Pete Hegseth headed to Capitol Hill Tuesday to ask for another vast pile of money for a war that’s long over or isn’t over or has been going on for decades or is all Joe Biden’s fault anyway. The War-Not-Defense Secretary was making a request for an additional $87.6 billion for the Pentagon, over $70 billion of which appeared to be headed straight to the war he started in Iran.
Senators were not amused.
U.S. intelligence experts have reportedly warned the Trump administration that there’s no end in sight for the conflict, an insight underlined on Monday by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announcing: “[Trump] should know that, by God’s grace, even if this war lasts for several years, until the very last day, our missiles and drones will rain down on American criminals.” Definitely sounds like something a few more drones and bombs will fix, doesn’t it?
Yet Hegseth’s favorite war is a culture war, and nothing could remind us more of this than his appearance Tuesday. He arrived late, which was remarked upon sardonically by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the committee’s chairwoman. (“Let’s leave it to the military people to be on time,” she said, as Hegseth, Caine and their entourage filed in without apology.) And from that moment onwards, he had very little to say if it wasn’t about Joe Biden.
“We live in a dangerous world,” Hegseth announced in his opening statement, before adding that Biden had presided over “social experiments and globalist appeasement,” something that for some unknown reason was relevant to his ask for more funding. The Pentagon is “no longer run by bureaucrats,” he added; instead, it’s “running like a business,” which does sound awfully bureaucratic to me, but what do I know?
“We’re bringing lethal innovation to the battlefield,” Hegseth told the room. It’s the kind of “lethality” that provides “peace through strength,” Hegseth added, with absolutely no sense of irony. Only Hegseth could do this job, because only he can deliver lines like this with a straight face.
Peace is being guaranteed through killing, “this year’s demands” have gone up unexpectedly but not because of the war we started, and we’ve always been at war with Iran, he also insiisted. Yes, we need to expand production lines and accelerate delivery of munitions, he told senators. But that’s totally not to do with that war in the Middle East, and instead it’s to do with AI, a space race, and — of course — Joe Biden.
These are desperate attack lines and the more he was questioned, the more ridiculous they looked. Why are emergency funds needed right now when you still have cash and you could go to Congress and legitimize the war in the usual way? asked Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
Extra funding is needed because of “the gross negligence of the Biden administration,” who ran the department “like a bureaucracy,” Hegseth repeated. He then went on a long aside about recruiting records and how Americans are desperate to “sign up for what President Trump is doing” after they weren’t inspired by Biden.
“My point is that a lot of this doesn’t sound like an emergency,” Murray interrupted. She then quoted his own words back to him in April — when he claimed that Iran’s military capabilities were functionally destroyed — and Hegseth paused.
“They’re in the worst place they’ve ever been,” he said, eventually.
What was going on with Trump’s abandoned claim that he would charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, asked Murray? Hegseth stammered. He was asked again, and eventually settled on: “We have a blockade.” Congratulations, I guess?
Dick Durbin, the Democratic senator from Illinois, picked up later, pressing Hegseth on precisely why he’d need an emergency sum of $70 billion if he already had that exact amount still hanging around from the last budget: “You’ve left some change on the dresser,” in Durbin’s words.
And again, Hegseth went straight back to Biden: we’re “rebuilding the military” from what was done under the Biden administration, he said, and we need to “move away from all the woke priorities of what Biden was pursuing.” There were no specific examples of those woke priorities given, of course, but perhaps they included pansy things like not bombing girls’ schools or democratic norms.
In a telling moment during his questioning by Durbin, Hegseth got wound up and shouted a complete non sequitur: “The Biden administration ignored hypersonics! … I don’t know what [Biden’s Joint Chiefs Chair] Lloyd Austin did for five years! I really don’t!”
“Let me interrupt your speech, Mr Secretary. It’s my turn to ask questions,” Durbin responded, before asking whether Hegseth has an estimate on how much the war he started has cost America so far. The answer, by the way, was $37.5 billion.
“Your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very, very obvious excuse for what you described [earlier, when attacking Biden] as gross negligence,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), as Hegseth launched into yet another Biden tirade a few minutes later. Hegseth responded with stomach-turning sycophantry about his boss: “President Trump deserves praise” for having “the courage” to go to war, even while it was unpopular, he began, in a spiraling rant that veered into the out-of-control.
“So he should be praised for starting a war without authority” and collapsing the economy, Reed asked incredulously? He raised his eyebrows and then stated: “Let me switch to General Caine.” And Caine, ever the foil to the mad-eyed Hegseth, simply stated that it would be “unhelpful for me to opine on theoreticals.”
Seventeen Americans dead, one missing, a forever war, a destabilized nation, skyrocketing oil costs and fertilizer costs in the middle of planting season — and with that kind of a track record, why wouldn’t you give someone $70 billion more?
Hegseth is famous for saying, back when I was 20 years younger and the Trump administration’s war with Iran had only recently begun, that “this is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change”. Similarly, this is not a so-called article about a vastly under-qualified man bleeding the country financially dry in order to destabilize the Middle East again, but funnily enough, a vastly underqualified man is currently bleeding the country dry in order to destabilize the Middle East.
They told the Army men to stop being woke and fat, though! And not a single female member of the military has been promoted to admiral this year!
If that kind of leadership isn’t worth another $70 to $80 billion, I don’t know what is. And anyway, did you hear the one about Joe Biden?
