True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 491: One Bottle After Another
Aired: 2025-09-25
Duration: 01:57:09


=== Pete Follows (01:59) ===

[00:00:00]  My name is Pete Hayseth and tonight we're declaring war on Iran.
[00:00:08]  They've struck at our troops and shit like that and just it's just fucking so stupid.
[00:00:19]  You want to like slur more.
[00:00:21]  It's just fucking so stupid the way.
[00:00:24]  what if Pete Hegson was just on fentanyl instead?
[00:00:26]  He's like, don't say anything.
[00:00:33]  He's like, that's great.
[00:00:34]  He's a great audio for the show.
[00:00:37]  He just follows.
[00:00:38]  You know what, dude?
[00:00:38]  That's who you should say.
[00:00:39]  It's like, Hegseth, you like to drink so much.
[00:00:42]  You know what else is great?
[00:00:45]  Carfentanil.
[00:01:14]  There she is.
[00:01:15]  Hello, hello, hello.
[00:01:17]  Hello.
[00:01:18]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:19]  My name is Brace.
[00:01:21]  I'm producer Jon Chomsky.
[00:01:22]  And this is Truanon.
[00:01:24]  Hello.
[00:01:25]  The world's number one millennial conservative podcast.
[00:01:31]  Who support our warfighters in their efforts against war.
[00:01:35]  Or wait.
[00:01:36]  Against the people we're fighting.
[00:01:38]  And in our wars.
[00:01:40]  At home and abroad.
[00:01:42]  In abroad.
[00:01:43]  And not too many broads.
[00:01:45]  Against the broads and at home in the home with the broads.
[00:01:50]  You know, many these days have been remarking on my conservative turn just because I'm such a firebrand voice for freedom.

=== Rob Belden's Middle Name Debate (06:55) ===

[00:01:59]  I don't think that's true.
[00:02:01]  A lot of people are calling me conservative Hitler.
[00:02:04]  They didn't think it could be done.
[00:02:06]  They didn't think it could be done.
[00:02:07]  Because, of course, the original was a socialist.
[00:02:09]  But, yeah, that's just, I'm bringing faithful freedom back from wherever it was.
[00:02:19]  Into Hitlerism?
[00:02:21]  Into Hitlerism.
[00:02:22]  Into Hitlerism.
[00:02:24]  Hitler.
[00:02:24]  Tough name on that one.
[00:02:26]  Yeah, sure.
[00:02:26]  Of course.
[00:02:26]  Famously.
[00:02:27]  I barely know her.
[00:02:29]  It's, come on.
[00:02:32]  Barely know who.
[00:02:33]  Her.
[00:02:34]  No, fair enough.
[00:02:36]  Adolph.
[00:02:37]  You don't hear too much of those anymore either, but blah, Everyone knows that.
[00:02:41]  It's interesting.
[00:02:41]  People always remark on the lack of Hitlers and the lack of Adolphs after World War II.
[00:02:46]  Explosion, however, in Mengelas.
[00:02:51]  Well, that was his project.
[00:02:52]  If that was his project.
[00:02:53]  We should go to Twin Town.
[00:02:55]  I've thought about it.
[00:02:56]  They say it's debunked, but I don't think it's debunked.
[00:02:59]  We should bunk it.
[00:03:00]  We should be like, look at all these twins.
[00:03:02]  Look at all these fucking twits.
[00:03:03]  He did this.
[00:03:04]  There's all the Germans down there, too.
[00:03:06]  There are all the Germans down there.
[00:03:07]  But why would you want more twins?
[00:03:10]  I think it was more of an experiment of if you could architect the twins.
[00:03:14]  Yeah, but this question remains.
[00:03:18]  Well, if you are.
[00:03:20]  I can't pretend to embody Joseph Mengela, though, of course, I've tried.
[00:03:26]  You can't pretend to, because you do.
[00:03:28]  It's authentic.
[00:03:30]  No, but I do think if you are into certain strains of esotericism, that the twin soul connection is very fascinating to you.
[00:03:42]  And the kind of mind psychic connection.
[00:03:48]  What do you think that's something to explore?
[00:03:50]  What do you think the Polish Mengela would focus on?
[00:03:53]  He'd probably make the mule, huh?
[00:03:54]  Oof.
[00:03:56]  I think that focus is about as far as it would go.
[00:04:00]  A new kind of like tinned fish, maybe.
[00:04:03]  I created him.
[00:04:05]  A sardine even smaller.
[00:04:07]  Unable to eat it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:04:09]  I can see that you're not smiling anymore.
[00:04:11]  In fact, you're kind of doing the opposite, which I would call a frown.
[00:04:14]  So perhaps we should just get on with it and talk about maybe the episode today.
[00:04:22]  Which is about Peter Hagseth.
[00:04:23]  Peter Brian Hagseth.
[00:04:27]  Let's not bury the lead.
[00:04:28]  Let's not bury the lead.
[00:04:29]  His name is Peter Brian.
[00:04:30]  Peter Brian Hagseth.
[00:04:32]  Middle names are tough.
[00:04:33]  They don't need to be.
[00:04:35]  But they often are.
[00:04:36]  Not for me.
[00:04:37]  You think I should start going by Rob?
[00:04:39]  No.
[00:04:40]  For my middle name?
[00:04:42]  Rob Belden?
[00:04:43]  Rob Belden.
[00:04:44]  It's a little bit of an Erica Girts.
[00:04:46]  No, just call me Rob.
[00:04:47]  Rob Belden.
[00:04:48]  Rob.
[00:04:48]  Rob Belden.
[00:04:49]  Because of my greats.
[00:04:51]  Who do we got out there?
[00:04:52]  Who's a big Rob?
[00:04:53]  You should be Rob, but R-O-B-B-E.
[00:04:58]  Yeah.
[00:04:59]  There's a certain kind of like the Baron, you know?
[00:05:03]  Rob.
[00:05:06]  Yeah, I might, maybe you're just a full Robert.
[00:05:08]  Do you know my middle name?
[00:05:11]  You know how many times women have asked me that?
[00:05:14]  I'm not just blanket women.
[00:05:16]  I'm Liz.
[00:05:18]  And Franzak.
[00:05:19]  That's right.
[00:05:20]  Yeah.
[00:05:21]  And they always think you're going to get this.
[00:05:22]  Listen, fellas out there, and I know this is an episode.
[00:05:26]  Well, I'm not going to say it's a cross-purpose of what I'm about to say, but it's not exactly aligned with what I'm about to say.
[00:05:31]  Women frequently try to trick you.
[00:05:33]  No, this is not.
[00:05:34]  An episode is about how that's not true.
[00:05:37]  Well, women sometimes ask you, what's my middle name?
[00:05:41]  And the answer I actually want to say to them is I am so busy thinking about ways to provide for you and to nurture you and to help you that that's my mind is so filled with that stuff that extraneous details like this.
[00:05:58]  It's not an extraneous detail.
[00:06:00]  It's an extraneous detail.
[00:06:02]  How is it extraneous?
[00:06:03]  Because to me, the middle name, thy middle name is beauty always.
[00:06:08]  You know what I mean?
[00:06:09]  Do you think the middle name, because I know, you know, a lot of places don't do middle names.
[00:06:13]  The Chinese probably don't.
[00:06:15]  Brazil, you don't do a middle name.
[00:06:16]  Koreans?
[00:06:18]  I don't know.
[00:06:19]  I'm just saying other nationalities.
[00:06:20]  I have no idea what any of them.
[00:06:22]  Do you think it's an extra name or like also part of the name?
[00:06:26]  It's a backup.
[00:06:27]  Do you think it's a backup?
[00:06:28]  I think it's a backup.
[00:06:30]  Okay.
[00:06:30]  Yeah.
[00:06:31]  I went to middle school with a guy who had the same first name, last name, and middle initial as me.
[00:06:36]  I thought the middle name was important.
[00:06:38]  Once I was in, I was in, I was in Portland, Oregon.
[00:06:41]  And I really learned a lot about the world.
[00:06:43]  And I convinced a group of people that my name was Brace, Brace, Brace Belden.
[00:06:49]  And it was probably sort of spiritually inspired by Butros, Boutros Galley.
[00:06:55]  But yeah, and it worked.
[00:06:57]  I feel like three is one too many.
[00:06:59]  Brace, Brace.
[00:07:00]  Well, it's the middle one's hyphenated.
[00:07:02]  I think it should be like...
[00:07:03]  Oh, so it was Brace Brace Brace.
[00:07:05]  Brace Belden.
[00:07:06]  Yeah.
[00:07:07]  I like Brace, Brace, Belden.
[00:07:08]  Brace, Brace Belden.
[00:07:10]  Because they were like, you don't get, because to me, they're like, we're dropping you behind enemy lines with no backup.
[00:07:15]  That's what being named Brace Robert Belden is to me.
[00:07:18]  you're going to be named Brace or you're going to start going by Rob and that is a bridge that you're not a Rob I'm not a Rob.
[00:07:25]  I'm just so clearly not a Rob.
[00:07:27]  And love to all the Robs out there, right?
[00:07:29]  I'm not talking about any Rob.
[00:07:31]  I'm just saying how you're not a Rob.
[00:07:32]  I'm just not like that.
[00:07:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:07:34]  I'm Brace.
[00:07:35]  But I'm like, because my kids, I just name them numbers.
[00:07:38]  Sure.
[00:07:38]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:07:38]  Well, easier than three, four, five, six.
[00:07:40]  Well, it goes up from there.
[00:07:41]  It goes up from there.
[00:07:42]  But of course it's easier.
[00:07:43]  You know, they're all across the country.
[00:07:44]  And about saying, well, once we get to about eight, it starts actually Spanish.
[00:07:47]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:07:48]  And we start over.
[00:07:50]  We got one and Uno.
[00:07:51]  They're best friends, though.
[00:07:53]  But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's tough.
[00:07:56]  I feel like the middle name is always there as either a SOP to a relative because we're like, well, we didn't name him after you, but we still love you, right?
[00:08:06]  Hortense, you know?
[00:08:09]  Or as if you don't like the first one, we're giving you the option to take the second name.
[00:08:16]  It's meant to be part of the first or it makes your so it's like a whole it's like a package deal Oh, yeah.
[00:08:23]  Like if I called you Elizabeth Ann or something.
[00:08:26]  Or perhaps like Peter Bryan, to bring it back.
[00:08:28]  Peter Bryan.
[00:08:29]  But my feeling is that you should name your kid a middle name that just makes them have funny initials.
[00:08:36]  That's why you should do it.
[00:08:37]  I mean, myself, it's BRB, which, of course, I predict.
[00:08:41]  And it's not funny.
[00:08:42]  But, you know, if it was, for instance, B-U-T-T.
[00:08:45]  But why would that be happen?
[00:08:50]  Like Brian Uvalde Taylor Thomas.

=== Welcome Back: Diaper Talk (04:18) ===

[00:08:55]  Right?
[00:08:55]  Hyphenated last name.
[00:08:57]  Why would you do that to your kids?
[00:08:59]  Because they would probably find it funny until about age five.
[00:09:02]  And then it would ruin their life.
[00:09:03]  But you know what?
[00:09:04]  Diamonds come from heated steel.
[00:09:08]  Just no.
[00:09:10]  But they could.
[00:09:12]  But I will say, perhaps, like Pete Hegseth.
[00:09:16]  Pete Hegseth.
[00:09:19]  So, okay, I see what she's trying to do here.
[00:09:21]  She's trying to get us to start the episode.
[00:09:22]  So we are here.
[00:09:23]  Because I don't think people want to hear us do like a tight 10 on middle names.
[00:09:27]  Well, it wasn't very tight.
[00:09:29]  It certainly wasn't 10.
[00:09:31]  But we did talk about middle names.
[00:09:33]  And now, for a tight four hours, we're going to talk about Peter Hegset.
[00:09:38]  Let's gong it in.
[00:09:50]  What would you do if you opened your eyes?
[00:09:52]  Saw a grown man wearing a diaper.
[00:09:56]  Would you scream?
[00:09:58]  Would you recoil?
[00:10:00]  Would you approach curiously as if you saw a strange spider?
[00:10:05]  Would you judge?
[00:10:07]  Would you judge a man as having a fetish?
[00:10:10]  Perhaps he likes to be a widow baby.
[00:10:13]  But consider this.
[00:10:14]  Not everyone who wears a diaper is wearing one because they like to pretend to be a baby because it makes them horny.
[00:10:22]  And the poo-poo stuff.
[00:10:24]  Some people wear diapers because they're drunk and can't control their bowels.
[00:10:30]  Our Department of War, formerly Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is possibly one of these men.
[00:10:38]  You don't like this?
[00:10:39]  No.
[00:10:40]  Do you think that he's wearing a diaper?
[00:10:41]  Do you think he's diper?
[00:10:42]  I'm just saying, of all of the people, a lot of people, I think, think that Trump is wearing a diaper because of his age.
[00:10:47]  And I can see it.
[00:10:48]  And because there's a blousiness, or not a blousiness, there's a thickness to his wooden carriage.
[00:10:52]  Sure.
[00:10:53]  You know what I mean?
[00:10:53]  That you're like, that surely can't be all air or but.
[00:10:57]  He's a bit thick with it.
[00:10:58]  I know, but there's, it's almost like, you know, how some people, as they say, muffin top?
[00:11:04]  He sort of muffin, it's like a muffin is upside down.
[00:11:07]  Sure.
[00:11:07]  And his ass is so significantly bigger than his waist at points that one must, you know, you follow the clues a little bit.
[00:11:14]  Yeah, he's a bit pear-shaped as well.
[00:11:16]  But yes, correct, correct.
[00:11:19]  Hegseth, I would say, is a close second because I think, and I'm just saying it's, I'm not, I don't know, I think that it's possible that his years of intense abuse of John Barleycorn could have so messed up his guts that he goes in the trousers.
[00:11:38]  Here to talk with us exclusively about that specific thing is a man who sounds like he writes for the newspaper in Sleepy Ho.
[00:11:48]  Jasper Craven, welcome to the show.
[00:11:50]  Sir, yes, sir.
[00:11:52]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:11:53]  Thank you.
[00:11:54]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:11:57]  We're talking Pete.
[00:11:59]  Yeah, but we're not actually talking about anything you just said.
[00:12:01]  We're talking around it.
[00:12:04]  We're not actually talking about that.
[00:12:05]  I know.
[00:12:05]  That's what around, you know what I'm saying?
[00:12:07]  We're talking about, it's kind of all around, we're describing the perimeter.
[00:12:11]  Jasper, you wrote a piece in The Baffler all about Pete Hegseth.
[00:12:17]  It's called Battle of the Sexes, Pete Hegseth's War on Women.
[00:12:23]  And I would say it's kind of a doozy.
[00:12:26]  There's a lot of stuff in here that I knew about Pete Hegseth, that I gleaned about Pete Hegseth.
[00:12:31]  But when you kind of put it all together, it's a quite rich psychological profile of, I would say, a very typical but kind of pathetic man who is now, of course, the head of Department of War.
[00:12:49]  I can't call it that.
[00:12:50]  Well, Congress hasn't actually, I'm going to be one of these guys.
[00:12:52]  Congress hasn't actually changed the name yet.
[00:12:54]  So it's still the Department of Defense.
[00:12:57]  Yeah, it's still legal.
[00:12:58]  Okay.
[00:12:58]  So it's not, it's not bad.
[00:13:00]  What are you calling it?
[00:13:01]  I'm calling it the Department of War.
[00:13:03]  I think that makes sense.
[00:13:04]  Yeah.
[00:13:04]  It's what it wishes.
[00:13:06]  But House Style, we'll set a house style role right now.
[00:13:09]  It's whichever one we remember to say at the time.
[00:13:11]  Thank you.
[00:13:11]  I love that.

