Commander Clueless Strikes Again

Hegseth’s ego-driven “leadership” proves dangerous, absurd, and illegal, forcing Washington to confront the man treating national security like a reckless stunt.

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Joshua Sukoff / Shutterstock.com

It’s becoming a weekly ritual in Washington: wake up, pour the coffee, check the news, and discover that Pete Hegseth has once again done something that isn’t just dumb, but aggressively, flamboyantly illegal. Not questionable, not sloppy; illegal. This isn’t your routine bureaucratic blunder. This is full-contact stupidity with a side of federal criminal exposure. And just when you think Hegseth has reached his personal ceiling of recklessness, he somehow finds a trapdoor, opens it, and swan-dives into a new subterranean chamber of idiocy.

The man’s résumé of disasters is already longer than an aircraft carrier, starting with Signalgate 1: when he treated encrypted military communications like they were Instagram DMs and sent classified operational chatter over unsecured channels because, in his words, it was “faster.” Fast isn’t the word the Pentagon used. They preferred terms like “reckless,” “dangerous,” and my personal favorite, “catastrophically unacceptable.” Then came Signalgate 2, the sequel nobody wanted, where he essentially committed the same offense but with even greater confidence, as though the lesson he took from the first investigation was that he hadn’t gone big enough.

There was also the unforgettable episode where he lectured admirals and generals—people who’ve commanded fleets, earned medals, and lived through things that would send Pete into a fainting spell—on how to run military operations. Imagine a guy who once spilled nacho cheese on his uniform at a tailgate telling Admiral Nimitz how the Pacific campaign “should’ve been done.” The Joint Chiefs have endured a lot in their careers, but being talked down to by a man whose strategic lens comes from cable news hits a special kind of nerve.

But all of that was merely the prelude to Hegseth’s latest and most alarming spectacle: ordering a missile strike so lethal, so sloppy, and so bizarrely vindictive that even members of his own party are choking on the details. A Venezuelan vessel suspected of drug trafficking? Fine; that’s what interdiction forces exist for. But blowing up the ship and then, according to multiple reports, allegedly green-lighting a second strike to eliminate two survivors clinging to debris? That’s not defense policy. That’s a deleted scene from a D-movie where the villain goes too far and the director mutters, “Yeah… we can’t release that.”

What makes it worse—and there is always a “worse” with Pete—is that this command wasn’t issued through careful deliberation or a structured chain of review. No, apparently it was spoken out loud, in the moment, in the same tone a frat boy might use to shout “send it!” before launching himself off a roof into a kiddie pool. And like all dangerous idiots, Hegseth assumes he’ll be protected by the same arrogance that led him to issue the order in the first place.

The man’s response to the scandal speaks volumes. Instead of expressing concern for the nearly 100 dead, or acknowledging the seriousness, or even feigning adult-level awareness of international law, he began posting AI-generated images mocking the entire situation. Because nothing says “I take this seriously” like using artificial intelligence to create memes about missile strikes. It’s the moral equivalent of a teenager doing Fortnite dances at a crime scene.

Meanwhile, congressional committees are gearing up for investigations with a level of intensity typically reserved for corrupt defense contractors and rogue intelligence operations. Democrats are using phrases like “illegal under international law,” while Republicans—yes, even Republicans—are saying if the reports are accurate, then Pete’s actions were beyond the pale. When bipartisan agreement materializes this quickly, it’s never about something good. It’s because the stink is so potent that nobody wants it near them.

Even the White House’s response is conspicuously frail. Usually, when one of their own is under fire, the reflex is unified defiance: deny, mock, deflect, rinse, repeat. But this time the tone is curiously soft, the distancing obvious, the support tepid at best. When a president who normally defends his appointees with flamethrower enthusiasm starts offering comments that sound like he’s hiding behind a curtain, you know the loyalty well is running dry.

Hegseth, though, marches on with his trademark mix of unwarranted bravado and cartoonish self-certainty. He insists everything was justified, everything was legal, and everything was necessary. He speaks like a man who confuses decisiveness with brutality and believes that sounding tough is the same thing as being competent. But there is a difference—a vast, canyon-sized difference—between strength and stupidity. And Pete, bless his misguided heart, keeps sprinting in the wrong direction with a hand grenade in each hand and no idea where the safety pin is.

At some point, even his defenders will have to ask the question everyone else is already thinking: why is a man who can’t handle a Signal thread without sparking a congressional inquiry in charge of lethal military decisions? How many more disasters does he get before someone in authority realizes that the biggest national security threat might be sitting in the Pentagon’s E-Ring wearing too much hair gel and barking orders like a discount action-movie villain?

Because if this is the pattern—if this is the level of judgment steering America’s war machine—then the danger isn’t coming from hostile nations abroad. It’s coming from the guy who treats war like it’s a playground dare, consequences be damned.

And the worst part?
Pete still thinks he’s the hero of this story.

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