Pete Hegseth was the year behind me at Princeton and seemed to be a relatively mainstream conservative who might be a decent leader sometime. If that was the end of the story, I'd be rooting for my underclassman.
What makes him TOTALLY unfit for the office of Secretary of Defense is his shameful cheerleading for war criminal Eddie Gallagher:
"In 2019, Mr. Hegseth lobbied heavily on behalf of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a member of the Navy SEALs who was acquitted of serious war crimes in Iraq. Mr. Trump reversed a demotion ordered as punishment, then fired the Navy secretary, whom Mr. Hegseth had aggressively criticized."
"Mr. Hegseth defended Chief Gallagher on Fox News and spoke to Mr. Trump several times about the case. 'From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,' he said."
"Mr. Hegseth’s book, the New York Times best-seller 'The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,' was published in June. 'Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’s John McClane in ‘Die Hard,’' Mr. Hegseth wrote in the book. 'But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and deadly.'"[1]
"Platoon members said they saw Chief Gallagher shoot civilians and fatally stab a wounded captive with a hunting knife. Chief Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury in July of all but a single relatively minor charge, and was cleared of all punishment in November by Mr. Trump."
"Video from a SEAL’s helmet camera, included in the trove of materials, shows the barely conscious captive — a teenage Islamic State fighter so thin that his watch slid easily up and down his arm — being brought in to the platoon one day in May 2017. Then the helmet camera is shut off."
"In the video interviews with investigators, three SEALs said they saw Chief Gallagher go on to stab the sedated captive for no reason, and then hold an impromptu re-enlistment ceremony over the body, as if it were a trophy."
"'I was listening to it, and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,' Special Operator Miller, who has since been promoted to chief, told investigators."
"Special Operator Miller said that when the platoon commander, Lt. Jacob Portier, told the SEALs to gather over the corpse for photos, he did not feel he could refuse. The photos, included in the evidence obtained by The Times, show Chief Gallagher, surrounded by other SEALs, clutching the dead captive’s hair; in one photo, he holds a custom-made hunting knife."
And I am sure this will be a huge factor in his confirmation hearings. And it could be a deal breaker. But also, Hegseth is the ringer. He’s the guy who will take all the heat and oxygen while other nominees sail through. I believe it was a political calculus.
Alright, this post needs to be updated for Matt Gaetz. As much as Hegseth is a head scratcher, Gaetz having his fat thumb on the scale of justice tells us a lot about how this administration plans to mette out justice. Scary stuff.
The personalities or characters chosen matter little as they will be simply doing the masters bidding. I can hardly wait till we get to see them seated around the table telling us all how great trump is. Far be it from me to be judgemental of how they function; they all deserve the opportunity to show us what they can do.
Because Steve you know as well as i do, no one can upstage trump; not even good old Leon. My guess is once he starts the promised "hardship" on us all, trump will explode. The king of debt has no problem running the tab up to try and look good. Is there any irony in one of the richest men in the world we are going to have to suffer?
Deporting 10 million, or is it 25 million people, will be no small task. It will break the bank as well as the industries they work in. I guess bailouts (like they did with the farmers) will be the order of the day. Next up will be the tariffs. It may not be as bad as we thought. Sounds like trump is entertaining companies paying him (personally?) for waivers on their products. Good old American no how (oops, my bad know-how) when it comes to grift; there is no one more accomplished than the man, the myth, the legend.
What i am truly excited about is watching trump fulfill his promises on all the tax cuts he proposed: Seniors, overtime, tipped wages and lets to forget the biggie restoring the sun-setting provision for those struggling billionaires. Let the largess begin/explode.
See, i am squarely in the JVL school of thought; "let trump be trump." With no disrespect to those hired, several come with the credentials of once being honorable and honest about who and what trump was/is. Once they sold their soul and kissed the ring we know he owns them.
Make no mistake Steve, this will be the trump show. Everyone (including Leon) will be bit players. Which is exactly why it will be the Three Stooges, Monty Python and SNL rolled into one.