=== Pete Hegseth's Ascendancy (15:40) ===

[00:13:13]  What drew you to Pete?
[00:13:16]  What drew me to Pete is when I was first on the beat, so was Pete.
[00:13:25]  I'm going to stop rhyming now, but basically I got my start covering the Department of Veterans Affairs.
[00:13:31]  And that was Pete's focus for a long time when he was at this coke-backed AstroTurf group called Concerned Veterans for America.
[00:13:38]  So veterans policy is kind of a backwater.
[00:13:43]  And yet here was this like incredibly telegenic, aggressive, mighty, mighty man.
[00:13:50]  And he sort of just like dominated the scene.
[00:13:52]  And so he was very prominent.
[00:13:56]  And so was his group.
[00:13:56]  His group was incredibly influential.
[00:13:58]  Like within like a five-year period, much of which occurred under Obama, he and this group were essentially able to like enact all of these anti-labor and privatizing policies at VA, despite the fact that VA patients and veterans really support what the VA does.
[00:14:16]  Sure.
[00:14:17]  It's like the last thing that they're like.
[00:14:18]  Yeah, it's like this safety net that they've built tirelessly over generations.
[00:14:22]  And yet Pete's sort of charm and connections and sort of brute force allowed him to just sort of like impose these, you know, lobby for, but they were imposed pretty much word for word what he wanted.
[00:14:36]  And so I was just like, damn, this guy has got something.
[00:14:38]  And it was kind of surprising to me that he hadn't broken out like on the scene more broadly.
[00:14:47]  You know, at the time he was also a Fox and Friends host, but also on the weekends.
[00:14:51]  Like it is kind of weird that he's never really sort of like secured the plum post.
[00:14:57]  It's always kind of been like the second fiddle.
[00:15:00]  Yeah.
[00:15:00]  And I think that's, that honestly like informs a lot of his resentment and his anger.
[00:15:06]  You know, he fought in Iraq.
[00:15:07]  He fought in Afghanistan, but he didn't really have notable deployments.
[00:15:13]  As I note in the piece, like he got a bronze star, but it was one without valor.
[00:15:19]  Those were given out pretty liberally at the time back then to needy officers.
[00:15:23]  And so like, I've just kind of found him an interesting fellow because he had this raw potential, this like raw talent, I think, this raw political talent, but there was, he just sort of never was able to get it together.
[00:15:38]  I think that's partly because he's just like an insane alcoholic and is just kind of like cursed by all of these internal neuroses and sort of like this anger and misogyny, really.
[00:15:55]  I want us to, we'll go through the bio and the timeline because it's really important to kind of understanding him now and his, you know, his character that you're painting so horrifically and beautifully.
[00:16:07]  But I do think it's interesting, you know, you say that he never kind of broke out, but was this very like talented politically in a way where you're like, this is a charismatic, clearly capable person in terms of like lobbying, being kind of a salesman in that way.
[00:16:24]  But it's true that like this is not someone who, when you think of like, you know, guys who go into the military and then go into politics, this is not the typical trajectory.
[00:16:35]  I mean, you kind of go through the ranks, you build up this kind of sense of, you know, where you're kind of going and usually still representing the military.
[00:16:43]  And he really wasn't doing that.
[00:16:45]  Yeah.
[00:16:45]  I mean, but he, he tried to, and again, he failed.
[00:16:48]  Like he mounted a Senate seat in Minnesota against Amy Klobuchar, who's about as charismatic as a piece of white toast and like lost.
[00:16:57]  So, you know, I mean, it was a pretty short-lived kind of last minute campaign.
[00:17:01]  I mean, I think he's just kind of like, he's just like rolling around.
[00:17:04]  He's sort of just like this like ball of energy.
[00:17:06]  And he's like, doesn't, he's not great at commitment on numerous fronts.
[00:17:10]  And so he just sort of is like constantly grasping for things or groping them, trying to just like make it happen.
[00:17:18]  And it wasn't really until Trump came along that he was able to sort of have a more direct trajectory.
[00:17:24]  But you're right.
[00:17:25]  It is very unconventional how he's come to power.
[00:17:30]  And I think it's no mistake that like the ultimate institution that inculcated him and supported him was Fox News, which is like this place that is just so permissive towards alcoholism, misogyny, all of this stuff.
[00:17:44]  And so he was just sort of able to like grit it out there, you know, put on his makeup, hung over at 6 a.m. and like blast out his message of the day.
[00:17:53]  And that worked for him.
[00:17:55]  Yeah, Fox News versus like it actually being DOD.
[00:17:58]  Right.
[00:17:58]  Yes.
[00:17:58]  Yes, yes.
[00:17:59]  Well, you know, I want to kind of start at the beginning with Pete.
[00:18:04]  You know, I don't, not in recent memory, I think, have we had so memorable a person at the head of the Pentagon.
[00:18:13]  I mean, our last guy was R.I.P. I can't remember his fucking name.
[00:18:18]  Lloyd Austin.
[00:18:19]  Lloyd Austin.
[00:18:20]  He was, I would say, the only person in not only DC, but maybe America more infirm than Joe Biden during much of his reign at the Pentagon.
[00:18:30]  He took a lot of it laying down.
[00:18:31]  Yes, he certainly did.
[00:18:34]  But Hegseth really is, you know, a character, like somebody who is much more prominent in the administration.
[00:18:39]  I mean, he spoke at Charlie Kirk's memorial, which, as I've said, was difficult goon, but we got there, of course.
[00:18:48]  Mission first and always accomplished no matter how long it takes.
[00:18:52]  But he comes from, what is it, Minnesota, somewhere in the Midwest, right?
[00:18:58]  One of those flyover states to us podcasters here in New York.
[00:19:02]  And I want to make it clear, though, his name is Peter Brian Hegseth.
[00:19:10]  That's a tough one.
[00:19:12]  It's no wonder he's a family guy.
[00:19:14]  There we go.
[00:19:18]  His career has been a little strange, right?
[00:19:20]  Because what you sort of know about him top line, I think that most people will kind of know, is that he's the vet who may look and seem kind of stupid, but did you know he went to Princeton?
[00:19:31]  Yes.
[00:19:31]  And also that he still is kind of stupid.
[00:19:34]  Yes.
[00:19:34]  Yeah.
[00:19:34]  Well, he's dumber now.
[00:19:35]  I think just in general, alcohol, there's a certain level if you drink enough, you actually get a little smarter, but it's very easy to go past that point.
[00:19:42]  And he unfortunately did.
[00:19:44]  You talk about some of his time at the Princeton Tory.
[00:19:49]  But actually, you know what?
[00:19:50]  Let me pause myself right there.
[00:19:51]  He actually, he's one of those guys, we should start with the women because his first wife is actually his high school girlfriend, Meredith Schwartz.
[00:19:59]  Is she Jewish?
[00:20:00]  That's my understanding.
[00:20:03]  What are you basing that understanding on?
[00:20:04]  I'm understanding that based on her last name.
[00:20:08]  I knew that was coming there.
[00:20:09]  What?
[00:20:10]  What is that?
[00:20:11]  Wait, are you setting me up?
[00:20:13]  She could be German.
[00:20:13]  She could be just German.
[00:20:15]  Did you know that Kirk in German is church?
[00:20:19]  Really?
[00:20:20]  Yeah.
[00:20:20]  Pete Hegset said that at Kirk's funeral.
[00:20:25]  Again, I was sort of in the goon.
[00:20:27]  So Erika Kirk technically means Erika Church in German.
[00:20:32]  Wow.
[00:20:32]  It's beautiful in German like it is in English.
[00:20:35]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:36]  But he gets together with Meredith Schwartz, his first girlfriend in high school.
[00:20:42]  And he goes off to Princeton.
[00:20:44]  She goes off to Barnard?
[00:20:46]  Barnard, yeah, one of the seven sisters.
[00:20:48]  Yeah, what's the deal?
[00:20:49]  So I've been from women's college, but what is just in general, but what is the deal with Barnard?
[00:20:55]  Is it like a liberal?
[00:20:56]  Barnard is like the Columbia basically created a woman's college and it's Barnard.
[00:21:03]  Yeah.
[00:21:03]  Oh, it's at Columbia.
[00:21:05]  Yeah, okay.
[00:21:05]  It's just across the street.
[00:21:07]  It is one of those things where I'm like, I know what it is.
[00:21:09]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:21:10]  You get a Columbia degree.
[00:21:12]  Gotcha.
[00:21:13]  Which many graduates of Barnard insist you know.
[00:21:16]  Yes.
[00:21:17]  Including one of my close friends.
[00:21:19]  So he's at Princeton.
[00:21:20]  She's at Barnard.
[00:21:21]  And he starts editing something called the Princeton Tory.
[00:21:24]  He starts publishing it.
[00:21:26]  Yes, he becomes the publisher of the Princeton Tory.
[00:21:29]  He arrives at Princeton in 1999 at the dawn of a new American consciousness.
[00:21:36]  I forget how young he is.
[00:21:38]  I know.
[00:21:38]  It's crazy.
[00:21:40]  He's got a weathered face.
[00:21:41]  He's got eyes that speak decades of.
[00:21:45]  I mean, I'm looking at this picture right now of the 2002 Tory editorial staff.
[00:21:50]  And it pretty much looks exactly like you'd think, except the woman under his arm does look to be about 38, as opposed to maybe 19, which you would assume from being a, you know, a freshman in college or whatever.
[00:22:04]  But it's like a pretty conservative magazine.
[00:22:06]  It reminds me, it's like a less intellectual version of like the Stanford Review or one of these like fancy college conservative papers.
[00:22:14]  Absolutely.
[00:22:14]  Absolutely.
[00:22:15]  I mean, back then, you know, as I understand it, Hegseth was sort of like a troll, a very handsome troll.
[00:22:23]  That's kind of how I think about him.
[00:22:25]  Back in the day, a magazine, a student magazine like the Tory really held weight on campus.
[00:22:30]  It instigated a lot of debate.
[00:22:33]  You know, Hegseth was always out there.
[00:22:35]  He loved to get in the thick of things.
[00:22:38]  He loved to do battle with the libs on campus.
[00:22:41]  I mean, Princeton is like a pretty conservative place at this point.
[00:22:45]  And yet you see Hegseth just like trying to find any shred of evidence of like leftism run amok that he can, you know, grip onto and destroy.
[00:22:58]  And so what you see at the Tory is him really just taking a lot of super extreme positions and sort of like having to basically.
[00:23:06]  Yeah, because there's really nothing there.
[00:23:07]  Right, right, exactly.
[00:23:09]  Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the second issue they put out, April 2002, and there is a great article titled Princeton's New Useful Idiots, and it is about three different pro-Palestine groups.
[00:23:22]  And this is a kind of incredible line.
[00:23:25]  Remember, this is from 2002.
[00:23:27]  Asked if Hamas terrorism should be stopped, he, and this is the author of the article sort of interrogating a member of one of these groups, he responded that Israel must first stop the occupation.
[00:23:37]  He also, however, believed that Israel should do nothing about Hamas, even if it were to continue its terrorist attacks after an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.
[00:23:45]  One must logically conclude that PCOP, which is the group in question, supports terrorism, or at least its leadership does.
[00:23:51]  If PCOP wants to avoid being seen as terrorist sympathizers, then they should clearly denounce Palestinian terrorism in its official materials.
[00:23:58]  And it goes on like that for multiple pages, just about every single group that they all support.
[00:24:02]  Hamas, they're all pro-Islamic terrorism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:24:05]  It's crazy, like going back through the archives of this, because it really is just the same fucking shit that you hear today that was being published in 2002.
[00:24:15]  Like there's a, I was reading like a whole screed against like the diversity hires at Princeton and like that actually, you know, insisting on diversity actually instills more emphasis on race and therefore like, like actually like concretizes these categories even more.
[00:24:35]  It's just the same arguments that you're hearing today from back then.
[00:24:39]  And it's just like, oh my God, nothing changes.
[00:24:43]  What was PCs now?
[00:24:44]  Woke.
[00:24:45]  It's all the same fucking same shit.
[00:24:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:48]  Well, I mean, I think there was just kind of like all of this tension building up in people like Hegseth because really they didn't have any cultural power.
[00:24:55]  Their political power was, it seemed waning.
[00:24:59]  And so.
[00:24:59]  From the Clinton years.
[00:25:00]  Yeah.
[00:25:01]  And now like, now that he's there, he can just explode and do all of these things that he's been agitating for since 2000 too.
[00:25:10]  But yeah, so like, you know, he Hegseth was like attacking on every front, but he really obsessed over feminism.
[00:25:19]  And he really always had this like fixation on women, which is strange because at the time, like you said, he was dating his high school sweetheart.
[00:25:30]  They seemed by all accounts to have kind of like a sweet relationship back then.
[00:25:34]  I'm told from sources that Hegseth wasn't drinking in college.
[00:25:38]  He was just chugging Mountain Dew.
[00:25:39]  He wasn't drinking in college.
[00:25:41]  I'm told he didn't drink until he was 20.
[00:25:42]  I don't think this is surprising.
[00:25:44]  I mean, because when you think about like the chastity stuff, the early church stuff, not drinking, like it really feels like, I don't know, like latency, like structured by repression.
[00:25:58]  Straight edge guys I knew were like this, who were like straight edge when they were teenagers and they broke edge when they were 22 and just became brutal alcoholics.
[00:26:04]  Yeah.
[00:26:05]  And so if it's this like really repressed, like really repressed issues like that dam kind of breaking at Princeton, especially with, I hate to say it, the motherfucking vagina monologues, which made a lot of men uncomfortable during the 2000s.
[00:26:20]  Sure did.
[00:26:21]  Yeah, and it's so crazy how big, because like I knew what the vagina monologues were.
[00:26:27]  I didn't know, I don't know if I really even still know what they are, but I knew of them when I was like 13.
[00:26:34]  So like 2003 or something.
[00:26:35]  Yeah, there's like a big cultural thing.
[00:26:37]  It was like on HBO.
[00:26:38]  Exactly.
[00:26:38]  They were like referenced frequently things.
[00:26:41]  It was sort of this like cultural touchstone.
[00:26:43]  And the vagina monologues seem to have deeply affected Secretary of War, Peter Brian Hagseth.
[00:26:49]  That's true.
[00:26:50]  Yeah.
[00:26:50]  So this pretty milquetoast feminist group on campus called OWL helps mount a production of the vagina monologues in 2002.
[00:27:00]  Sounds like a hoot.
[00:27:02]  Very nice.
[00:27:03]  That's terrible.
[00:27:06]  And one of the members told me that one day she was out, you know, postering campus to promote the production.
[00:27:14]  And she looks over and there's Pete Hegseth at the bulletin board scratching off the poster and just looks at her in a way that she described as if like he wanted to kill me.
[00:27:25]  Like there was this really intense energy about that moment.
[00:27:29]  Like she remembers it two decades later.
[00:27:32]  And Pete Hegseth at the time was also in ROTC, Go Tiger Battalion.
[00:27:38]  And he would always, not always, but he would often wear his military uniform.
[00:27:43]  Like he didn't need to be wearing it, but from what I understand, he would just like wear it around campus as this like badge of honor.
[00:27:49]  What?
[00:27:50]  Dude, badge of honor?
[00:27:51]  Even in the fake army.
[00:27:53]  It's crazy how much this all fits together.
[00:27:55]  Yeah.
[00:27:56]  Yeah.
[00:27:56]  No.
[00:27:56]  I mean.
[00:27:57]  If you're in the ROTC, forgive me because when you say Go Tigers Battalion, I assume that you were in it at some point.
[00:28:03]  No, I wasn't.
[00:28:04]  No, is that what the principal is?
[00:28:05]  Everyone is supposed to call the Tiger Battalion.
[00:28:07]  Everything is there.
[00:28:08]  I know it's like you can get an officer commission or whatever afterwards, but like if you're just in the ROTC, you're not actually in the army then, right?
[00:28:18]  You're not, it kind of depends.
[00:28:20]  My understanding is that like if you accept ROTC scholarship money, you have a commitment during college.
[00:28:27]  You're not actually like active duty.
[00:28:29]  Like they can't call you up to fight.
[00:28:32]  But once you graduate, if you stay with ROTC the full time and sort of like hit, you know, then you sort of have some service.
[00:28:39]  I guess my question is like, do you think he was getting discounts?
[00:28:42]  Like military discounts?
[00:28:43]  military discounts because I'm just saying is that like You mean the 20%?
[00:28:47]  There's been a lot in the community, in the Guat Vet community, which you're a part of.
[00:28:53]  I'm part of.

