Pete Hegseth is a danger to the world

Sep 02, 2026

Last night, at 9:08 PM, after the only event on his public schedule for the entire week was canceled at the last minute, the United States Secretary of Defense, or as he now calls himself, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, took to social media to humiliate a member of one of our closest allies’ militaries. Or at least that’s what he thought he was doing when he shared a photograph from a Canadian account with the caption “🇨🇦 (this is real),” apparently expecting millions of people to laugh along with him at the body of the person wearing the uniform. He thought he was being clever and exposing the weakness of Canada’s military. Instead, in one extraordinarily stupid post, Hegseth exposed something much more disturbing about himself: that the man entrusted with overseeing the most powerful military in the world is not only cruel enough to use his position to publicly humiliate someone because of their appearance, but apparently too ignorant or too lazy to read what was directly in front of him before doing it.

Because the photograph wasn’t what Hegseth apparently thought it was. The account itself is called “cadets.vernon.” The photograph came from a Canadian cadet program in Vernon, British Columbia. This was not Hegseth catching some supposedly embarrassing glimpse of Canada’s fighting force. It was a photograph from a youth cadet program for children 12-18. The picture shows a young person and what is most likely a volunteer for the program awarding them a medal. Somehow, the man responsible for advising the President of the United States on matters of war and national defense could not figure that out. That tells us far more about Pete Hegseth and the other people Donald Trump has put in extraordinarily powerful positions than it could ever tell us about Canada.

The response was immediate. Canadian journalist Terry Reith wrote, “Is the US secretary of defence trying to shame cadets in Vernon? These are cadets, high school kids. How dare you be such a complete asshole to imply this is our military, and shame on you for body shaming our young people. This is reprehensible.” Canadian Member of Parliament Garnett Genuis responded by reminding Hegseth of something he apparently never learned or chose to forget: “158 members of the Canadian military gave their lives in Afghanistan after your country was attacked. Canada and the US have a great history of fighting together for freedom and justice. It’s history worth remembering.” Prime Minister Mark Carney called the post “beneath their office.” Defence Minister David McGuinty called it “below the dignity of the office he holds.”

The Pentagon, however, stood behind it. They did not take it down. Did not apologize. Did not even attempt to explain how a youth leadership program for teenagers in British Columbia ended up in the crosshairs of the Secretary of War of the United States. Because many of us, parents or simply people who care about children, want to know why Pete Hegseth was even looking at children’s bodies in the first place.

I kept thinking about that young person in the photograph. Still finding themselves. Standing there proud of something they had earned, captured in a moment that was supposed to be theirs. I kept thinking about the volunteer standing next to them. A woman who obviously loves her country and loves children, who believes they are the future, and that is why she was there. She showed up, gave her time, and put on the uniform, because she believed in what that program could do for the next generation. And the United States Secretary of Defense saw that photograph and decided it was an opportunity for humiliation.

One of the most patriotic things a person can do is serve. I’m using the word “patriotic” carefully because this administration has twisted it into something performative, but real service is quiet and selfless, even when the person doing it does not fully realize they are choosing selflessness. Military service means low pay compared to the private sector. It means a lack of control over your own life. It is not easy, mentally or physically. It does not matter whether that service is American or Canadian or any other one of our allied countries, because the choice to show up for something bigger than yourself looks the same in every uniform.

When I think of Canada’s military, I do not think of something to mock. I think of them standing beside ours. So many times, when we needed someone, they were there immediately. Afghanistan. The Cold War. The World Wars. So many families live on both sides of that border, connected by the same roots. When one branch of my own family came to this continent, some went to Canada, and some came to the United States. We are not strangers. We are neighbors in the deepest sense of the word. Real Americans will never look at a Canadian and see an enemy, or a freeloader, or weakness by any stretch of the imagination. But what we are seeing is those things in our own government. We see the people running our government right now, and we see corruption, cruelty, failure, and embarrassment. What Pete Hegseth and anyone who cheered him on were doing was not being an American. And they were certainly not being good human beings either.