Me? I am going to sit back and watch the shit show as it unfolds and simply laugh at how pathetically inept (i am being kind here) about what the voters of this country have done. Pass the pop corn brother and buckle up, the show is about to begin.
Something a bit unrelated, but Marco Rubio stated that Trump is owed deference in his cabinet picks "as a president with a mandate".
We're currently sitting at ~2% popular vote differential between Harris and Trump, 48.2% to 50.2% - and that number is likely to change to Trump getting under 50%. I'm pretty sure no one thought Biden had any mandate with a 4.4% popular vote differential and 51.6% of the popular vote.
Well little hands Marco owes him deference, that is for sure. It is amazing how much Trump emasculates some of these people to see them crawling back for more. I actually think Rubio as SoS is fine, he may even control some of trump’s worst foreign policy impulses to a certain degree (sh*tting on NATO), but I don’t have a lot of respect for him. If I was being profane there would be something about Trump’s female dogs here.
Re: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), per Fox this morning...
Ramaswamy on X: DOGE will soon begin crowdsourcing examples of government waste, fraud & and (sic) abuse. Americans voted for drastic government reform & they deserve to be part of fixing it.
Musk on X: All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.
Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!
We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining [two crying-laughing faces]
We already have an office that deals with this: the GAO. We save $133 for every $1 spent on the GAO, and we'd save ~$200bil if all the GAO recommendations were enacted.
Ok you can flip out now. Matt Gaetz as AG? Sorry no.
I was a bout to tell you I look forward to your revised edition. Gaetz, Robert Kennedy....WTH?
Pete Hegseth was the year behind me at Princeton and seemed to be a relatively mainstream conservative who might be a decent leader sometime. If that was the end of the story, I'd be rooting for my underclassman.
What makes him TOTALLY unfit for the office of Secretary of Defense is his shameful cheerleading for war criminal Eddie Gallagher:
"In 2019, Mr. Hegseth lobbied heavily on behalf of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a member of the Navy SEALs who was acquitted of serious war crimes in Iraq. Mr. Trump reversed a demotion ordered as punishment, then fired the Navy secretary, whom Mr. Hegseth had aggressively criticized."
"Mr. Hegseth defended Chief Gallagher on Fox News and spoke to Mr. Trump several times about the case. 'From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,' he said."
"Mr. Hegseth’s book, the New York Times best-seller 'The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,' was published in June. 'Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’s John McClane in ‘Die Hard,’' Mr. Hegseth wrote in the book. 'But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and deadly.'"[1]
#MAGA: Make Atrocities Great Again.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/us/politics/pete-hegseth-defense-secretary-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk4.TNj4.iQ_0I1W2dID1&smid=url-share
Yeah I remember that now. Not particularly a good look.
"Platoon members said they saw Chief Gallagher shoot civilians and fatally stab a wounded captive with a hunting knife. Chief Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury in July of all but a single relatively minor charge, and was cleared of all punishment in November by Mr. Trump."
"Video from a SEAL’s helmet camera, included in the trove of materials, shows the barely conscious captive — a teenage Islamic State fighter so thin that his watch slid easily up and down his arm — being brought in to the platoon one day in May 2017. Then the helmet camera is shut off."
"In the video interviews with investigators, three SEALs said they saw Chief Gallagher go on to stab the sedated captive for no reason, and then hold an impromptu re-enlistment ceremony over the body, as if it were a trophy."
"'I was listening to it, and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,' Special Operator Miller, who has since been promoted to chief, told investigators."
"Special Operator Miller said that when the platoon commander, Lt. Jacob Portier, told the SEALs to gather over the corpse for photos, he did not feel he could refuse. The photos, included in the evidence obtained by The Times, show Chief Gallagher, surrounded by other SEALs, clutching the dead captive’s hair; in one photo, he holds a custom-made hunting knife."