=== Military Discounts Debated (04:05) ===

[00:28:54]  There's just been a lot of stories.
[00:28:55]  Do you get military discounts?
[00:28:56]  No, I wasn't in the military.
[00:28:58]  You were in a military.
[00:29:00]  That's true.
[00:29:00]  But if that worked, then but the I'm like, there's a lot of stolen valor accusations in my community right now.
[00:29:13]  Tim Kennedy.
[00:29:14]  Tim Kennedy.
[00:29:14]  Well, yes, but John Shrek McPhee, the sheriff of Baghdad, is having a tough time lately.
[00:29:19]  Those are actually a little Hegsethian in their rape part of it.
[00:29:26]  But him losing his officer commission or whatever the fuck happened there.
[00:29:32]  But I'm like, I feel like if you're doing ROTC and you're like getting military discounts, that's like a little stolen valor.
[00:29:39]  I agree.
[00:29:39]  We should investigate it.
[00:29:40]  I will except for stolen valor.
[00:29:42]  But anyways, anyway, so he was walking around this fucking uniform.
[00:29:46]  It's crazy because it's like that.
[00:29:48]  That's sort of, they hold this up as like a reason Hegseth is so cool, like not cool, I guess cool is the right word, but is so like devoted to service is that like, yeah, he was going to Princeton and he could have got a billion dollar job.
[00:30:00]  I don't know what people from Princeton do after Princeton.
[00:30:02]  Being Chinese.
[00:30:05]  But he instead, what was it, what was it you said?
[00:30:08]  Deloitte.
[00:30:09]  Deloitte.
[00:30:09]  He could have gone to Deloitte and served our country.
[00:30:12]  Yeah, he could have just gone to McKinsey.
[00:30:14]  He was serving really well there.
[00:30:15]  But instead, he joined the army and went to Guantanamo Bay.
[00:30:19]  Guantanamo Bay.
[00:30:20]  And so it's, I guess that's sort of like, it's held up as this plus, like he's this intelligent warrior.
[00:30:26]  Although, frankly, the intelligent warrior.
[00:30:29]  He doesn't seem that intelligent to me.
[00:30:31]  But I mean, what do I know?
[00:30:34]  But he joins the army.
[00:30:37]  Yeah, so he's in Princeton ROTC.
[00:30:41]  I must say, just to close the loop on the vagina monologues, not only does he, it's okay.
[00:30:45]  Not only does he rip down the posters, but then he hatches his own daring plan to put up his posters.
[00:30:54]  And the vagina monologues posters were pink.
[00:30:57]  They said stuff about the clitoris.
[00:30:59]  And Heg Seth just walks around campus with his boys, putting up blue posters that say, my penis is furious and it needs to shout, which I kind of find like the perfect encapsulation.
[00:31:11]  Yeah.
[00:31:12]  And I surface that information, I don't think that's been out there before.
[00:31:15]  That's kind of the nugget I'm musing.
[00:31:16]  My penis is furious and it needs to shout.
[00:31:19]  Well, first of all, that's the title of this episode.
[00:31:22]  But second of all, I mean, I find, again, like, this stuff is so beautifully tied together, like his issues with women and his also like clear overcompensation and performance of masculinity.
[00:31:34]  And it's so fascinating to watch that like something broke at Princeton, clearly, because he was this like mountain dew chugging, repressed, choir-esque boy, right?
[00:31:46]  Like Christian, you know, celibate boy who then, who, you know, as I think we're going to talk about, has clear issues like with his father and also his mother.
[00:31:56]  And then something about the vagina monologues or whatever he experienced in this environment broke him so much that this like, I don't know, distorted form of misogyny and like compulsive sexual display becomes like who he is at this moment.
[00:32:16]  Yes, yes.
[00:32:17]  And he's obviously, he's about to enter an institution that has elevated rates of alcoholism and misogyny and domestic abuse and divorce.
[00:32:30]  So it's like he's just headed into the, you know, the heart of all of these things, which just completely flip him upside down and fuel all of these sort of latent urges that are starting to show themselves at Princeton.
[00:32:48]  You know, he had also a kind of balanced view towards the Muslim world at Princeton.
[00:32:53]  It wasn't great, but then his first assignment is to Guantanamo Bay in 2004.

=== Guantanamo Bay Assignment (02:51) ===

[00:32:59]  He's there for a year.
[00:33:00]  It seems like that's probably the first place he started drinking is at old Gitmo on the beach, the Sandy Beach.
[00:33:08]  If anything's going to get you to drink, I know.
[00:33:10]  It's going to be Guantanamo Bay.
[00:33:12]  Yeah.
[00:33:14]  I want to be a little bit sympathetic here.
[00:33:15]  Because these guys are like guarding.
[00:33:16]  I'm not even being sympathetic.
[00:33:18]  I'm just like, I fucking.
[00:33:20]  These guys are guarding the detainees.
[00:33:21]  So they just basically stay outside this torture shacks.
[00:33:23]  Yeah.
[00:33:24]  Making sure no one gets out.
[00:33:25]  You're not going anywhere.
[00:33:27]  You're stuck on this base and you're just drinking probably.
[00:33:30]  Yeah.
[00:33:30]  Yeah.
[00:33:30]  That makes sense to me.
[00:33:31]  Yeah.
[00:33:32]  So he's there for about a year.
[00:33:33]  He's now in the National Guard, in the Army National Guard.
[00:33:36]  He doesn't really get the action or the medals that, you know, he's clearly pining for.
[00:33:41]  So then he heads back.
[00:33:43]  He does his day job, which is sort of a unique characteristic of the National Guard.
[00:33:46]  You sort of drill a few times a year and then a month, every month for a couple of days.
[00:33:51]  And he's at Bear Stearns right before the Princeton.
[00:33:57]  This is shortly before its dissolution.
[00:33:59]  Yeah, I was going to say, that must have sucked.
[00:34:00]  He got there right in the nick of time.
[00:34:03]  Well, I mean, his career, actually, I ended up just writing it out just so I could kind of have like a handle on it.
[00:34:10]  And it's kind of insane.
[00:34:11]  It's Bear Stearns, Guantanamo Bay Guard, Iraq, Manhattan Institute, Coke Front Groups, counterinsurgency training, another fake veteran Ash Ratiff group, Fox News, and then DOD.
[00:34:25]  I mean, what's more American than that?
[00:34:27]  It is incredibly American.
[00:34:29]  It's a really impressively like, like, yeah, that is the American dream right there.
[00:34:34]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:36]  He goes to Bears, but he and Mademoiselle Schwartz, his wife at this point, no?
[00:34:41]  Yeah.
[00:34:41]  So he gets married to Mademoiselle Schwartz in 2008 or 9, I want to say.
[00:34:49]  The pictures are gorgeous.
[00:34:50]  It's a nice wedding.
[00:34:51]  It's in the St. Catherine Cathedral or something.
[00:34:55]  I guess Cathat.
[00:34:56]  It's in Minnesota at a nice cathedral.
[00:34:58]  Are you having trouble saying the word cathedral?
[00:35:00]  St. Cathedral?
[00:35:01]  I think I meant to say St. Catherine Cathedral.
[00:35:04]  St. Catherine's Cathedral.
[00:35:05]  Oh.
[00:35:07]  Erica Kirk.
[00:35:08]  She's pretty.
[00:35:09]  Yeah.
[00:35:10]  Do you think she's Jewish?
[00:35:11]  I do think she's Jewish.
[00:35:13]  I'm going to be honest.
[00:35:14]  I do think she's Jewish.
[00:35:15]  Does that mean she's so great there?
[00:35:17]  Oh, wait.
[00:35:18]  No, this is Samantha.
[00:35:19]  Oh, Samantha?
[00:35:22]  I won't say anything about Samantha.
[00:35:23]  No, this is Samantha.
[00:35:24]  Oh.
[00:35:25]  So she looks, I mean, she's the brunette.
[00:35:27]  Meredith is nice, pretty.
[00:35:28]  Meredith.
[00:35:30]  I couldn't find a picture of Samantha.
[00:35:31]  Are you sure it's not Meredith?
[00:35:32]  Maybe it is.
[00:35:33]  Actually, maybe it is because it's just, I'm just reading the headlines here.
[00:35:36]  So, oh, yeah.
[00:35:39]  This is.
[00:35:40]  Yeah, that's her.
[00:35:41]  That's Meredith.
[00:35:42]  Oh, that's Meredith.
[00:35:43]  That's Meredith.
[00:35:43]  Yeah.
[00:35:43]  It says Samantha.
[00:35:44]  It's Meredith.
[00:35:45]  Oh.
[00:35:46]  Yeah.
[00:35:46]  No, it's like impossible.
[00:35:47]  South China Morning Post lied to me.

=== Defending the Iraq War (09:34) ===

[00:35:50]  The gong's too far away from you today.
[00:35:52]  Well, they don't get the gong for that.
[00:35:54]  Okay.
[00:35:55]  But he marries Meredith.
[00:35:56]  And from what I understand, he embarks on a sort of side hustle of cheating.
[00:36:04]  Yes.
[00:36:05]  So as he is sort of like moving through deployments and these weird like AstroTurf conservative groups, he begins cheating and drinking a lot.
[00:36:20]  Once he marries Meredith, he kind of goes on these all-night benders, I'm told.
[00:36:24]  Like friends would, you know, be planning to meet with him after work at like six in Manhattan, and he just like wouldn't show up.
[00:36:33]  And Meredith would say, do you know where Pete is?
[00:36:35]  And they would say no.
[00:36:36]  And then he would show up like the next morning or something.
[00:36:39]  Just like he was really going off the rails.
[00:36:42]  And I have some, I mean, after his Guantanamo deployment is kind of a dud, he hustles really, really hard to get in the 101st Airborne, which had recently just been made famous by Band of Brothers.
[00:36:58]  So like, again, there's almost this sort of like boyish, like masculine ideal that he needs to meet.
[00:37:03]  He calls in every favor with Princeton and all the other military guys he knows to get in the 101st Airborne.
[00:37:09]  He does.
[00:37:10]  Then he gets sent to Iraq and he has this sort of like crusading ideal of what the military can do.
[00:37:16]  There's a certain innocence to it.
[00:37:19]  But then he's paired with a platoon called Kill Company.
[00:37:24]  Yes.
[00:37:25]  And things get pretty fucked up pretty quickly.
[00:37:28]  There's still some holes biographically about like what he was and wasn't aware of.
[00:37:35]  People say he was a good leader, cool-headed, and sort of like, you know, wasn't bloodthirsty, I guess.
[00:37:42]  But a lot of the men around him, including the men he counts today as mentors, were.
[00:37:48]  He gets moved into a civil affairs post in Iraq.
[00:37:53]  And then almost immediately after that happens, Kill Company gets ensnared in a war crimes case where two of his buddies basically capture a combatant, let him go, and then shoot him in the back while he's running away.
[00:38:07]  Oh, shot while trying to escape.
[00:38:09]  Shot while trying to escape.
[00:38:11]  The classic murder technique.
[00:38:13]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:13]  We've all been there.
[00:38:15]  Well, no, we haven't all been there.
[00:38:16]  We have not all been there.
[00:38:18]  Oh, right.
[00:38:18]  Just to be clear.
[00:38:20]  But that is a classic thing that people do.
[00:38:24]  Yeah, it seems, you know, I read that New Yorker article about Kill Company.
[00:38:27]  Yeah, yeah, which Hegseth is quoted in.
[00:38:29]  Yes.
[00:38:30]  Yeah, it seems like they were just like, I mean, one of the big parts, I think, of the article is that they went in hot into every door.
[00:38:36]  Yes.
[00:38:37]  Which basically, as far as I can tell, means that you just open a door and shoot every single time, which to be clear, this is supposedly, this is like 2007, 2008.
[00:38:47]  Yeah.
[00:38:47]  This is, we're long past the very brief like war phase of the Iraq war.
[00:38:54]  And we're supposed, we're in the occupation phase.
[00:38:56]  Pre-surge.
[00:38:57]  Pre-surge.
[00:38:58]  Right before the surge, yeah.
[00:39:00]  But generally, you're not supposed to just start shooting when you open a door because, you know, that's where families.
[00:39:05]  I mean, my understanding is that's like typical American.
[00:39:08]  I think that does happen quite a bit, but you're not supposed to do that.
[00:39:11]  Like, sure.
[00:39:11]  Against the ROE, the Rules of Engagement means you're not supposed to do that.
[00:39:17]  And it seems like they were like, we do do that.
[00:39:19]  They were more upfront about that.
[00:39:21]  Yeah.
[00:39:21]  Yeah.
[00:39:21]  I mean, it's interesting.
[00:39:22]  It's kind of like an early piece of evidence of this sort of like operator, badass mercenary culture that would really start like flourish later on in this conflict.
[00:39:33]  It's funny to think of Pete like as someone who goes in, again, like with these kind of, like you say, ideals.
[00:39:41]  You know, the Band of Brothers note is so funny because again, this is someone who strikes me as like a very mediatized person.
[00:39:50]  And like that is just having this sort of idea and going after this 101st Airborne because it's so, it has such a, like it would mean something, right?
[00:40:02]  As it's so symbolic in his head to then like this transition into this brute brutal operator culture, like you're saying, that was really formed in these like early or mid-years of like the Iraq war.
[00:40:17]  Yes.
[00:40:18]  Like you see the transition even with him.
[00:40:21]  Yes, yes, absolutely.
[00:40:22]  And I think they're probably, I mean, I'm, I tend to believe that like back in those days, Hegseth probably was one of the more cool-headed gents in Kill Company and maybe did sort of like counsel restraint.
[00:40:37]  But, you know, I think like after he gets back from Iraq, he kind of, there's a feeling of betrayal, I think, by his country.
[00:40:49]  But for whatever reason, and maybe it's just because he's kind of stupid, he like doesn't, he doesn't place that anger in the right direction.
[00:40:57]  Instead, it's all about like, well, Bush wants the surge and like we need more people and you're not giving us enough time.
[00:41:04]  And like, there is real hope here.
[00:41:06]  In his civil affairs post, he does kind of that bullshit thing of like, oh, we, you know, made a well and like we elected a phony like tribal leader as a lawmaker.
[00:41:16]  Yeah.
[00:41:16]  So he's sort of what I don't know how deeply held that like counterinsurgency, like civil affairs shit stuck, but that's what he's using to really push the war forward and support the Bush agenda.
[00:41:29]  It's interesting.
[00:41:30]  I watched an interview he did on the Sean Ryan show co-worker of ours.
[00:41:34]  And I think right before he got into DOD.
[00:41:41]  And, you know, he's sort of describing some of his advocacy work, his early veterans' advocacy work, essentially describing it as like a pro-war organization.
[00:41:51]  And it's so funny because it's like, well, I guess to me, it's like, if you were stupid enough to be pro-war, then you are stupid in a way that like, I don't even know what to tell you.
[00:42:02]  You know, at least some veterans have the decency to kind of just embrace this like nihilistic view of violence for violence's sake.
[00:42:11]  But if you're like, I'm pro-war because I believe in the mission, well, there is no mission at that point.
[00:42:15]  So you're really, he's just an NPC versus an NPC talking points.
[00:42:19]  But he really is like, it's kind of baffling to hear him talk like this in 2025 because it's like very few people who were big Iraq war boosters kind of talk about it now in such a blase way because in, you know, with the benefit of, no, actually, you don't need hindsight for it.
[00:42:36]  Really, at the time, you could see like, this is just nonsense and it's just a deeper and deeper quagmiring more and more deaths, solving absolutely nothing.
[00:42:44]  History has certainly borne that out.
[00:42:47]  And yeah, it just, he seems to be, that's why I say like he like, he's like almost kind of not stupid, but then he is pretty stupid in pretty severe ways, it seems like it is weird to see someone in 2025 like defend the Iraq war.
[00:43:04]  Like that has been pretty much like you're saying, like even the like guys who would like staunchly defend it as like, well, I was just sent there and so we had to do what we had to do.
[00:43:14]  Right, right, right.
[00:43:15]  Like, okay, you get that.
[00:43:16]  But for someone to be like, this was like a project that made sense is like fucking crazy.
[00:43:21]  Like there's nobody says that.
[00:43:23]  Well, yeah, he talks about this specifically in relation to his advocacy on behalf of McCain in 08.
[00:43:30]  And, you know, it's, it's funny.
[00:43:32]  Like, and like sort of painting Obama.
[00:43:34]  Another talented airman.
[00:43:35]  I know.
[00:43:35]  Yeah.
[00:43:37]  Painting Obama as this sort of, you know, piece-knit candidate, which, like, obviously was not the case, you know, but um, he uh, yeah, so he, you know, I mean, that I think sort of leads us to his other side gig, which was being like a frontman for fake grassroots veterans groups, right?
[00:43:58]  So, yeah, he's basically enveloped in sort of like right-wing advocacy.
[00:44:02]  He gets back from Iraq and he writes a Wall Street Journal that the Bush White House loves entitled More Troops, Please.
[00:44:09]  And Bush loves him.
[00:44:10]  He gets a visit at the White House.
[00:44:12]  He's clearly very excited by this.
[00:44:14]  I mean, there is like a level of ignorance and stupidity towards his advocacy.
[00:44:18]  I also think there's an element where he's like, he's so desperate to wring some valor out of this war.
[00:44:23]  And so it's like he can't find what that is.
[00:44:26]  And so all that's left is just keep it going.
[00:44:29]  And like, we'll win maybe if we just fucking keep busting down doors.
[00:44:33]  Do you think he's naive?
[00:44:35]  I think he was naive.
[00:44:36]  I mean, like we sort of alluded to earlier, he came from this small Minnesota town, very religious, didn't drink, wasn't exposed to sort of like the outside world.
[00:44:46]  And I mean, he tells this like insane mythical story about how like a Vietnam War veteran came up to him during a 4th of July parade one day and was like, hey, sonny, don't miss your war.
[00:44:58]  Fight if you can.
[00:44:59]  But wait, I would wouldn't you want to miss a Vietnam War?
[00:45:04]  Yeah.
[00:45:05]  But see, that's what I'm saying.
[00:45:06]  It's like even this, like very rare you even hear military guys even now like make any defense of Vietnam.
[00:45:13]  I know.
[00:45:13]  I mean, it's so weird.
[00:45:14]  Like he has this, he like has this insane dig about his dad in one of his memoirs where he's like, my father has a strong Scandinavian work ethic, but like he didn't know how to fight.