None of this is new. Pete Hegseth has been telling us exactly who he is for years. His own mother, Penelope Hegseth, wrote him an email in 2018 that was later read on the floor of the United States Senate during his confirmation. “You are an abuser of women,” she wrote. “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. You are that man, and have been for years, and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.” She continued: “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.” She later said she regretted the email. But the words were already in the Congressional Record, spoken aloud in the chamber where his confirmation was decided. Senator Tim Kaine asked Hegseth directly whether sexual assault, spousal abuse, or working under the influence would disqualify someone from being Secretary of Defense. Hegseth refused to answer. He was confirmed by a single vote by the Vice President, JD Vance, who had to break the tie.

Before that confirmation, NBC News reported that ten current and former Fox News colleagues said his drinking was a persistent concern, with two saying he smelled of alcohol before going on air on more than a dozen occasions. One colleague said the problem was so well known that “everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air.” He pledged to stop drinking if confirmed. Today, his wife, Jennifer Hegseth, reportedly travels with him everywhere he goes because, as an insider told the New York Times, the Secretary of Defense relies on her to “keep him out of trouble.” Twenty current and former administration officials confirmed that she has become his most influential adviser, prepping him for appearances, sitting in on meetings with journalists, interviewing potential staff, and helping brainstorm Pentagon videos. She attended a classified meeting between U.S. and U.K. officials about military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Pentagon staffers reportedly refer to her as “The Leash.” Former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot called it “bonkers that a defense secretary would involve his wife in his sensitive official duties, including sharing details of an impending military operation, and face zero consequences.”

We can’t forget when he leaked war plans to a journalist on the encrypted messaging app Signal in March of 2025 after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally included in a group chat where he shared precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing for strikes on Yemen. Then he stood on a runway in Hawaii and told reporters, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The Pentagon’s own inspector general later concluded that his actions could have resulted in “potential harm to US pilots.” Even after that, he created a second Signal chat that included his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer.

This is the man who stood at a Pentagon prayer service in April and recited what he presented as a prayer inspired by Ezekiel 25:17. It was not. It was a fictional speech written by Quentin Tarantino for the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character immediately before he murders someone. “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth intoned, asking his audience to pray along with him. When the mistake was caught, his spokesman Sean Parnell did not apologize. He called anyone pointing it out “ignorant of reality.”

Maybe the most horrific example of what happens when Pete Hegseth’s arrogance and incompetence collide with the power he has been given came on February 28th of this year, on the first day of Operation Epic Fury, when a U.S. Tomahawk missile struck the Shajareye Tayabeh girls school in Minab, Iran. According to Amnesty International, at least 156 people were killed, including at least 110 children, most of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12. U.S. military investigators later concluded that American forces were likely responsible. The strike was reportedly caused by outdated targeting data that still identified the school as part of an Iranian military complex. When asked about it, Trump said, “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Hegseth backed him. “The only side that targets civilians is Iran,” he said. This from the man who had previously declared that U.S. strikes in Iran would not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement.” That is Pete Hegseth, that is his record, and now his own Pentagon is falling apart around him.

In a classified document obtained and published by the Washington Post, it was revealed that six of the military’s most senior four-star commanders formally warned Hegseth that the Iran war is unsustainable. The heads of U.S. European Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and U.S. Southern Command, along with multiple other combatant commanders, all issued a formal “non-concur” to his plan to keep troops deployed in the Middle East through September and others into 2027. The Navy’s top admiral, Daryl Caudle, gave the starkest assessment, telling Hegseth the service “cannot sustain its current level of support” because there is no end date to the conflict. The leaked document revealed what we have feared for months: the United States has depleted more than half of its cruise missiles and advanced air-defense missiles during six months of this war. The military has had to redeploy its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missiles from South Korea and pull the USS George Washington from Japan, removing the only aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Families of soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division were told this week that their deployments will extend to 12 months, into 2027.

