Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth really wants you to think he’s a tough guy. The former Fox News host and reported makeup-studio enthusiast is forever bragging out how brave and manly he is, with a length and volume that screams “overcompensation” to anyone actually possessing internal fortitude. With his perfectly coiffed hair and belligerent posture, Hegseth has long made it clear that his idea of “strength” is strictly a matter of showmanship. He eschews the term “soldier” in favor of “warfighter.” He rejects the term “defense” in favor of “lethality.” He even tried to rename the Defense Department the “Department of War,” which is the bureaucratic equivalent of buying an oversized pickup because your wife left you for her spin instructor.
He forced the military’s top brass to sit still for a lecture about the “warrior ethos,” convened for no other apparent reason than Hegseth’s adolescent desire to pretend that he’s Mel Gibson in “Braveheart.” He goes on and on about his imaginary “male standard” or “male-level” fitness ideals, mostly because women don’t fit his image of what “warfighters” look like, which seems entirely drawn from the G.I. Joe figurines he played with as a child. He was pushed out of the Army, quitting of his own accord because of too much perceived wokeness. As defense secretary, he’s been systematically trying to purge all women who have performed their military duties beyond his capablities. Heaven forbid he endure reminders that many female members of the species are stronger and more capable than he could ever imagine being.
To be clear, real men of courage are not intimidated by women’s success. Hegseth’s hostility to female service members has always served as a leading indicator that beneath all that bluster the man is a sniveling coward. The growing scandal over his role in killing civilians in boats off the coast of Venezuela confirms his lily-livered nature beyond all doubt. The model of masculinity offered by MAGA, from Donald Trump on down, has always been one of inadequate men pretending at greatness, but only a few are as laughably obvious as Pete Hegseth, a man whose every bellowed word bespeaks an unsubtle small-D energy that fuels him.
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To recap: For months now, the Trump administration has been arbitrarily killing civilians in boats off the coast of Venezuela, justifying these extrajudicial attacks with accusations that everyone on such a boat is a drug dealer, although administration officials prefer to use overblown and meaningless terms like “narcoterrorist,” betraying the insecurity of their position. Killing accused drug dealers is almost certainly illegal in itself, and the administration has offered no meaningful evidence to back up its accusations, even as it becomes evident that the real goal is to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to resign. (Maduro is a dictatorial strongman who rigged the last presidential election, facts that would impress Trump under other circumstances. He also identifies as an anti-American leftist, making him No. 1 villain for the MAGA crowd.)
The Washington Post reported this week that in one such attack on Sept. 2, U.S. forces launched a second missile to kill survivors of the initial strike, which would be a war crime at best and likely just straight-up murder.
Shooting unarmed, helpless and likely injured people in the open sea is certainly evil, probably criminal and undeniably pathetic. It’s the behavior of someone who’s afraid of a fair fight and enjoys killing people from afar by pushing buttons.
The details of that incident couldn’t offer a clearer illustration of what cowardice playing at toughness looks like. After literally blowing up a boat under Hegseth’s reported instructions to “kill them all,” military commanders reportedly ordered a second strike to kill men who were clinging to the wreckage. Shooting unarmed, helpless and likely injured people in the open sea is certainly evil and probably criminal, and it’s also pathetic. It’s the behavior of someone who’s afraid of a fair fight, and enjoys killing people from afar by pushing buttons. Unsurprisingly, War Secretary Warrior-Ethos-Man appeared on Fox News the next day to brag about this pitiful behavior, acting as if he’d won a wrestling match with a grizzly bear.
“I can tell you that was definitely not artificial intelligence,” Hegseth giddily recounted of the attack that killed a reported 11 people. “I watched it live!”
That’s how a man who deigns to lecture actual soldiers about “warfighting” makes himself feel big: ordering the long-range killings of defenseless civilians, and watching it all on video. And Hegseth’s subsequent reaction to the Washington Post report has amounted to acting like a huge weenie. First, he lied about it, calling the report “fake news.” Now that it seems he can’t hide from the story entirely, Hegseth is trying to wriggle out from responsibility by blaming an underling, Adm. Mitch Bradley. In true quisling fashion, Hegseth won’t even admit that’s what he’s doing, he’s disguising the buck-passing as praise, and writing that he will “stand by” Bradley, as if it were the officer, and not his boss at the Pentagon, who is the focal point of the scandal. As Bill Kristol mockingly posted on X, “I pretend to stand by Admiral Bradley as I distance myself from him and throw him under the bus.”
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But blaming Bradley has gotten more difficult in light of the now-viral video of Hegseth gleefully bragging about watching the killings. Instead of manning up and admitting responsibility, on Tuesday Hegseth rolled out an even more preposterous story. During one of Trump’s interminable public “Cabinet meetings,” Hegseth insisted that, yeah, he watched the first strike but did not “stick around” to watch Bradley order the killing of survivors. That’s tough to swallow too, since Hegseth clearly seems to enjoy viewing death from afar. One might add that making sure there are no survivors left to hold you accountable fits Hegseth’s cowardly M.O.
Hegseth is the classic bully, hiding his insecurity by dominating those who are weaker or more vulnerable, and pretending that’s cool instead of pitiful. During his Senate confirmation hearing, reports circulated that Hegseth had been accused of rape, in a case settled out of court.
Whether that was true never really mattered, since rape allegations would make Trump more likely to nominate someone to high office, not less. Still, the details are worth revisiting. The accuser in that incident said she had been too drunk to resist Hegseth’s alleged assault. Rape is a cowardly crime no matter what, most often committed by men who are afraid to pick on someone their own size. Selecting a victim who is too incapacitated to defend herself is unfortunately common, which makes the masculine preening of men who commit these kinds of crimes even more ludicrous.
Hegseth has denied that allegation, but his entire adult has been defined by a tendency to brag about how strong he is while running away from anything that resembles a real challenge. He’s on his third marriage at the moment, and belongs to a church that preaches an especially extreme doctrine of female submission. You don’t need a degree is psychology to understand that only weaker men crave women trained not to talk back, because they’re incapable of handling a mutual relationship based on adult communication.
Hegseth’s brief tenure at the Pentagon has been dominated by his quivering inability to deal with any kind of challenge or discomfort.
Hegseth’s brief tenure at the Pentagon has been dominated by his quivering inability to deal with any kind of challenge or discomfort. He’s tried to purge all military schools and libraries of any historical information that might makes him feel icky, such as reminders that racism exists or that slavery was a bad thing. I’m sure he can do push-ups, as he constantly brags. But the real test of someone’s mettle isn’t how ripped they are but whether they can handle the complexities of a world that hasn’t been sculpted to shield their egos. Even by MAGA standards, Hegseth is the most delicate of snowflakes.
Indeed, Secretary Warfighter’s need for constant coddling is being ever more severely exposed as this scandal unfolds. As the Washington Post reported this week, Hegseth is now hiding behind the skirts of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She’s an accomplished liar, but has been reading carefully crafted statements that redirect the blame for the Sept. 2 killings to Bradley and insist, without offering any evidence, that everything Hegseth did was legal. “This is ‘protect Pete’ bull—,” as one anonymous military official told the Post.
Operation “Protect Pete” seems like a fitting description of this guy’s entire career of evading accountability. Perhaps he should make that his next tattoo, so he can brag about how much the needle hurt while ducking any consequences that might truly sting.