=== Need Lethal Female Companionship (11:37) ===

[00:45:24]  And like I shied away from confrontation because of that.
[00:45:28]  And so like he clearly at some early age, I guess, just kind of saw his dad as a pussy and was like, I need to like, I need to build myself up strong so I'm not like my Scandinavian father.
[00:45:40]  That's the army sort of becomes a father figure in this.
[00:45:42]  Absolutely.
[00:45:43]  Absolutely.
[00:45:44]  And like, and I think that that probably is the case for a lot of young men.
[00:45:47]  Yeah.
[00:45:47]  He overcompensates through like military performance for what he lacked at home.
[00:45:52]  Yeah.
[00:45:52]  Classic.
[00:45:53]  I know, but it's also, it's funny now in this sort of, I mean, we'll get to this a little later, but like his reformation or whatever of the army that he's trying to do or military culture that he's trying to do also is sort of that like, you know, that battle with your father that everybody has got to go through at some point.
[00:46:12]  So he's back and he's, he's drinking a lot.
[00:46:15]  He's drinking a lot.
[00:46:15]  He's cheating a lot.
[00:46:16]  He's cheating a lot.
[00:46:18]  He basically starts cheating on Meredith Schwartz, his first wife with a woman named Samantha Deering, who he is a colleague of his at one of these AstroTurf groups.
[00:46:31]  Then apparently, but he's very good at sort of like maintaining the facade of the good father and the good husband.
[00:46:38]  My understanding is that Meredith kind of didn't really catch on that he was cheating until like things blew up and he admits to cheating.
[00:46:49]  At this point, he says he no longer believes in God.
[00:46:53]  But the two get divorced and then very quickly he remarries Samantha.
[00:46:58]  One other sort of interesting through line here is that like he he needs female companionship at all times.
[00:47:06]  Like there is like no real window where he's not with a woman.
[00:47:10]  He breaks up with Meredith, but he's already seeing Samantha.
[00:47:12]  Then he marries Samantha, has a kid with her.
[00:47:15]  Two months after that child is born, he goes to a Republican women's conference and allegedly rapes a woman.
[00:47:23]  Then that marriage falls apart after, well, the woman he had the child with was not his wife.
[00:47:32]  So then he marries that woman who's a Fox News producer.
[00:47:34]  Like there's just always, he always needs like these women to just sort of be there for whatever his purpose.
[00:47:41]  He like needs them.
[00:47:41]  He really needs them and is probably somewhat ashamed by that, but is, you know, it seems like violent towards women and fucked up and not loving and all of this sort of stuff.
[00:47:50]  Yeah, I mean, I think that's all part of one thing, right?
[00:47:53]  Like I think that his, he has a very like paradoxical relationship with women where he is, like you're saying, simultaneously dependent on them for recognition, whether it's through whatever like Fox segments he's doing,
[00:48:07]  like all the different wives or the TV makeup or the performance or like his obsession with his like body and his looks and this like masculine creation that he's like made of himself and this like projection of masculinity while at the same time violently rejecting their authority at all at all turns.
[00:48:27]  Yeah.
[00:48:28]  And this is all like, you know, intertwined together, right?
[00:48:32]  This sort of like violent love, hate, need, reject kind of relationship.
[00:48:40]  The fact that he sort of really casts himself as a protector of women, but like is responsible for significantly more abuse of women than I think your average person is.
[00:48:54]  You know, it's just one of those things.
[00:48:55]  It's like, it's this sort of like this these stereo ideas that he has that like that don't that can't connect, but it just makes up this person who's like this fundamentally fractured schizophrenic personality.
[00:49:08]  Well, I think like it's always this like presence of women, whether it's, you know, one of his colleagues or the women that he assaults or the fucking vagina monologues, like all of these kind of points, or his mother, which we'll talk about towards the end, which is a very fascinating letter that she writes.
[00:49:30]  This kind of like presence of women is always, you know, exposing what he lacks, which is this like insufficiency that he feels.
[00:49:38]  So he insists violently like on their exclusion.
[00:49:42]  And you, you know, you kind of see this over and over and over again.
[00:49:46]  And it is, again, so tied up with his own like self-conception and mythos and performance as this like uber masculine man.
[00:49:55]  Absolutely.
[00:49:56]  I mean, part of what makes him an uncanny figure is that he's dealing with war in the 21st century.
[00:50:03]  And yet he is so desperate for the old school World War II lifestyle of being the provider, the protector, the nuclear family, all of these sorts of things.
[00:50:14]  You know, he wants to be in the 101st airborne.
[00:50:16]  That's the World War II brigade he almost certainly saw depicted in that HBO show.
[00:50:24]  And so he grasps for that, but it's not there.
[00:50:29]  And the other sort of important thing to note about why it's not there is that not only does the war have no moral center, there is no actual mission that can be justified in any real way, but there are also at this time women rising up the ranks alongside him.
[00:50:46]  And so this idea, this like hegemonic military masculinity, which is very fragile, but powerful and important to him, is fracturing.
[00:50:55]  And there are women, including one woman I talk about in the piece, who like is braver than him, is a better fighter than him, is stronger than him, did not come from the pedigree that he came from.
[00:51:06]  But this woman, Leanne Hester, almost like a few months before he arrives in Iraq, she engages in this badass firefight, kills all these combatants and gets the silver star.
[00:51:17]  And I sort of Contrast to the fact that she gets silver, he gets bronze.
[00:51:21]  There's clearly like something deeply painful about that.
[00:51:26]  And that also, I think, is what's fueling this, like this, this schizophrenic nature.
[00:51:31]  Yeah, I mean, you can clearly see, because he talks about her specifically in his book, like you can clearly see some level of jealousy because she has this kind of classic band of brothers style war experience, grenades, clearing trenches, you know, fighting against insurmountable odds.
[00:51:49]  Although, you know, knowing the military numbers probably just a little bit there.
[00:51:54]  And, you know, funnily enough, Hagseth probably does have a little bit of a point where like they certainly were trying to like elevate female combatants at a time because they wanted more women to join the military because they wanted more people to join the military because the military, of course, perpetual recruiting crisis.
[00:52:10]  But regardless, I don't think that's really, maybe subconsciously, that's why he felt like that.
[00:52:14]  But really, it seems pretty clear that like there is a degree of jealousy there.
[00:52:20]  And anxiety.
[00:52:22]  And anxiety.
[00:52:23]  Yeah.
[00:52:23]  Anxiety about that.
[00:52:24]  And it's funny because I think the military is supposed to be this kind of like last bastion where like you could be a guy and you know, men without women and we could fucking, we can go be pipe hitters or whatever fucking pipe smokers.
[00:52:38]  And how many more like homo erotic?
[00:52:41]  You know, yeah, we can go smoke some poles down to fucking in Iraq and all our guns out at each other.
[00:52:51]  Just oil and lubricate and get squared away and make our beds really neat and keep our grooming standards.
[00:52:56]  And wearing nice big uniforms.
[00:52:58]  Wearing nice big uniforms.
[00:53:00]  And sing our songs.
[00:53:01]  And sing our songs and do our marches.
[00:53:03]  And our shiny medals.
[00:53:04]  And our fucking, you know what?
[00:53:06]  We get our shiny awards.
[00:53:07]  My dream is Starship Troopers, those beautiful shower scenes.
[00:53:11]  Let's get those women out of there.
[00:53:14]  Actually, those shower scenes were really difficult for me as a kid because I'm like, damn, dude, if, of course, I'm like 10 years old.
[00:53:20]  I want to be in the army.
[00:53:21]  I got to show my wiener to all these people in the shower.
[00:53:24]  But thankfully, I found out later it was a fiction movie.
[00:53:27]  But it seems like it's like the last bastion where a man could be a man.
[00:53:31]  And then they're trying to have all these chicks get into the army.
[00:53:35]  And chicks have always been in the army in some level.
[00:53:39]  But then it was, yeah, it's true.
[00:53:42]  I mean, not always, you know, but it's relatively, you know, for modern history, they've been in it for a while.
[00:53:49]  But now they're trying to put them in frontline combat units.
[00:53:53]  And I think that he sees, and I think, frankly, a huge number probably of infantrymen see that as a two-pronged thing, like both like lowering the physical standards or whatever, and then also the culture changes.
[00:54:13]  And this becomes a really big deal to Hagseth.
[00:54:16]  Absolutely.
[00:54:17]  Yeah.
[00:54:17]  I mean, you can see evidence of this in his books where he basically calls out like most of the sort of like women troops during GWAT who sort of distinguished themselves and earned medals for bravery and just tries to sort of tear down or lessen their valor.
[00:54:38]  And, you know, I mean, to your earlier point about like his the germ of the truth about like maybe, yes, the military was overhyping Hester for recruitment purposes.
[00:54:48]  Like there are these moments because Hegseth did go to Iraq.
[00:54:51]  He did go to Afghanistan.
[00:54:53]  He sort of can clearly have some level of analysis that he's capable of.
[00:54:58]  Like he, he, he is kind of like the perfect embodiment of many of the problems with these conflicts and also of the sort of like toxic ideologies that was fueling them.
[00:55:08]  Like that's why he's not really a surprising character in some ways.
[00:55:11]  He is sort of like exactly what one would expect to be churned out of these conflicts.
[00:55:19]  But yeah, he really rebels violently against the idea of women usurping his military status, of them serving.
[00:55:29]  The other thing I think too is that like once these wars became so clearly unwinnable, so clearly failed, people like Hegseth were looking to pin the blame somewhere, you know, like, and so what Hegseth chose to do was say, well, is the women, you know, we've lost lethality.
[00:55:48]  That's all he's talking about now.
[00:55:49]  It's like we need a lethal, we need a lethal war.
[00:55:53]  We need lethal warriors again.
[00:55:55]  But like, you know, it's too feminized.
[00:55:56]  Right, exactly.
[00:55:57]  And so rather than, you know, confront the fact that he bought a crock of bullshit, rather than confront the fact that like, you know, we basically just repackaged old Vietnam War tactics and saw the same conclusion, rather than like grapple with the true reasons we lost this conflict, he chose to pin it all on women.
[00:56:15]  Yeah.
[00:56:15]  Yeah, it's, it's.
[00:56:17]  I think too, there's just also the classic, like these women, you know, I mean, I think for a lot of men, women tend to unmask at some level whatever they feel they're insufficient at or their like own insufficiency.
[00:56:33]  And he just projected that toward this like political, or he took that anxiety, right, and like projected it outward toward DEI or feminism or the fucking Longhouse or whatever these fucking people talk about.
[00:56:46]  Yeah, no, I think to almost to return back to the hearth at home for him.
[00:56:51]  So at this point, he's left Meredith.
[00:56:53]  He's with his second wife where he has three children.
[00:56:58]  Gunner, Boone, and Rex.