Hegseth’s response to anyone who tells him the truth has been the same every time. He removes them. Since taking over the Pentagon, he has fired or forced out more than two dozen senior military officers. He fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George in April for objecting to Hegseth’s decision to block officer promotions, many of which involved Black and female officers. He has not nominated a replacement in four months. He fired the editor, publisher, and a reporter at Stars and Stripes, the independent military publication, about ten days after they reported on the hardships Navy sailors were facing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose deployment was extended to nine months because of the Iran war. Those journalists are now suing him. He fired the Stars and Stripes ombudsman for speaking out about what she called the Pentagon’s “attempts to control the editorial content” of the publication. She is suing him too.

On Monday, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll submitted his resignation after months of being frozen out by Hegseth. Driscoll, a combat veteran and close ally of Vice President Vance, was asked by the White House to stay through the midterms. He refused. His departure means the Army now has no Senate-confirmed civilian secretary, no Senate-confirmed chief of staff, no confirmed operations chief, and no confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe and Africa. The largest branch of the United States military is being led by no one confirmed by the United States Senate. And the man Hegseth reportedly wants to replace Driscoll is Sean Parnell, the same Pentagon spokesman who fired the Stars and Stripes journalists.

I often find myself thinking back to times when the people entrusted with this kind of power understood the weight of what had been placed in their hands. They were never perfect. Our country was never perfect. But there were still moments when the people at the very top understood the responsibility that came with leadership, and that asking other people to risk their lives required something more from you than the spectacle Hegseth has made of the position. I keep coming back especially to one night, more than 80 years ago, when an American general was preparing to send tens of thousands of young men into one of the most dangerous military operations in history.

On the night before D-Day, June 5, 1944, before the largest amphibious invasion in human history, General Dwight Eisenhower did two things. First, he went to visit the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne before they boarded their planes. He walked among them, and he talked to them. He asked where they were from. He looked them in the eyes, knowing deep down in his soul that many of them would not come back. Then he went back to his quarters, sat down, and wrote a note. It was short, and in it he took full personal responsibility for the failure of the invasion, should it fail. “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” he wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” He put that note in his pocket before a single soldier set foot on that infamous beach. The invasion succeeded, and he never had to send it. But he had already decided that if it did not, the failure would be his and his alone.

That is what military leadership looks like. A man who visits his troops, who looks them in the eye, who writes a note of personal responsibility before the first shot is fired. The distance between that man and Pete Hegseth is the distance between everything this country was supposed to be and everything it is becoming under this administration.

The President, who ran on “no new forever wars,” announced earlier today on Truth Social, just after noon, that the attack has resumed on Iran. “The United States is, as we speak, striking Iranian Targets near the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote. “The strikes are large and powerful.” He followed with a threat: “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” When asked in a Fox News interview whether he was interested in a deal, Trump said, “I think an agreement with them isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. We gave them a lot of chances.” Meanwhile, at the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked by CNBC’s Sara Eisen what happens if economic pressure does not change the behavior of Iran’s leaders. Bessent’s answer was, “My experience with people like this… the main thing they care about is their head staying attached to their neck.”

Iran responded with missiles and drones. Thirteen Iranian ballistic missiles entered Jordanian airspace. Ten were intercepted. Three fell in remote areas. Iran targeted Bahrain. In the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, a U.S. strike hit a residential home. An Iranian official went on state television and said, “A residential home was attacked while people were holding a wedding ceremony. Two people were reported martyred and a number of others wounded.” The death toll has been updated to four people, including a child.

Our country is in serious trouble. The world is in serious trouble. We have not just an incompetent and dangerous leader, but a man who has deliberately surrounded himself with equally reckless, unqualified, and morally bankrupt people to advise him and carry out his orders. But even now, there are still people willing to call what is happening wrong, including from inside the institutions these people are trying to bend to their will. Inside the Pentagon itself, six four-star commanders put their names on a classified document and said no through the formal chain of command, in writing, on the record. The Army Secretary looked at what Hegseth had built and decided he would rather walk away than become part of it. And this planet still has people like that volunteer in Vernon, British Columbia, who put on a uniform and showed up to award a medal to a young person she believed in. In doing so, she demonstrated something Pete Hegseth has never understood about service. She served without needing millions of people to see her do it. She served without needing to humiliate anyone else to make herself feel powerful. She simply showed up, did something good for another human being, and did it honestly and with her whole heart.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?