Evil.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/us/navy-seals-edward-gallagher-video.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk4.tVOC.IP6O0t0IqZxL&smid=url-share
And I am sure this will be a huge factor in his confirmation hearings. And it could be a deal breaker. But also, Hegseth is the ringer. He’s the guy who will take all the heat and oxygen while other nominees sail through. I believe it was a political calculus.
Why: He sounds like the perfect candidate for trump's band of brothers?
He picked a sex trafficker and an actual Russian spy. Glorious.
Alright, this post needs to be updated for Matt Gaetz. As much as Hegseth is a head scratcher, Gaetz having his fat thumb on the scale of justice tells us a lot about how this administration plans to mette out justice. Scary stuff.
The personalities or characters chosen matter little as they will be simply doing the masters bidding. I can hardly wait till we get to see them seated around the table telling us all how great trump is. Far be it from me to be judgemental of how they function; they all deserve the opportunity to show us what they can do.
Because Steve you know as well as i do, no one can upstage trump; not even good old Leon. My guess is once he starts the promised "hardship" on us all, trump will explode. The king of debt has no problem running the tab up to try and look good. Is there any irony in one of the richest men in the world we are going to have to suffer?
Deporting 10 million, or is it 25 million people, will be no small task. It will break the bank as well as the industries they work in. I guess bailouts (like they did with the farmers) will be the order of the day. Next up will be the tariffs. It may not be as bad as we thought. Sounds like trump is entertaining companies paying him (personally?) for waivers on their products. Good old American no how (oops, my bad know-how) when it comes to grift; there is no one more accomplished than the man, the myth, the legend.
What i am truly excited about is watching trump fulfill his promises on all the tax cuts he proposed: Seniors, overtime, tipped wages and lets to forget the biggie restoring the sun-setting provision for those struggling billionaires. Let the largess begin/explode.
See, i am squarely in the JVL school of thought; "let trump be trump." With no disrespect to those hired, several come with the credentials of once being honorable and honest about who and what trump was/is. Once they sold their soul and kissed the ring we know he owns them.
Make no mistake Steve, this will be the trump show. Everyone (including Leon) will be bit players. Which is exactly why it will be the Three Stooges, Monty Python and SNL rolled into one.
Me? I am going to sit back and watch the shit show as it unfolds and simply laugh at how pathetically inept (i am being kind here) about what the voters of this country have done. Pass the pop corn brother and buckle up, the show is about to begin.
Is there a part 2 to this post?
I think today’s Gong Show post might do.
Something a bit unrelated, but Marco Rubio stated that Trump is owed deference in his cabinet picks "as a president with a mandate".
We're currently sitting at ~2% popular vote differential between Harris and Trump, 48.2% to 50.2% - and that number is likely to change to Trump getting under 50%. I'm pretty sure no one thought Biden had any mandate with a 4.4% popular vote differential and 51.6% of the popular vote.
Well little hands Marco owes him deference, that is for sure. It is amazing how much Trump emasculates some of these people to see them crawling back for more. I actually think Rubio as SoS is fine, he may even control some of trump’s worst foreign policy impulses to a certain degree (sh*tting on NATO), but I don’t have a lot of respect for him. If I was being profane there would be something about Trump’s female dogs here.
Nah, Rubio will roll over every time.
Surely the Senate will quash these nominations...
'the bain of Harvard University"
I believe you meant "bane"
Yeah I saw that. Blame fat fingers. Fixed it.
Re: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), per Fox this morning...
Ramaswamy on X: DOGE will soon begin crowdsourcing examples of government waste, fraud & and (sic) abuse. Americans voted for drastic government reform & they deserve to be part of fixing it.
Musk on X: All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.
Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!
We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining [two crying-laughing faces]
Wish i had said it; from The Bulwark commentary this morning: Perfect; "two heads to run the dept of efficiency."
You've got to love the irony.
We already have an office that deals with this: the GAO. We save $133 for every $1 spent on the GAO, and we'd save ~$200bil if all the GAO recommendations were enacted.