=== Elon's Anachronistic Crusade (05:31) ===

[00:57:02]  This is like Elon.
[00:57:04]  I was saying earlier that it reminds me so much of it's like on a different part of the spectrum, but the same level as how like Elon names his kids.
[00:57:13]  And he wants all his kids.
[00:57:14]  He's like, he's going to be a lot of people.
[00:57:15]  Such a like large.
[00:57:17]  There's a larp level here that is so wild to me.
[00:57:20]  Yeah, like this we were talking about this before but the I I know it's up, but he is the like kind of perfect head of dod like especially for this administration, because that we you know what you're talking about with this like reaching back towards this like World War Ii kind of fantasy.
[00:57:40]  But there's something so anachronistic about almost everyone in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, that like this sort of like performance that they're all giving like at every level of the cabinet, or I mean, you could, you can pull any of them out and it's there like fucking Scott Besant too, you know, like everyone.
[00:57:59]  And Elon himself is also a man of such who has like basically built his career on like an anachronistic performance, as if he is like some Henry Ford genius, when we all know the truth about all of that, or at least people who've listened to this show before do um.
[00:58:16]  But so there's this like it, this like beautiful contradiction almost in this like tv performance guy versus like trying to kind of do this whole.
[00:58:31]  I don't know what else.
[00:58:32]  It's like a tv mask, like he's like a mascot or a caricature or, like you know, it's all parody versus, like what that role actually is, or where we, where America is at this given point in history yeah, and what it's capable of, and what do even is what the war machine is now, you know, like fucking Rex, Gunner And Boone.
[00:58:55]  Well, I mean, I just take a look at his and maybe i'm getting ahead of us, or we're getting ahead of ourselves here, or i'm getting us ahead.
[00:59:00]  What do you know what i'm saying there?
[00:59:02]  Look at his tattoos right, I mean, he's covered in like the most dog shit, fucking hell Dodge, Hellcat Signing Bonus Ass, fucking Artist.
[00:59:12]  Video Game shit, deuce Volt, fucking Crusader cross on his.
[00:59:17]  You know, on his uh, what's it?
[00:59:20]  Synthal pectoral, synthal peck.
[00:59:22]  Yep, he's got uh uh, Kufir underneath it, I believe.
[00:59:28]  Yep uh, which is obviously famous Infidel and it's just like he's just one of these guys.
[00:59:33]  It's just like okay, so you guarded people who were blackbagged in Guantanamo, Tonamo Bay, and then with the weight of a trillion, multiple trillion dollar war machine kicked in peasants' houses and killed their families.
[00:59:50]  And then you did fucking counterinsurgency training, which by the way was a failure in Afghanistan.
[00:59:57]  Yeah.
[00:59:58]  What the fuck do you have to be so proud of?
[01:00:00]  You know what I mean?
[01:00:01]  Like you're Crusader bullshit.
[01:00:03]  It's like, well, not exactly, you know?
[01:00:08]  I don't know.
[01:00:08]  Well, I guess the Crusaders did kind of just return and fuck things up and then leave sometimes.
[01:00:13]  But it's like cosplayed strongman.
[01:00:16]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:00:16]  Yeah.
[01:00:17]  It's so like, like if somebody I know was like, I'm thinking of getting these like fucking badass tattoos to like commemorate this fucking cool ass shit.
[01:00:25]  I'd be like, you know, maybe don't get one.
[01:00:28]  You know what I mean?
[01:00:29]  I'm like, it's like, maybe, maybe spend the money on something else.
[01:00:32]  You know, it looks stupid.
[01:00:34]  It looks silly.
[01:00:34]  It's a caricature.
[01:00:36]  And like, but that is sort of as you're saying, like, it's perfect that we have a caricature as head of DOD.
[01:00:42]  I mean, fucking, it's perfect that he's the head of the Department of War, for instance.
[01:00:46]  You know what I mean?
[01:00:46]  Like, like, it's obviously reactionary, but there is something where it's like, it is that like performance is doing something important politically, right?
[01:00:58]  Like, it is, it is kind of like the only thing that America could project right now would be a Fox News host at the head of DOD.
[01:01:07]  Yes.
[01:01:07]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:01:08]  Like, that is actually what is left of America.
[01:01:11]  Yes.
[01:01:11]  And the military.
[01:01:12]  These guys, the way that he talks to me is also itself such a caricature of the way that these people talk.
[01:01:19]  And I hate to use the word caricature so much, but there's a few words that really sum up Peter Brian Hagseth as much as that one.
[01:01:26]  I think we do need to insist on calling him Peter Bryan.
[01:01:28]  Peter Brian Hagseth.
[01:01:30]  But that you're looking for his lois.
[01:01:34]  But that Sean Ryan interview I watched, the amount of times that he uses the word warfighter.
[01:01:41]  Now, warfighter is a term that people with CTE who get 100% disability benefits.
[01:01:49]  Non-sport CTE.
[01:01:50]  Non-sport CTE.
[01:01:52]  And oftentimes undiagnosed CTA, but CTE, but still 100% disability benefits.
[01:01:57]  By that, I mean veterans.
[01:01:59]  They like started calling troops that like 10 years ago.
[01:02:02]  And now that's all they call troops is just warfighters.
[01:02:06]  It's funny because it's such a mirror of this social justice shit that these guys like rail against.
[01:02:11]  It's the exact same kind of, it's very similar type of attack or like reconfiguring of language to be sort of, this is what we think is more appropriate to what, you know, the actual experience is.
[01:02:26]  Absolutely.
[01:02:26]  Because most people who are in DOD aren't warfighters.
[01:02:29]  They're like refilling fueling jets or like, you know, serving as accountants or whatever.

=== Strip Club Sycophancy (14:59) ===

[01:02:34]  Like, it's just sort of this desperate idea again to try to like this sort of pay on to the past.
[01:02:39]  Like, in the same way, the War Department is what it was called after World War II, like up until the end of World War II.
[01:02:45]  It's just like trying to cling so desperately to, and this is kind of like the last conservative institution, you know.
[01:02:51]  And so, it's like, okay, well, we need to hang on to this because this is all we have left.
[01:02:55]  And then, Trump is kind of like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
[01:02:57]  And also, like, there is all of this power that I can squeeze from this institution if I can like fully capture it.
[01:03:04]  So, he's sort of like, it's Hegset is kind of, you know, getting his finally, he's sort of like at the helm of this thing.
[01:03:11]  He has power.
[01:03:12]  He feels validated, I think.
[01:03:15]  And Trump's just kind of exploiting that so that he can just like amass power in an authoritarian way.
[01:03:21]  Well, Hegset's journey to get there was a little tumultuous because, as we said, like he was part of this like front group basically that was, or like this veterans group that was, you know, doing these ads for McCain, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:03:35]  It was an NGO.
[01:03:36]  Well, I mean, kind of, yeah.
[01:03:38]  No, but I think legally it was like a PAC, basically.
[01:03:42]  Isn't that the first thing?
[01:03:43]  He worked for, I think he worked for, yeah, like a political PAC and then he worked for a 501c3, which had a political.
[01:03:50]  But he doesn't seem to do a good, what do you call it, job in either of those roles.
[01:03:57]  He appears to be frequently drunk, frequently, obviously, the rape allegation, and then also just in general, cheating.
[01:04:06]  There's a big New Yorker article, which I think most people are probably familiar with because it was sort of the basis for a lot of what we know about Hegset's personal life.
[01:04:15]  Not a lot, but some of what we know about some of the less savory aspects because there's sort of all these whistleblower reports from his organizations recounted there.
[01:04:25]  And it seems like the guy is just frequently taken to his room drunk while on some drunk.
[01:04:32]  And I want to be honest with all of our listeners out there.
[01:04:35]  If you are past the age of like 20 and you get so drunk that people are having to take you home blackout drunk, you are an alcoholic.
[01:04:46]  That is just like, I'm sorry.
[01:04:49]  I mean, I know a thing or two about alcoholism and I know a thing or two about people in denial.
[01:04:56]  And I got to tell you, it's like this guy is in his 30s getting completely blackout drunk, being like dragged to his fucking hotel room.
[01:05:04]  Multiple instances of this recounted.
[01:05:06]  And like, I'm sure countless more that just aren't.
[01:05:09]  I mean, the guy is very clearly so drunk that he just cannot take care of himself or control himself.
[01:05:18]  And he is like out of control.
[01:05:20]  He is completely out of control.
[01:05:23]  And there's these like coups against him in the organizations that he works for because people are like, this wasted philanderer is just blowing it for all of us.
[01:05:33]  And his whole thing, right, is this is the, it's the second group, Concerned Veterans of America.
[01:05:37]  And that's the whole thing that they're doing VA reform, which we talked a little bit about earlier.
[01:05:41]  But it's like he is essentially just trying to get, and he talks about this in the Sean Ryan show, to privatize the VA.
[01:05:47]  Yeah.
[01:05:47]  Yeah.
[01:05:47]  Essentially, so he would go on.
[01:05:49]  I mean, there's a bit of Kirkish design to what he's doing.
[01:05:56]  He's traveling the country for these like defend freedom tours.
[01:05:58]  He's going to communities that have VA centers.
[01:06:02]  He's finding people who like have bad experiences with the VA because, you know, like any healthcare system, it's not perfect.
[01:06:09]  And then he's using those anecdotes to like tar and feather the entire institution.
[01:06:13]  So basically, you know, he does his big rally.
[01:06:17]  People love him.
[01:06:20]  Oftentimes, his family is there.
[01:06:22]  And on those stops, I'm told he's very humble and he doesn't drink very much.
[01:06:28]  And he's all about the family.
[01:06:29]  And he spends time with his family.
[01:06:31]  Dad's there.
[01:06:31]  He doesn't need to confront his stern Scandinavian presence.
[01:06:35]  Exactly.
[01:06:37]  Exactly.
[01:06:37]  He's got Rex tugging on his arm saying, Daddy, Daddy, I love you.
[01:06:42]  He's got Gunner.
[01:06:43]  Gunner's there.
[01:06:43]  Daddy, why do you drink so much?
[01:06:45]  And then Boone is a mute.
[01:06:46]  Boone doesn't say anything.
[01:06:48]  Yeah, Boone.
[01:06:48]  He's sort of his Boone is the.
[01:06:50]  Well, I'm not going to finish that joke.
[01:06:53]  And so, but then his parents or his family goes away.
[01:06:57]  And then that's when Heg Seth plays.
[01:06:58]  And he's going to a strip club and he's jumping on the strip club stage.
[01:07:04]  So that's just for the strippers.
[01:07:06]  I know.
[01:07:06]  And he's breaking that sanctified, he's breaking the back third wall.
[01:07:10]  That's where they go.
[01:07:12]  Yeah, I mean, that was, and he says that was not him.
[01:07:14]  I watched the Megan Kelly interview where Megan Kelly is like, so how about all these liars who say you've been raping?
[01:07:19]  And he's like, they're making it up.
[01:07:21]  But they talk about the strip club thing.
[01:07:23]  And he's like, this is just ridiculous.
[01:07:25]  I've never been to a strip club.
[01:07:27]  I can take one look at you, my brother.
[01:07:29]  Yeah.
[01:07:30]  You have been, there is not a face that I've never seen.
[01:07:34]  Yeah.
[01:07:35]  Maybe he's like, I haven't been to any strip club.
[01:07:38]  I've been to every strip club.
[01:07:40]  That is the most strip club looking individual that I've ascertained.
[01:07:44]  And like enjoys the buffet as well.
[01:07:47]  Oh, yeah.
[01:07:48]  Don't.
[01:07:49]  So?
[01:07:49]  I will.
[01:07:50]  I will.
[01:07:51]  I also enjoy the buffet at the strip club.
[01:07:54]  Not anymore, but that's because you felt uncomfortable.
[01:07:58]  I do feel uncomfortable.
[01:07:59]  So you just hung out with the other side.
[01:08:00]  It's a carny situation.
[01:08:02]  I'm like, you're trying to trick me.
[01:08:04]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:08:05]  I'm just saying that I feel like he's deeply enmeshed in the strip club so much so that he also enjoys eating there.
[01:08:14]  Yes.
[01:08:14]  The atmosphere.
[01:08:15]  Yes.
[01:08:15]  Well, he's not even going for the buffet, Liz.
[01:08:17]  He's ordering the coins of steak.
[01:08:22]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:08:23]  He's ordering a little filet mignon coins there.
[01:08:27]  I think he's a good dancer on that poll.
[01:08:29]  Think that when Hegseth has two handles of Johnny Walker, two handles of Tito's in him, then I think that the amount of contortions that his body can do, the physical abilities that he has are probably unlimited.
[01:08:45]  But he could be telling the truth.
[01:08:46]  He just literally might not remember going to the strip club because he was completely blacked out drunk every time.
[01:08:50]  Can we talk about that Megan Kelly interview for a second?
[01:08:53]  Because it's deeply upsetting.
[01:08:55]  So there is, which I assume you've seen.
[01:08:57]  Yeah.
[01:08:57]  So there is a Megan Kelly interview.
[01:08:59]  And by the way, remember, we'll get to this in a second.
[01:09:03]  Are you going to say Megan Kelly's high?
[01:09:04]  You say that every episode.
[01:09:06]  What do you mean?
[01:09:08]  No.
[01:09:09]  Me?
[01:09:09]  Yeah.
[01:09:10]  Every time I turn on, turn on, it's oh, Megan Kelly's hot.
[01:09:13]  And then I go, click.
[01:09:16]  Yep, click.
[01:09:17]  Time to not have the audio distraction while I Google image search Megan Kelly, put her into Grok and add myself to the picture.
[01:09:25]  Are you doing John Fetterman, Megan Kelly?
[01:09:27]  No, okay.
[01:09:27]  Well, John Fetterman stuff, people are getting really aggressive towards me about some of my artists.
[01:09:34]  Well, it's not, it's an expression of him that I'm doing for him because he can't do it himself because he's going to kill himself.
[01:09:41]  But so Megan Kelly, I did, I used to find her very attractive.
[01:09:44]  I think she's too skinny now, but she's too skinny now.
[01:09:46]  She's too skinny now.
[01:09:49]  So she does this interview and she's sort of talking to her audience in this way.
[01:09:54]  She's like, listen, there's a lot of allegations about Peter Brian Hegset.
[01:10:01]  And when I say them in this episode, it's really going to sound like there's a lot of allegations.
[01:10:06]  And they all kind of go together and they paint a picture of somebody that's not so good.
[01:10:10]  And I'm going to be tough on him.
[01:10:12]  And then again, I mentioned this earlier, but she spends the entire interview being like, isn't it interesting how all your accusers are anonymous?
[01:10:19]  Right.
[01:10:19]  Even though some of them are.
[01:10:20]  Isn't it interesting how they're all lying?
[01:10:22]  Yeah.
[01:10:22]  Yeah.
[01:10:23]  I do want to say, like, Megan Kelly fucking made her.
[01:10:26]  I mean, in case people forget, made her career as the like Me Too spokeswoman for fucking Fox News against Roger Ailes.
[01:10:38]  And then fucking Trump called her out, remember?
[01:10:43]  And was like, that when she was questioning him, when she was like, it was for the debate, right?
[01:10:47]  When she was moderating the debate.
[01:10:49]  And he was like, she was bleeding through every whatever.
[01:10:53]  Yeah.
[01:10:53]  I think that's how he put it.
[01:10:54]  She was bleeding from her whatever.
[01:10:55]  Yeah.
[01:10:56]  Or something like that.
[01:10:58]  This woman is such a fucking sycophant now.
[01:11:01]  It is so wild to watch.
[01:11:04]  Not surprising, but just like really, really pathetic.
[01:11:09]  Just deeply, deeply pathetic and shameful.
[01:11:12]  I mean, she is a straight up pathetic woman who is like clearly, I mean, I don't know.
[01:11:20]  It's the obsequiousness that she displays to Trump and all these people after what she went through.
[01:11:28]  It's like, now it's, it's just, it's so ridiculous.
[01:11:31]  And she, she brings on Pete Hegseth as if she's going to sort of confront him.
[01:11:35]  Or this is the thing.
[01:11:36]  She trades on that persona and that history to then be like, and all of these women are fucking lying.
[01:11:44]  Yeah.
[01:11:44]  Like all women do, because actually they enjoy it, or whatever she wants to say.
[01:11:48]  And like that was huge to him getting confirmed.
[01:11:51]  It was.
[01:11:53]  It was really, it was such a staged managed way of like, it was as if he was sitting there and I'm sure that he was with his crisis PR manager being like, so you need to actually be like a little light on your rhetoric towards women in this part.
[01:12:10]  And like, Megan, can you ask me about this and this and this?
[01:12:12]  Ask in this specific way.
[01:12:14]  It is a, that thing was just an exercise of, I don't know, like exculpating him from like, and really like her basically standing in for all women and forgiving Pete Hegseth.
[01:12:28]  You know what?
[01:12:28]  But she doesn't even need to forgive him because he didn't do any of it.
[01:12:31]  And that's another thing.
[01:12:32]  And vets always fucking do this shit where there's just this fucking excuse after excuse after excuse.
[01:12:38]  And that's sort of one of the great jokes about the U.S. military is these people talk about, especially guys like Pete Hegseth, pole smokers like Pete Het Pete Brian Hegseth.
[01:12:48]  And I joke, I joke, I joke, noble profession, pole smoking.
[01:12:51]  Well, let's just continue on with what I was saying.
[01:12:55]  These people always talk about how it teaches you fidelity, loyalty, about taking accountability.
[01:13:02]  And yet none of these prominent veterans that you see do, not only do they not do this, they always do the precise opposite.
[01:13:09]  Nothing is ever their fault.
[01:13:11]  They were always tricked, hoodwinked, betrayed.
[01:13:13]  There's all these people that are just out to get them.
[01:13:15]  The world is against them in this conspiratorial way.
[01:13:18]  Everybody's coming out to get them.
[01:13:19]  But, you know, it's that, and they're, it just, to me, it is such a joke.
[01:13:24]  It fucking, it, it, it, they, they talk about all of these ideals and then instill the precise opposite into these fucking brain-damaged young morons.
[01:13:34]  And then they spit them out and they fucking do it to everybody else.
[01:13:37]  And we have to fucking pretend that these people are noble in some way.
[01:13:42]  There's nothing noble about Peter Hegseth, Peter Brian Hegseth.
[01:13:45]  It's, it's, it's ridiculous to me.
[01:13:47]  And this whole interview that he does with Megan Kelly is just, they both sort of play their roles there, where she is this woman who is standing in for the Pete Hegseth rape victim.
[01:13:57]  And he is this guy who is just like the all-American fucking soldier.
[01:14:01]  And they're both just saying, well, aren't we so great?
[01:14:03]  Aren't all these other people such fucking liars?
[01:14:05]  Yeah.
[01:14:05]  It's crazy.
[01:14:06]  Can we talk about the allegations?
[01:14:08]  Because we've been kind of just talking around them, but maybe our listeners don't know.
[01:14:13]  Yeah, well, I mean, Beyond the drinking and the infidelity and having at least one child out of wedlock, there is this Republican women's conference in California.
[01:14:29]  Again, it occurs two months after Peter Heg, Brian Hegseth has had a child out of wedlock.
[01:14:35]  He's there.
[01:14:37]  It's unclear what he says to this crowd of Republican women.
[01:14:41]  I tried desperately to find a copy of his remarks and couldn't.
[01:14:45]  But the women are— He's like, oh.
[01:14:49]  That's why you couldn't find them.
[01:14:51]  Because actually, it would just say unintelligible.
[01:14:53]  It reads just like a Cthulhu book.
[01:14:56]  But the women are all over him.
[01:14:57]  I mean, there's also something, not to sound too judgmental, but there's this weird sycophancy among Republican women towards Pete Hegseth.
[01:15:04]  And after the outcome.
[01:15:05]  Well, he plays into that.
[01:15:06]  Right, of course, of course.
[01:15:07]  And after during his confirmation hearing, I went on the Facebook page of this Republican California women's group, and they were totally in support of Hegseth despite these allegations.
[01:15:18]  But anyways, so he speaks, he does his thing, then he, you know, hangs out at the bar for a while.
[01:15:24]  He's talking to women.
[01:15:25]  One of the women there who helped organize the conference starts to give him some shit about how she felt like he was being sort of like misogynistic or sexist in his remarks and the way he was treating women at the bar.
[01:15:42]  They then end up on like closed circuit camera around 1 a.m. in front of the pool.
[01:15:48]  It's unclear what they're talking about.
[01:15:50]  It seems like maybe like the reparte between them was kind of flirty, even if she was being critical, whatever.
[01:15:57]  Some both highly intoxicated.
[01:16:01]  She later thinks that maybe she was drugged.
[01:16:05]  Finds herself in Pete Hegseth's room not long after one.
[01:16:10]  Her husband is texting her, being like, I'm worried about you.
[01:16:14]  Where are you?
[01:16:15]  She starts to text back and then stops.
[01:16:20]  Her husband is very worried.
[01:16:21]  She claims that basically she was like trying to tell her husband what was happening over a text message, at which point Hegseth takes the phone from her, slams the door shut, locks it, and rapes her.
[01:16:32]  And there is then an investigation by the police.
[01:16:36]  It's deemed legitimate enough to be referred to the local DAs.
[01:16:39]  They choose not to prosecute it.
[01:16:41]  It's unclear why.
[01:16:43]  And then eventually the two people enter into an undisclosed settlement with NDAs attached.
[01:16:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:16:53]  And so they can kind of just talk generally about it.
[01:16:56]  Yeah.
[01:16:57]  I mean, it's just interesting because his defense when he talks to Megan Kelly there, I mean, it's so like his defense is literally like, well, actually, the best way to look at this is just, I cheated.
[01:17:12]  You know what I mean?
[01:17:12]  Like, that's his defense for himself.
[01:17:14]  Like, and it's so, it's so, and he sort of wraps it around all this other sort of cheating that he does.
[01:17:21]  And this is just another instance of this, except we have a lion bitch who's fucking going to sue me over this.
[01:17:27]  And he really does.
[01:17:27]  He sort of paints it.
[01:17:29]  I listened to this part a couple of times.
[01:17:30]  He really paints it as like, she came crawling for money later.

