During a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, where he updated reporters on the Strait of Hormuz blockade, Hegseth also slammed the news media and its coverage of Operation Epic Fury.
“I just can't help but notice the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling,” he complained to Pentagon reporters and the news media in general.
Recalling the Sunday morning sermon he heard just days earlier, which was how the Pharisees criticized Jesus for healing a blind man on the Sabbath, Hegseth unhappily compared that New Testament story to reporters covering Epic Fury.
“I sat there and I thought, Our press are just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth told reporters. “Your politically motivated animus for President (Donald) Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors.”
Now seven weeks into the military campaign, Hegseth said Epic Fury has met and exceeded the Pentagon’s stated goals to crush Iran’s military and IRGC, with that list of targets shared online by U.S. Central Command.
Hegseth also pointed to the Air Force rescue missions conducted to locate and return downed U.S. pilots. One of those missions, with a plot that sounds like a Hollywood film, involved the daring daylight rescue of the F-15 co-pilot with Iranian troops closing in.
That “blindness” Hegseth was talking about is really left-wing hatred directed at President Trump that is often referred to as Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS. It means a person’s hatred for President Trump runs so deep it hinders a person’s ability to see and think rationally.
One example of that was Lawrence O’Donnell, the MS NOW host. Regarding the rescue of the downed pilots, he ranted that Hegseth stating “leave no man behind” was a chauvinistic statement because women are fighter pilots, too.
A more recent example, from the weekend, was liberal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. In a CNN interview, he said he wants the Iran regime defeated but not if President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are “politically strengthened” by its defeat.
“The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation,” Hegseth lectured reporters days later. “The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn.”
As if the news media was tricked into proving Hegseth’s point, media coverage of the Wednesday press conference misrepresented a portion of the event. Driven largely by Democrats on social media, news stories wrongly reported Hegseth had recited a Bible verse he lifted from “Pulp Fiction,” the violent Quintin Tarantino film, at the press conference.
An online search by AFN shows numerous news outlets laughed at the Secretary of War, known to be a church-attending Christian, for seeming to quote the made-up Bible verse used in the film by Samuel L. Jackson’s hit-man character.
After the mockery of Hegseth had a good headstart, people with knowledge of the Bible verse came to Hegseth’s defense, not because they know their Bible but because they watched the entire Pentagon clip for the context that was excluded online.
Among the people defending the Secretary of War was Navy veteran Matthew Buckley, a former F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilot. On his X account, Buckley pointed out Hegseth was citing the unit motto from CSAR, the Combat Search and Rescue unit in the Air Force. It was CSAR, and its para-rescuers, that had led the effort to find and rescue the F-15 pilot.
Buckley, and many others, pointed out the full context showed Hegseth was humorously praising CSAR and recited the unit's motto that is a nod to the Tarantino film.
“We run on movie quotes, folks,” Buckley said, reciting several films with memorable lines that are routinely quoted by military units.
“But hyper-partisan hacks, who wouldn't know the Bible if it hit them in the face, got their talking points and are executing their daily faux outrage. It must be exhausting being so stupid,” the former Navy pilot wrote.
