for defense secretary” - Phil Stewart & Idrees Ali | Reuters
“General Officer Announcement” | U.S. Department of Defense
“Trump Pentagon pick had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat’” - Tara Copp, Michelle R. Smith, & Jason Dearen | Associated Press
“Tom Steyer: What is the symbol he draws on his hand?” - Roland Hughes | BBC
“Scholars Say White Supremacists Chanting 'Deus Vult' Got History Wrong” - Neda Ulaby | NPR
“The Capitol Riot and the Crusades: Why the Far Right Is Obsessed With Medieval History” - Ellen Knight | Teen Vogue
“Pete Hegseth” | GLAAD
“Trump’s Pick For Defense Sec Spent His College Years Crusading Against ‘Glorification of Diversity’ And ‘The Homosexual Lifestyle’” - Hunter Walker | Talking Points Memo
“‘Archaic’: the Tennessee town that made homosexuality illegal” - Ava Sasani | The Guardian
“Off the Wall” | Fox News
“Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions” - Jason Wilson | The Guardian
“Trump’s Pentagon pick aims for clash with top military leadership” - Jeremy Herb and Haley Britzky | CNN
“Who Is Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who doesn’t wash his hands that Trump nominated for Defense Secretary?” - Christopher Wiggins | The Advocate
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