=== Joe Brandon's Defenses (10:10) ===

[01:17:34]  You know what I mean?
[01:17:35]  Like she like, she came for a payout later.
[01:17:38]  And Megan Kelly fully backs him up on that.
[01:17:41]  Which is, I'm like, I'm sure Megan Kelly got some money from Fox News at some point.
[01:17:47]  And it's just, it's so slimy.
[01:17:50]  And it's so, it's, it's just, it's kind of extraordinary.
[01:17:54]  Also, like, of all the, let's say, politicians, appointees, I don't know, I feel like we've been kind of, there's been so many examples over the past, I don't know, 10 years, let's say, of nominees who have had or been dogged by scandals.
[01:18:15]  This one really, I mean, this is a pretty like open and shut case, except for all the stuff with the NDAs and all of that.
[01:18:23]  I mean, it really does seem like something very serious occurred.
[01:18:30]  And as opposed to maybe a lot of other instances that were a little bit more gray or perhaps kind of falling into the typical he said, she said of a lot of like assault or rape cases.
[01:18:47]  And completely, I mean, corroborated in some like profound way by his mother.
[01:18:53]  You know, not the specifics itself, but there's this letter that she writes to him shortly thereafter that is lacerating.
[01:19:00]  Yeah.
[01:19:01]  That just basically describes this like descending down into just like ego and power and abuse.
[01:19:09]  She calls him an abuser.
[01:19:10]  Yeah.
[01:19:11]  Should I just read it?
[01:19:12]  Yeah, because it's very, it's deeply upsetting.
[01:19:15]  I mean, it's a little long, but it's not that long.
[01:19:19]  This is from April 30th, 2018.
[01:19:21]  One sentence was redacted by the New York Times for Privacy Reasons.
[01:19:23]  It says, son, I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent.
[01:19:31]  And as a woman and your mother, I feel I must speak out.
[01:19:36]  You are an abuser of women.
[01:19:38]  That is the ugly truth that I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.
[01:19:45]  You are that man and have been for years.
[01:19:47]  And as your mother, it pains and embarrasses me to say that, but that is a sad, sad truth.
[01:19:53]  I am not a saint, far from it.
[01:19:55]  So don't throw that in my face.
[01:19:56]  But your abuse over the years to women, dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling, needs to be called out.
[01:20:04]  Sam is a good mother and a good person under the circumstances you created.
[01:20:08]  And I know deep down you know that.
[01:20:10]  For you to try to label her as unstable for your own advantage is despicable and abusive.
[01:20:15]  Is there any sense of decency left in you?
[01:20:18]  She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand.
[01:20:23]  Neither did Meredith, his first wife.
[01:20:26]  I know you think this is one big competition that we have taken her side.
[01:20:29]  Bunk.
[01:20:30]  We are on the side of good, and that is not you.
[01:20:33]  Go ahead and call meself righteous.
[01:20:34]  I don't care.
[01:20:35]  Don't you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us.
[01:20:39]  that we shared with us.
[01:20:40]  That's what babies do.
[01:20:41]  It's time for someone.
[01:20:42]  I wish it was a strong man, to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women.
[01:20:48]  We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character.
[01:20:52]  I don't want to write emails like this and never thought I would.
[01:20:55]  If it damages our relationship further, then so be it.
[01:20:59]  But at least I have said my piece.
[01:21:01]  And then I redact the portion.
[01:21:02]  Yes, we are praying for you and you don't deserve to know how we are praying.
[01:21:05]  So skip the snarky reply.
[01:21:08]  I don't want an answer to this.
[01:21:09]  I don't want to debate with you.
[01:21:10]  You twist and abuse everything I say anyways.
[01:21:13]  But on behalf of all 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.
[01:21:21]  Mom.
[01:21:22]  I mean, do you know how difficult that must have been to write that letter as a mother about our son to like confront that about your son?
[01:21:31]  I know.
[01:21:32]  I mean, she just, she, every paragraph is just like, you abuse women.
[01:21:35]  You abuse multiple women.
[01:21:36]  Yeah.
[01:21:37]  You abuse countless women.
[01:21:39]  I mean, it's just, this, this came out around the same time, like, I guess this came out in 2024.
[01:21:47]  So after Trump won, but had a lot of fun.
[01:21:49]  This is like in anticipation of his like potential confirmation.
[01:21:53]  And they sort of drag Hex's mother out on TV and she sort of recants this.
[01:21:58]  But I mean, I'm sorry.
[01:22:02]  It's just, I mean, there's a little more background to this as well, which is that he was cheating on Samantha with his third wife because he was hired at Fox News.
[01:22:10]  As you said earlier, he was on Fox and Friends morning show.
[01:22:14]  Weekend.
[01:22:15]  And he was cheating.
[01:22:16]  In fact, had a child with a producer there.
[01:22:21]  Yes.
[01:22:22]  Who he says, of course, oh, led me to Christ and everything's different now.
[01:22:25]  I'm on a different man, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:22:28]  And I mean, it's just, it's so, I think one of the things that really gets me about a lot of this Hexa stuff is this letter or the rape allegation or even if we're taking his word for the rape allegation, which is just that you, you, you slept with another man's wife in a hotel room while he was in another room.
[01:22:48]  Even if at your excuse making that you're the saintly guy, all of these things should be enough for people to say, well, maybe this is not somebody with a lot of integrity and certainly not somebody who practices a lifestyle like this so deeply into his life.
[01:23:04]  It seems pretty entrenched there.
[01:23:07]  But none of it did.
[01:23:08]  I mean, this letter is so, I mean, this is, if, if someone from my family sent me something like this, I would kill myself.
[01:23:14]  I mean, it's fucking crazy.
[01:23:16]  Yeah.
[01:23:16]  No, it's insane.
[01:23:18]  And there doesn't seem to be any like actual reckoning with those words.
[01:23:27]  As you note, like Hegseth sort of pivots at this point and says that he's found God again.
[01:23:33]  He starts seeing an ultra conservative evangelical pastor.
[01:23:39]  Sexually?
[01:23:40]  Not that we're aware of.
[01:23:43]  And, you know, doesn't seem to address his drinking, doesn't seem to address his manipulations.
[01:23:50]  I mean, there's this insane, in fact, the manipulations kind of continue.
[01:23:54]  Like a few months after Hegseth's mother writes that deeply emotional indictment of her boy, it's Mother's Day.
[01:24:05]  And Fox and Friends Weekend does a segment between Hegseth and his mother that is very uncomfortable.
[01:24:12]  The letter itself was not public at this time, but it's during this insane tumultuous divorce.
[01:24:18]  One of the other kind of like crazy wrinkles is that my hunch is that this Fox and Friends segment between Pete and his mother was likely produced by Jennifer, his new wife, who's in the room, like basically trying to bring the family back together.
[01:24:36]  And so the Fox host is basically there to put on this positive, this positive image of the Hegseth family.
[01:24:47]  It's very uncomfortable.
[01:24:49]  Hegseth's mother basically declines to endorse anything other than his like military record.
[01:24:56]  She doesn't give any sort of like warm personal recollections of who he is or what she respects about him.
[01:25:02]  And then the Fox host gives her a bouquet of flowers on behalf of Pete.
[01:25:09]  And Pete doesn't even know that the flowers were there for his mom.
[01:25:11]  And so he has this shit eating grin.
[01:25:12]  And basically like you can just tell that behind the scenes, Fox is trying to clean up this mess and sort of keep everything together.
[01:25:19]  And probably Jennifer, his soon-to-be wife, is sort of like orchestrating it all.
[01:25:23]  So like the manipulation and the sort of like the posing and the public image, it's all there.
[01:25:28]  There's no, it just, Pete at this point is so far removed from this like young kid in Minnesota who was like the star point guard, didn't drink, seemed to like have this, you know, pretty average life, this normal relationship, all the rest.
[01:25:43]  It's just like the descent is so drastic and damaging and dark.
[01:25:50]  But there's really nowhere I think he sees himself.
[01:25:53]  Like he can't really, where else does he go from there?
[01:25:56]  And so he just keeps digging in.
[01:25:57]  He keeps digging in.
[01:25:59]  He's writing books about how women aren't strong, women can't fight.
[01:26:03]  Right.
[01:26:04]  And basically Goes into this like ultra conservative church at the same time as he basically gets booted from the army.
[01:26:13]  So there's also this like really intense moment right after January 6th because his National Guard unit is called to defend the Capitol for Biden's inauguration.
[01:26:26]  And yet Hegseth gets flagged ahead of the deployment to the Capitol because he has all of these tattoos that are like white nationalist calling cards.
[01:26:37]  And so he is unable to guard the Capitol for Biden's inauguration, which I think like he would have done.
[01:26:47]  Like he would have just, he wouldn't have like made any stink out of it.
[01:26:50]  He just would have been there.
[01:26:51]  Yeah.
[01:26:52]  And I think that personally, deep down in his heart, was so damaging.
[01:26:58]  Like this was his identity.
[01:27:00]  And all of a sudden, he's been rejected from this institution that he's poured his by Joe Brandon.
[01:27:05]  By Joe Brandon.
[01:27:06]  By Joe Brandon's woke army.
[01:27:09]  Yeah.
[01:27:09]  Yeah.
[01:27:09]  You know, I want to go back to the mother a little bit because Liz, I know that you have some thoughts maybe on the relationship between Peter Hagseth and his mother.
[01:27:18]  But this, I think this letter, and just in general, when we talked about his like, you know, talking about his dad as this sort of in this kind of backhanded compliment, you know, my dad was hardworking but non-confrontational, which reads as, my father was a pussy.
[01:27:34]  Yeah.
[01:27:36]  You know, it's very clear that the relationship with his mother is incredibly strained by the time that this letter is written.

