Pete Hegseth needs to be next

At 8:03 this morning, Pete Hegseth stood before reporters at the Pentagon in a gray suit that looked like it was pulled straight from the 1980s, his greased-back hair slicked tightly against his head. Behind him were the Air Force flag and the American flag, perfectly arranged, like a set designed to project maximum patriotic symbolism for the cameras. And for the next thirty minutes, he didn’t brief the press so much as shout through a set of pre-written remarks about the Iran war, reading directly from papers placed on the podium. At one point, he suggested Europe “might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences and get in a boat,” while also describing the war, the global instability, and the surging fuel prices that came with it as a “gift to the world.”

Hegseth opened by comparing Operation Epic Fury favorably to every major American military engagement of the last century. Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. All of them, he said, dragged on for years with vague missions and little to show for it. Epic Fury, by contrast, has been “laser-focused from the very start.” A “decisive military result” delivered “in just weeks.” A “bold and historic” mission, led by a “bold and historic President.”

But here is what he does not seem to realize he just said. The reason those wars dragged on with vague missions and nothing to show for it is precisely because nobody could define what winning looked like going in. And that is exactly where we are right now. We are on day 55 of a war that was supposed to last four to six weeks. A war never authorized by Congress that is costing at least an estimated one billion dollars a day. And nobody, not Hegseth this morning, not Trump, not a single person in this administration, has been able to tell us what we are actually trying to achieve.

They keep saying that we can never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That is the implied mission. Except their own people told us last summer that we neutralized their nuclear capabilities. Their own CIA said there was no immediate nuclear threat. Their own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified under oath after the war started that Iran had not rebuilt its nuclear enrichment capability since last summer’s strikes. She then omitted that portion when she read her statement aloud. So we went to war to stop an immediate nuclear threat that our own intelligence community said did not exist, and now we are on day 55 with no exit, and the mission is still “no nuclear weapons.”

He also said, with a straight face, that the United States military deserves the Nobel Peace Prize every single year. And that’s not to say that we don’t have some of the most brilliant members of the military, brave people who are willing to sacrifice their lives in the defense and honor of our country. But to say that the military as a whole deserves the Nobel Peace Prize while continuing to actively attack other countries is beyond absurd.

He also told us that yet another aircraft carrier is joining the operation. Which means more sailors who are not coming home on time, who are already on extended deployments, who are, according to reports, being asked to eat rations because the supply situation in the region is not what it should be. These are human beings, away from their families, eating inadequate food, in a war zone, for a mission nobody can define, while the man sending them there stands at a podium in Washington and reads from prepared remarks about how great everything is going.

What we are watching is not a confident administration narrating a successful war. It is an administration that started something it does not know how to finish, now performing victory for the cameras because the midterms are coming and the country is exhausted and they need us to believe they won. The mission keeps shifting because there was never a clear mission. The objectives keep changing because they went in without any. They thought they could walk in guns blazing and it would be different for them. It wasn’t.

But maybe one of the most revealing parts was his contempt for Europe and our other allies around the world. Hegseth stood at the podium this morning and lectured our allies about free-riding. He told them to stop having “fancy conferences” and get in a boat. What he did not say is that we are the ones who broke the global energy supply chain they depend on. We went into that region without a single NATO ally beside us, because every ally refused to join this war. And exactly what is happening now in the Strait of Hormuz was something Trump and his administration were warned about over and over again. We did it anyway. And now the man who helped start it is mocking them for not rushing in to clean it up.

And the consequences are real. The head of the International Energy Agency warned last week that Europe may have as little as six weeks of jet fuel remaining. Hegseth also said during the same press conference, “Europe and Asia have benefited from our protection for decades, but the time for free-riding is over. America and the free world deserve allies who are capable, who are loyal, and who understand that being an ally is not a one-way street, it’s a two-way street.” This isn’t just talk from a war-hungry man. This is the continual assault on what our future looks like, our connections with our allies, and the stability of the entire world.

As he rattled this all off, I kept thinking about our readers outside the United States, the ones who write to me, who watch this from abroad with a mix of disbelief and grief. I want to say this directly to you: I know what we are doing to your energy supply. I know what this instability is costing your families. You are being held hostage by decisions you had no vote in and no warning about. So many of us don’t just see this; we are actively resisting what they are doing. And we will prove this in November when we vote his congressional enablers out and start the long process of repairing the harm they have done.

After Hegseth finished his prepared remarks, General Caine took the podium. And if Hegseth was the swagger, Caine was the whitewash. He spoke in the measured, procedural cadence of someone who has spent a career learning how to make things sound orderly. He gave precise timestamps. He used military terminology. He described the boarding of the Touska with the kind of clinical detail that is designed to make an illegal blockade sound like a routine logistics operation. He honored the fallen. He praised the intelligence community. He thanked the families.

It was a performance of institutional legitimacy in service of something that has none. Because here is what we should not lose sight of when we hear that calm, professional voice: General Caine is carrying out orders for a war that was never authorized by Congress. He is the operational face of an administration that has killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children, with no legal mandate from the legislative branch of this government. He may be the more competent man in that room. He may understand things about naval operations that Hegseth will never grasp. But competence in the service of lawlessness is not a virtue. It is cover. And history will not remember him kindly for providing it.