=== War Woke and Forgiveness (14:39) ===

[01:27:44]  And I don't know, it seems like that a lot starts with them, the old moms.
[01:27:51]  I mean, yeah, I don't know.
[01:27:53]  I feel like we've kind of talked around this a lot.
[01:27:56]  He has just like, you can tell, like a very deep ambivalence toward women that, you know, manifests in both this, it seems like, like, like we were saying, this kind of like longing for their approval while also like violently rejecting, you know, that their authority.
[01:28:18]  And to, I'm sure that reading that from his own mother, like, you know, straight up, was one of those moments that, like you say, kind of like, you know, would probably cause someone not to reflect, but to actually dig deeper and kind of like bury themselves more.
[01:28:38]  Because like the thing is, is that like across the spectrum, it seems like this man embodies that these like performance, you know, this performance that we keep talking about, it's always, you know, like he kind of like mimics through parody that which he can't embody.
[01:28:55]  Whether that's how he views, you know, masculinity embodied or not through his father, or whether that's like how men relate to women, whether that's, you know what I'm saying?
[01:29:08]  Like, or even how, you know, the concept of what it means to be a man and war and brotherhood and so on and so forth.
[01:29:18]  So I mean, the kind of like embrace of the evangelicalism too fits in perfectly with this, not just because it's sort of like always the kind of last stop for the desperate, you know, especially the desperate on television or that are accustomed to the sort of television lifestyle, we'll say, or as you call them, so telegenic.
[01:29:44]  Obviously, evangelicalism is an extremely and importantly telegenic religion.
[01:29:51]  And so it attracts those types.
[01:29:53]  But also just like, I think his, I don't know, like reorientation toward this kind of maybe like larger political project that he sees with like, you know, now the woke, you know, the woke military, Trump is actually going to come back and maybe there's like a spot for me here.
[01:30:15]  Yeah.
[01:30:16]  Yeah.
[01:30:16]  You know, absolutely.
[01:30:17]  And I think you're so right about like the performance is so important because it's kind of like all he knows how to do.
[01:30:24]  And I guess thinks there's something genuine around that.
[01:30:27]  But like he's not actually embodying any of these things.
[01:30:30]  He's not like being the protector of women.
[01:30:32]  He's abusing them.
[01:30:33]  Like he's not being a hero in a just war.
[01:30:36]  He's like having a perfectly average career in a fucked up war.
[01:30:40]  Like there's all of these things that maybe just sort of like force the performance even more because like any effort to try to get there though, like, I mean, obviously you can be like a supportive husband.
[01:30:53]  Like it's not that hard to do.
[01:30:55]  Like so there it's like the psychology is just so all over the place.
[01:30:59]  It is really kind of hard to find that.
[01:31:01]  And to go back to the relationship with his women, with his wife, his mom, wife, mom, husband, wife.
[01:31:09]  It's all the same.
[01:31:11]  That's true.
[01:31:13]  Father, son, Holy Ghost.
[01:31:14]  It's all there.
[01:31:15]  Yeah, it's like there must be something between them.
[01:31:17]  And I don't know if she was just like really hard on him.
[01:31:19]  And I don't know.
[01:31:20]  That's kind of like the one outstanding thing about his biography that I really don't know is like what their relationship was like when they were young.
[01:31:28]  But it's fascinating.
[01:31:29]  And yes, you're right.
[01:31:30]  So then he like dives into evangelicalism.
[01:31:33]  Once the military rejects him, he doesn't have this like institution that's holding him up.
[01:31:39]  The evangelical church is surely an institution that can hold you up.
[01:31:42]  Yes, yes, absolutely.
[01:31:43]  Oftentimes my wires send you to the stage.
[01:31:47]  I'm really mean, like, especially for someone as charismatic and ready to perform as Heg Seth.
[01:31:55]  Like, talk about a fucking match made in literal heaven.
[01:31:57]  Well, and also ready to be forgiven.
[01:32:02]  Yes.
[01:32:02]  Desperate sin.
[01:32:04]  Yes.
[01:32:05]  That's something he really addresses with this addresses that he talks about.
[01:32:11]  Because he doesn't really address it, but he talks about it in this Megan Kelly interview where he's like, that was me, but then I, you know, sort of came to Christ and that's not me anymore.
[01:32:23]  But like, that's just not how that works.
[01:32:25]  I'm sorry.
[01:32:25]  Like, that's not.
[01:32:26]  I heard that a lot.
[01:32:27]  I mean, to be sure, it is how Christianity works.
[01:32:28]  It's how Christianity.
[01:32:29]  No, it's how Christianity works.
[01:32:30]  George Bush is a good thing, of course.
[01:32:32]  Your sins can be forgiven.
[01:32:34]  Your sins can be forgiven.
[01:32:36]  But the reality is, it doesn't cure you of those desires and those urges and that inability to control yourself or maybe that ability to control yourself too much.
[01:32:49]  It doesn't completely cut out the evil in a man's heart, obviously.
[01:32:53]  I mean, it's no matter sort of what theology might say about it in certain sects of Christianity, he sort of just uses this as like, well, the slate is wiped clean, right?
[01:33:06]  Like, I came to Christ.
[01:33:07]  I'm a different man now.
[01:33:08]  And the fucking, and, you know, starting over.
[01:33:11]  And so like, that was the old me that did that, but the new me would never do anything like that.
[01:33:19]  And it's just.
[01:33:20]  I think he genuinely believes that.
[01:33:22]  I think he does too.
[01:33:23]  I mean, I think on some level, I think that he leaned into the repression that has been prepared.
[01:33:30]  He hates feminism and yet he leans in.
[01:33:32]  Exactly.
[01:33:34]  And he's channeled that, you know, now that he finally has a mission again, too, right?
[01:33:38]  Because they bring him in and his whole thing has been the war on woke within the 10 years.
[01:33:44]  He's a war on woke.
[01:33:45]  10 years on woke.
[01:33:47]  But he is leading the charge in the war on woke and sort of doing these like Pentagon purges and getting this DEI bullshit out of there and making this a lean fighting machine about warfighters from warfare.
[01:33:58]  He's doing push-ups on TV.
[01:34:00]  Yeah.
[01:34:01]  Just like, you know, God.
[01:34:03]  I'll just say if I was Jennifer, his latest wife, I would be a little concerned about those videos that he posts doing the jogs with Tulsi Gabbard at like, you know, the base in Germany.
[01:34:15]  I don't know if he's Tulsi's type.
[01:34:18]  What do you mean by that?
[01:34:19]  What is Tulsi's type?
[01:34:20]  What is Tulsi's type?
[01:34:22]  You know what?
[01:34:22]  I don't know.
[01:34:23]  But what do you, what were you thinking when you said that?
[01:34:25]  I don't know.
[01:34:26]  I just, perhaps she enjoys someone a bit smarter and more sensitive.
[01:34:30]  Oh, maybe a little more in touch with her feminine side.
[01:34:33]  But yeah, I mean, I'm just saying, you know, he is, it's, he is now, it's kind of what you talked a little bit about it in your article, too.
[01:34:42]  It's like he has kind of declared the Pentagon to be the woke, this festering hole of wokeys who are fucking, I don't know, doing what, making our warfighters less lean by teaching them PowerPoints about it, they'll be giving them pussies next.
[01:35:05]  Actually, he says in first step is tampons and something to put it in.
[01:35:11]  Could you get the machine?
[01:35:12]  Yeah, but no, but in his defense, he actually does defend female airmen because he says they move the machine.
[01:35:23]  And he does like a little thing with his hand on the Sean Ryan show.
[01:35:26]  Of course, I think this is immediately before a pilot does the worst plane disaster in U.S. history.
[01:35:35]  But to be fair, that pilot was American.
[01:35:37]  Yes.
[01:35:38]  Yeah, no, she was.
[01:35:39]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:35:40]  So the disability was going to be.
[01:35:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:35:45]  But he has now sort of been the foot soldier and very prominent within the administration about the war on wokeys.
[01:35:53]  And he's always doing this.
[01:35:55]  His whole thing is like peace.
[01:35:56]  And this is Trump.
[01:35:57]  Trump talked about this, the UN yesterday as well.
[01:35:59]  Peace through strength.
[01:36:02]  And which is like, it reads like something from like, I don't know what, one of those fucking, like a young adult novel about like the bad government.
[01:36:09]  Like, yeah, their new thing is peace through strength.
[01:36:12]  But like peace through strength, which seems to be like drone strikes on boats in the Caribbean and begging the Taliban for a portion of, or maybe the entirety, if we're lucky, Bagram Air Base back.
[01:36:28]  You know, it's kind of he, it really a lot of what it seems like a lot of people in this administration is they're playing this role for Trump, right?
[01:36:35]  Like they're, you know, Trump always talks about how certain people, he always said this about Luigi Mangiani, straight out of central casting.
[01:36:42]  And I really do think that he's like, okay, Hegseth has been accused of rape and he looks like a guy that you would draw if you were trying to draw a soldier.
[01:36:50]  And so he's my guy.
[01:36:52]  And he hates the wokies.
[01:36:54]  And so it just seems like so many people in this administration are just that.
[01:36:57]  They're like performing these roles.
[01:37:00]  Whether he's actually, and of course, there's been these scandals, right?
[01:37:03]  Like the signal thing, which his wife was in, there was a different minor signal scandal aside from the major one with Goldberg and about with his wife and like his brother and his lawyer in a signal group about strikes in Yemen.
[01:37:17]  But then there's also been this sort of like chase for the moles and the leakers within the Pentagon as well.
[01:37:23]  That I'm really unclear of what was going on with that.
[01:37:27]  I know Tucker had one of those guys.
[01:37:28]  Real Tinker Taylor situation.
[01:37:29]  Yeah, that was the Cold War on woke.
[01:37:32]  That was a very George Smiley war on woke situation where it's like, who's the woke one?
[01:37:36]  Do you know like the worst George Smiley impression that you could ever imagine?
[01:37:40]  Like, just like the dumbest guy looking for to me, whenever I think of George Smiley, do you know that movie, The Master of Disguise?
[01:37:48]  Yes.
[01:37:48]  I've never seen it, but I know the famous image of Dana Carvey as like a turtle guy.
[01:37:53]  Yeah.
[01:37:53]  That's what I think George Smiley looks like to me.
[01:37:56]  I think they that's what you think of George Smiley?
[01:37:58]  Yeah.
[01:37:58]  They filmed it on 9-11.
[01:38:00]  They did.
[01:38:01]  George Smiley to me is like very distinguished.
[01:38:04]  He's much more.
[01:38:05]  Well, he's wearing a suit, I believe, in the turtle thing.
[01:38:08]  But he's not all like funny looking.
[01:38:10]  I think in my head, he's like very distinguished.
[01:38:12]  He is very distinguished.
[01:38:13]  He was a little, you know, you know, but, but I guess in my head, he still kind of looks like Dana Carvey or whoever is.
[01:38:20]  I know who's in that movie.
[01:38:21]  It's Dana Carvey.
[01:38:22]  Dana Carvey.
[01:38:23]  But, but it's, and then there's been, you know, now this recent thing about how you're not allowed to report on anything in the Pentagon unless it's been pre-approved or whatever.
[01:38:34]  I mean, it's really, I think he kind of doesn't know what to do with himself and he's just kind of doing things that's all of them.
[01:38:40]  Yeah.
[01:38:40]  Yeah.
[01:38:41]  I'm sorry.
[01:38:41]  Like every, it's just all the cabinet heads seem to be like, because they're all basically incompetent at all different levels, that they're all just sort of like twiddling their thumbs, trying to find stuff to do, usually having to do with television to show and perform that they're doing something with their office.
[01:39:05]  No, totally.
[01:39:06]  It's all about optics.
[01:39:07]  And again, like Hag Seth out of all the cabinet members has the longest career in optics.
[01:39:11]  So it's like, it's sort of extra intense for him.
[01:39:14]  And especially like no one sort of went through the gauntlet that he had to go to to get confirmed.
[01:39:21]  And so like he was like, I'm not going to drink anymore.
[01:39:23]  I love my wife.
[01:39:24]  I'm a man of God.
[01:39:25]  And so now he's just kind of like white knuckling it, trying to make this like he has like big photos of his wife on like the walls of the Pentagon.
[01:39:33]  Oh my God, I forgot about that.
[01:39:35]  He says, don't cheat.
[01:39:36]  Yeah.
[01:39:37]  And like, I mean, who knows what's going on with the drinking thing, but he's clearly having to hide it if he's still drinking.
[01:39:43]  Maybe this is like the finally of the wife.
[01:39:45]  Like he like, there's got to, maybe there's some pseudomasochisms.
[01:39:49]  You know what I'm saying here?
[01:39:51]  It's like, yeah.
[01:39:52]  Maybe it's like, I don't know.
[01:39:55]  But yeah, I mean, it's, he tells Megan Kelly on that interview, he's like, listen, I'm treating, I'm going to treat this position like, I'm not going to say my drink again.
[01:40:03]  I'm not going to say that.
[01:40:04]  But this is like a deployment to me.
[01:40:06]  I can just, it's easy for me to quit drinking because I don't have a problem with fucking drinking.
[01:40:10]  That's, yeah, it's easy for me to quit drinking.
[01:40:12]  Nobody has questions about it when I say that.
[01:40:15]  Hit the tip line.
[01:40:15]  Hit the tip line, Peter Hagg says.
[01:40:17]  I will.
[01:40:18]  Do you work at DOD?
[01:40:20]  Have you had drinks with me?
[01:40:22]  Pete Hagg says eighth and ninth step is going to be a tip line.
[01:40:26]  Phone book.
[01:40:27]  Every woman's name.
[01:40:29]  But yeah, I mean, it's really, if you work at, if you have seen Pete Hegseth, we will pay, we have a bounty out for firsthand information on Pete Hegseth drinking during his tenure at DOW.
[01:40:41]  I will say, never mind.
[01:40:43]  I shouldn't say, I don't know.
[01:40:44]  I could say this.
[01:40:45]  When I lived in L.A., I lived right by a restaurant that John Hamm would always get wasted at during Peak Madman.
[01:40:53]  And the like sweaty Don Draper in real life.
[01:40:57]  situation.
[01:40:58]  So funny.
[01:40:59]  Like whiskey meat sweat.
[01:41:01]  Do you know what I'm talking about?
[01:41:02]  I do.
[01:41:02]  Oh, I do.
[01:41:03]  Was constant.
[01:41:06]  That is what I imagine is happening at DOD.
[01:41:08]  It's like that level, but also that he leans into the kind of like male in the office, like sweaty alcoholism that he probably imagines there's this, you know, classic kind of like mastery.
[01:41:22]  You know, I'm going to go ahead and say I think that he is probably heavily doused in very scented liquids.
[01:41:32]  X-Body spray.
[01:41:33]  Yeah.
[01:41:34]  Beyond even Axe.
[01:41:35]  I think he is just probably like, he's got like eight different things.
[01:41:37]  He's like doing a roller underneath his like chin or whatever.
[01:41:40]  Maybe he's butt chugging.
[01:41:42]  He's could be butt chugging.
[01:41:44]  Yeah.
[01:41:44]  Yeah.
[01:41:45]  So that no one knows.
[01:41:46]  Maybe he was butt chugging during the confirmation.
[01:41:49]  Well, you know what?
[01:41:50]  A girl that I like how like how RFK was popping the zins.
[01:41:55]  Yeah.
[01:41:55]  God.
[01:41:56]  There's another performance.
[01:41:57]  Fucking God.
[01:41:58]  Anyway.
[01:41:58]  I do think RFK is probably getting out of some weird shit.
[01:42:02]  No shit.
[01:42:03]  No, but I'm saying like a lot of these guys are thinking you're waiting for the cameras.
[01:42:06]  I think RFK is like, what's on the laptop today?
[01:42:09]  What's on the laptop today?
[01:42:11]  He's like on ayahuasca right now.
[01:42:14]  Could you imagine being a secretary?
[01:42:15]  Sorry, sir, could you repeat that?
[01:42:17]  I couldn't understand what you said because your voice is all fucked up sounding.
[01:42:20]  Because it's a nightmare to hear you speak.

=== Child Soldiers Recruiting Campaign (13:55) ===

[01:42:23]  It's just, yeah.
[01:42:24]  Remember how everyone allegedly thought, that's how I'm going to phrase it.
[01:42:29]  Me, she's talking about me.
[01:42:30]  I know.
[01:42:31]  Everyone, there were all of those pieces that suggested that people believed to say that, that he killed his wife.
[01:42:39]  The RFK did?
[01:42:41]  Yeah.
[01:42:41]  Well, no, he actually should talk to Hagseth because RFK, this is what people believe, that RFK Jr. cheated on his ex-wife so much that she killed herself.
[01:42:52]  Right.
[01:42:53]  I think that there's some reporting on that.
[01:42:56]  There's some reporting on that.
[01:42:57]  I don't know.
[01:42:57]  I'm not really sure that he's not talked about as much anyway.
[01:43:01]  Well, he's another guy.
[01:43:01]  He's like, once I found, once I finally found my voice, I was able to.
[01:43:07]  It's just, it's crazy.
[01:43:09]  Cheryl.
[01:43:09]  Oh, the sounds they must make making love.
[01:43:13]  One can imagine.
[01:43:14]  One can, this is something, that's how you'll know.
[01:43:17]  That's the benchmark for AI, right?
[01:43:18]  When I can just type into Grok, what does this sound like when RFK Jr. and Cheryl from Curb Your Enthusiasm make love?
[01:43:29]  And it'll be able to give me a perfect six minutes of audio of that exact thing.
[01:43:35]  I mean, yeah, they should really, they should really talk.
[01:43:37]  It's just crazy.
[01:43:37]  There's just, you can do, you can just do things.
[01:43:40]  Like, it's so crazy that, like, never let a scandal ever get in your way of anything.
[01:43:46]  Like, RFK Jr. cheated so much that a woman killed herself.
[01:43:51]  His wife killed herself.
[01:43:52]  They say, they say this.
[01:43:54]  People believe that they did.
[01:43:55]  People believe that they did.
[01:43:57]  Pete Hegseth, be kind of one of the most prolific cheaters, I think, in the public eye.
[01:44:04]  That's not an actor or a musician.
[01:44:07]  It is just, it is the fathering a kid while you're still married to Gunner's mom.
[01:44:13]  Or Gunner.
[01:44:14]  Think of Boone and all of that.
[01:44:16]  Think of Boone.
[01:44:18]  Those kids, that is, we are, those kids are.
[01:44:21]  Boone Hegseth.
[01:44:22]  Boone Hegseth.
[01:44:24]  That is really going to be a bathroom situation, full metal jacket style once they send him off.
[01:44:33]  Boone, hit the tip line.
[01:44:35]  I will change your life, my brother.
[01:44:37]  I will introduce you to a little thing called carfentanyl, and it'll make all your feelings.
[01:44:42]  No, I'm just playing.
[01:44:43]  That's just.
[01:44:43]  Maybe Boone could learn like a different, like, he could start reading like tactics from a different kind of military.
[01:44:51]  Yeah.
[01:44:53]  Which kind?
[01:44:54]  Like a, you know, like a different, a different type of insurgency.
[01:44:58]  Yes.
[01:44:58]  We'll say.
[01:44:59]  Yeah.
[01:44:59]  Perhaps one that comes from the countryside.
[01:45:02]  I'm like one of those like anarchist.
[01:45:04]  Oh, yeah.
[01:45:05]  Yeah.
[01:45:05]  I'm like one of those anarchists like abolish the family kind of people, but just for Pete Hegset's family.
[01:45:11]  I'm like, we need to wrap it up.
[01:45:12]  I think he's doing a real good job of that itself.
[01:45:14]  I guess that's true.
[01:45:15]  Itself, it's abolishing itself after, you know, they say.
[01:45:19]  This is Pete's alphabet.
[01:45:20]  They say that the state becomes the brightest and kind of most expansive under socialism just before it dissolves into communism or ascends, I guess you could say.
[01:45:33]  And I think that's true with Peter, too.
[01:45:35]  I think that really his family is going to become really tight.
[01:45:38]  And then we're going to have our first openly Pauli Department of War secretary.
[01:45:47]  Jasper, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:45:49]  Thank you for that.
[01:45:50]  The Pete.
[01:45:51]  The Pete is great.
[01:45:52]  The piece is great.
[01:45:54]  Thank you.
[01:45:54]  And we will link to it in our notes.
[01:45:57]  And everyone can read about the horror that is Pete Hegseth, Peter Brian Hegseth.
[01:46:01]  You should probably go back in and change.
[01:46:04]  You say, yeah.
[01:46:05]  Just Matthew.
[01:46:06]  Change the beast.
[01:46:08]  To just, you know, constantly refer to him as Peter Brian.
[01:46:12]  Yeah.
[01:46:14]  Any last thoughts?
[01:46:15]  No, thanks for having me.
[01:46:17]  You don't have any last thoughts?
[01:46:18]  I don't know.
[01:46:19]  I just think that.
[01:46:21]  Such an asshole.
[01:46:23]  You don't have to answer that, but do you?
[01:46:26]  Well, I think that like sort of as sort of insane and crazy and sometimes silly and extreme as all of this is, the sort of like undercurrent and the sort of trend broadly here, I think, is that Hag Seth is also, despite his incompetence, and he's not very good at military missions.
[01:46:47]  He's like not good at bombing Iran, for instance, or hitting these boats or a Signal Gate.
[01:46:51]  Like he's not good at the sort of like typical foreign policy entanglements that America gets into.
[01:46:59]  But I think he may prove to be effective as a messenger to bring in a massive new movement, especially now that Charlie Kirk has died, of young conservative loyalists to Trump that could be weaponized by the Trump administration in a very serious, scary way.
[01:47:19]  So you were actually saying prior to us, I think, starting recording, they're actually thinking of recruiting off of the back of Charlie Kirk's accident.
[01:47:27]  Right.
[01:47:27]  So there are plans being developed currently in the Pentagon to potentially lay out an entire recruiting campaign replete with ads on the whole nine yards that basically, you know, says like Charlie Kirk was a prayer warrior.
[01:47:42]  Step up, join his cause.
[01:47:44]  The best way to do that is to join the Department of War.
[01:47:48]  Yeah, none of this is surprising at all.
[01:47:50]  No, no, not at all.
[01:47:51]  Especially when you see the money that was all poured into this memorial service over the weekend and this, the entire regalia.
[01:48:00]  And that's sort of the most obvious place for this energy to be funneled, you know, like just recruiting.
[01:48:06]  Because like part of Charlie Kirk's whole thing was like, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I work out.
[01:48:12]  Like I'm a man.
[01:48:12]  I'm a warrior.
[01:48:13]  Treat your wife well.
[01:48:14]  Like there was a lot of over and also like the religious symbology and stuff.
[01:48:17]  So and like there's 900 TPUSA chapters across the country that are now all of a sudden something to glom on to.
[01:48:27]  Cells.
[01:48:28]  TPUSA cells.
[01:48:30]  So yeah, I mean, no, that's fascinating.
[01:48:32]  That's worrying to me.
[01:48:34]  And especially like if you look at January 6th, there were already a lot of Trump loyalists in the military.
[01:48:40]  And the Pentagon kind of went dark in the days leading up to Jan 6.
[01:48:43]  And I think what do you mean when you say that?
[01:48:46]  There were basically like Trump got rid of Mark Esper, who was just sort of like a nothing West Pointer, whatever, like two months before the January 20th inauguration and installed all of these like hardcore loyalists, which was strange because it's like, why would you put these people in if they're only going to be there for two months?
[01:49:05]  Some of them were also West Pointers military guys, hardcore Trump people, who later admitted under grilling from congressional investigators that they thought Trump might stay in office beyond January 20th.
[01:49:16]  And so basically these new Trump military guys get in.
[01:49:20]  They cease transition efforts.
[01:49:24]  The Biden people like don't hear from them.
[01:49:26]  They're all very worried.
[01:49:28]  I think like two or three days before January 6th, every living defense secretary writes an open letter in the Washington Post, basically like warning the people in charge of the Pentagon not to do a coup, that they're hearing about something happening and that like they will be punished severely if they try something.
[01:49:45]  And then on January 6th, as people are trying to get in touch with the Pentagon, they just don't hear anything.
[01:49:52]  So like, I think that, you know, and especially because the National Guard in D.C. can be, as we've seen, weaponized and activated by the president in the way other National Guard units can't.
[01:50:02]  There's just like, I think that Trump will try if he loses, or we'll see what happens.
[01:50:09]  I don't know if he'll run again, but like there's just there's if Trump is going to try to stay in power beyond 2024, he needs the military.
[01:50:17]  And I think he understands that.
[01:50:18]  And I think Peg Seth understands that that's part of his remit is to like see if they can get enough of their boys on board for something like that.
[01:50:27]  Can I ask a question just because since we have you here, even though we're going super long, what is your read on the current situation with the National Guard and its deployments to like the cities around?
[01:50:38]  Yeah, I mean, I think that the National Guard could be the sort of like last defense against authoritarianism if Trump tries to seize power and if he has sort of enough loyalty built within the armed forces.
[01:50:54]  I mean, what's happening, but it's tricky because like all of the conservative states are weaponizing and activating their National Guard on Trump's behalf.
[01:51:02]  So like the Louisiana National Guard can be activated out anywhere.
[01:51:08]  So there are all of these states that are loyal to Trump that can activate the National Guard and do what they will.
[01:51:13]  I mean, the people who are in the National Guard, thankfully, because they have day jobs, generally aren't as like bought in.
[01:51:18]  No, a lot of them are like dentists.
[01:51:20]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:51:20]  So like I think what podcasters don't like what they're doing for the most part.
[01:51:27]  There's obviously some wackos in the bunch.
[01:51:30]  And I think some of the like more liberal states, if shit really went haywire, they could like call their National Guards up to like try to, you know, defend the breach and protect Valhalla.
[01:51:42]  But I think that what's happening.
[01:51:44]  That's so absurd.
[01:51:46]  I know.
[01:51:46]  I mean, it's possible.
[01:51:48]  I mean, I'll be, I'll be, listen, I'm constantly running the numbers.
[01:51:53]  I'm at 10%.
[01:51:55]  It's happening.
[01:51:56]  What is happening?
[01:51:58]  Military.
[01:51:58]  Something's happening.
[01:51:59]  You can't just say I'm at 10%.
[01:52:01]  Military is happening.
[01:52:04]  I'm going to say something happens with some kind of armed forces at the end of this term.
[01:52:08]  Well, something's already happening.
[01:52:09]  I know, but something happens in a way that is.
[01:52:12]  When you say the armed forces, do you mean at home?
[01:52:15]  At home.
[01:52:16]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:52:16]  Domestic.
[01:52:17]  Domestic.
[01:52:17]  Not saying there's something abroad.
[01:52:19]  And I oftentimes I'm like, listen, the army is really big.
[01:52:24]  Yeah.
[01:52:24]  You know, it is.
[01:52:25]  There's only one.
[01:52:26]  Diversity is its strength.
[01:52:30]  There's only so much you can really do to clean house in that four years.
[01:52:35]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:52:36]  It's huge.
[01:52:37]  It's huge.
[01:52:37]  It is the largest bureaucracy in civilizational history.
[01:52:42]  Exactly.
[01:52:42]  And it's just also really like.
[01:52:45]  You know, there's a lot of people who are depending on that.
[01:52:47]  It's the iron rice bowl for a lot of people.
[01:52:52]  But I'm saying there's like a 10% chance.
[01:52:54]  Yeah, we could see something.
[01:52:55]  And obviously that's what a lot of these National Guard deployments are trying to sort of test the water, see what they're different.
[01:52:59]  I mean, the military parade is part and parcel of that.
[01:53:02]  And just trying to see like how much loyalty he can build in this time period.
[01:53:07]  Would you fight if it was a civil war?
[01:53:09]  Yes, sir.
[01:53:11]  Which side?
[01:53:11]  I'm a man of Vermont, the Green Mountain Boys.
[01:53:14]  I would fight on whichever side's winning.
[01:53:16]  No, but come on.
[01:53:17]  Come on.
[01:53:18]  You fight for the good guys, right?
[01:53:19]  Come on.
[01:53:20]  Yeah, I'd fight for the good guys.
[01:53:21]  I'd fight for the good guys.
[01:53:23]  Whichever side is winning, as if you could tell that in the moment.
[01:53:26]  Well, I would wait for two months and then join whichever side was winning.
[01:53:31]  We should need Chotsky to get away from the game.
[01:53:34]  That's what we need.
[01:53:35]  You don't need to be strong to have a gun.
[01:53:36]  But I want to do cool, like, fighting stuff.
[01:53:38]  You got to sleep that gun.
[01:53:40]  Guns aren't that.
[01:53:41]  I did schlep.
[01:53:42]  You don't really have to be that strong.
[01:53:43]  They have child soldiers.
[01:53:43]  Think about this.
[01:53:44]  And anybody who thinks that they can't do it, they have child soldiers all over the world, dude.
[01:53:49]  Those guys fucking carry guns, like machine guns sometimes.
[01:53:51]  Some of those guys have peekams and the belt.
[01:53:54]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:53:55]  Fight a child soldier.
[01:53:56]  You could.
[01:53:57]  You could, but they can carry the gun.
[01:53:59]  I mean, they do fight 100 child soldiers.
[01:54:01]  That's the whole thing.
[01:54:03]  The reason they get child soldiers, they're not like, here's our expert child soldier.
[01:54:06]  They're like, we have 50 child soldiers.
[01:54:08]  Right.
[01:54:08]  So would you rather fight one Pete Hegseth after six drinks or 60 child soldiers?
[01:54:15]  I think six drinks for him is like one drink for a normal person.
[01:54:17]  Yeah, Pete Hegseth is like, he's like, his hand is like held out there.
[01:54:21]  He's like, steady as he's ever been.
[01:54:24]  Pete Hegseth might be at that.
[01:54:26]  There's a movie that I've never seen with Denzel Washington where he's drunk and he flies a plane.
[01:54:31]  That's like a selling flight, I think it's called.
[01:54:33]  That's a great movie.
[01:54:34]  I've never seen it by several times.
[01:54:35]  It's terrifying if you have any kind of anxiety about flying and pilots.
[01:54:40]  Really?
[01:54:41]  Don't watch that movie and don't read about the pilots who purposely crash planes because they're depressed.
[01:54:47]  Well, we all know about that.
[01:54:49]  That happens all the time.
[01:54:50]  I didn't know about that.
[01:54:51]  A lot of them think it and most pilots think it and don't do it study show.
[01:54:56]  But you know what's a great kind of rejoinder to that?
[01:54:59]  The rehearsal.
[01:55:00]  That's true.
[01:55:01]  But you know how like sometimes you're like at a subway station or you're in traffic?
[01:55:05]  Every single person on earth goes through this.
[01:55:07]  They're like, I should drive my car into oncoming traffic.
[01:55:12]  Every single person thinks about this all the time and just doesn't do it.
[01:55:15]  Pilots are also thinking about this shit twice.
[01:55:18]  One girl.
[01:55:20]  Yeah, I know that girl there.
[01:55:22]  Lots of people.
[01:55:22]  Or not into traffic, into a wall.
[01:55:24]  What girl?
[01:55:25]  You don't know about this?
[01:55:27]  Oh, I thought you were referring to someone we both know.
[01:55:29]  No, there's this like famous, this like influencer that like got wasted.
[01:55:37]  Her boyfriend and his best friend and like drove into a I've watched her interrogation tapes into a wall and then they went back after like months and ended up charging her for like on homicide now she's in jail.
[01:55:52]  I knew a lady and if you're listening to this well you better have gotten sober because this was tough.
[01:55:58]  This should have been your rock bottom but I knew a lady who was in her car and a guy met her baby was riding her ticket and he just she just drove on into him and drove on the freeway from the mission with him on the on it was in the newspaper.
[01:56:09]  What?
[01:56:09]  Yeah.
[01:56:10]  Did he survive?
[01:56:11]  He survived, yeah.
[01:56:12]  I don't think he was even really injured.
[01:56:13]  I think he was sort of hanging on to it.
[01:56:15]  That's crazy.
[01:56:16]  Yeah.
[01:56:17]  I think she got pulled over.

=== It Takes All Kinds (00:50) ===

[01:56:18]  You know what?
[01:56:18]  It takes all kinds.
[01:56:19]  It takes all kinds is what I got to say.
[01:56:21]  And one kind that it took today was Jasper Craven, William McCraven's.
[01:56:27]  I wish.
[01:56:28]  Then I'd be strong.
[01:56:31]  If I was the son of William, I'd make a little Rex guy.
[01:56:33]  I'd be like a little boon in front of the naval seal.
[01:56:36]  I'm going to say this.
[01:56:37]  Anybody out there who's like, I'm weak, I'm weak.
[01:56:39]  I'm weak.
[01:56:40]  Just think of child soldiers.
[01:56:42]  Just be like, well, they could do it.
[01:56:43]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:56:45]  Thank you for joining us.
[01:56:47]  And we will see you next time.
[01:56:50]  Thank you.
[01:57:01]  Well, with that, I'm Liz.
[01:57:03]  My name is Bryce.
[01:57:05]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[01:57:06]  And this has been Tronon.
[01:57:08]  We will see you next time.