Then came the questions. A reporter asked Hegseth about Pope Leo, who has publicly called this war unjust, and about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued a statement saying it does not meet the requirements of just war theory. The Pope and the American Catholic bishops together represent one of the oldest and most consistent moral frameworks for evaluating the use of military force in human history.

Hegseth’s answer was this: “Pope’s gonna do his thing.” For a man who claims to be religious, who invokes Bible verses as often as he can, his response told us exactly how religious he really is.

The last time an American administration publicly dismissed the Pope’s moral authority on a war was Iraq. Pope John Paul II spoke out clearly and repeatedly against the invasion. The Bush administration went in anyway. We know how that ended. Twenty-plus years, trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and a region that has still not recovered. And now here we are again, with a different pope, a different war, and the exact same shrug from the men holding the power.

And then came the questions from TMZ DC. Yes, the same TMZ that focuses primarily on celebrities but has also been picking up their coverage of political news. Since Pete Hegseth has systematically dismantled press access at the Pentagon, the briefing room is now filled largely with right-wing and other alternative outlets like TMZ DC, a new bureau of the celebrity tabloid, instead of actual journalists. Their reporter, Jacob Wasserman, stood up and asked the question that appeared to catch Hegseth off guard.

“I’ve heard you talk a lot about bombing people and places. And when you give these orders to carry out this extreme level of violence, what’s going through your mind and your body? Do you have, like, an adrenaline rush? Are you scared? Do you feel like you’re on a power trip? Just walk us through and paint us a picture of what it feels like mentally and physically.”

Hegseth’s answer: “It’s a very TMZ question. My only thought process is to ensure that our warfighters have everything they need to be successful, defeat and destroy the enemy, and they come home. I want them to feel empowered, to have every authority they need within our rules and within our law to bring maximum violence to the enemy, because war is violent, war requires doing difficult things, but I want our people to feel empowered, so it’s our guys that come home and their guys that do not.”

He never answered it. He never denied that this war is making him feel powerful or that it gives him pause when he thinks of the human toll for not just our military and their families but also the civilians caught in the gunfire.

His lack of answer makes him exactly the wrong person for this job. His lack of care for other people, for the cost of war, and his constant grandiose positioning are dangerous qualities to be held by a man who has enabled the commander in chief to act out violently in other countries, on boats in international waters, and of course, on citizens back here at home. Trump has already fired 3 cabinet members and multiple people right below them in their departments. Pete Hegseth needs to go next.

I spent the better part of today walking through Washington, D.C., just to see how much it has changed since I was last here toward the middle of Joe Biden’s presidency. And it has. You can’t get close to the White House. There is construction everywhere, projects nobody asked for, vanity wrapped in patriotism, polishing the area ahead of the 250th birthday party for a country on the verge. National Guard members stand posted on corners or drift in small groups, away from their families, so that the president’s paranoia is satisfied.

If I told you all it was painful to be here, right now, under this leadership, it would be the greatest understatement I have ever made. Not because I don’t love my country, or feel a connection to the past in this town, or to those who have walked these streets and sacrificed so that I could be here and able to write these words, but because I do. And I can see exactly what we are losing. I can feel the distance growing between what this country is supposed to be and what it is becoming. And it’s happening so quickly, right in front of us, that it almost feels unreal.

But then I reminded myself that nearly every single vote that has come since he was put back into office, redistricting and other local and state races, has been a vote against him, his chaos, and his cruelty. A vote against authoritarian takeover.

And in November, if we keep the pressure up, if we can continue to open more eyes to the danger we are in as a country, we will take back power and slow-roll the rest of his presidency. Or maybe even have both Trump and J.D. Vance removed from office through impeachment and removal proceedings. There is a path by which this could actually happen, and we need to do whatever we can to ensure it does.

And until then, we find other ways to push back, like Senator Thom Tillis has done. After making it clear he would not move forward on Trump’s Federal Reserve nominee until the Department of Justice dropped its politically motivated criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the DOJ dropped it today. That is a Republican drawing a line and holding it, and the pressure working. Which tells us that if we can get more lawmakers, financial enablers, and others in his inner circles to start adding guardrails, he can be controlled and stopped from wreaking more havoc on the world.

That is the model we must follow. It is not glamorous or a revolution. It is friction. It is making everything they want harder to get. It is finding the people who still have dignity and some resemblance of care for our country and its future, and using their leverage to push back. It is showing up in November with the kind of turnout that takes both chambers back and starts the process of real accountability, not just for this war, but for all of it. And from what we keep seeing in polling numbers and past elections, we have a real chance to make that a reality. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: The “view” of the White House. Not pictured was a lone woman, sitting in her lawn chair, with protest signs against Trump and his administration. She is a real patriot.

Sources:

https://www.iea.org/news/iea-warns-europe-faces-jet-fuel-shortage-amid-iran-war

https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-trump/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/04/22/strait-hormuz-mines-six-months/

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/04/08/pentagon-data-13-us-troops-killed-346-wounded-in-operation-epic-fury/

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/doj-criminal-probe-of-powell

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5793749/what-the-sudden-turnover-in-trumps-cabinet-means-for-him-politically

https://www.britannica.com/event/2026-Iran-war