Defense Secretary Is Clear: He Cares About Headlines, Not Troop Deaths

Update: this story has been changed to reflect that all six members of a KC-135 aircraft died when they crashed in Iraq.

Pete Hegseth, the serial sexual abuser, rampant alcoholic, and white nationalist war criminal currently in charge of the Department of Defense, whined like a petulant child before the media this morning, as he admonished them for not being nicer to him.

Hegseth was clear in his messaging: his fragile little feelings were hurt, and it was the meanies in the media who were at fault for reporting the failures of the Iran War.

This morning, CENTCOM confirmed six more deaths as a result of the Iran War, crew members on a refueling plane that went down in Iraq.

Hegseth also contradicted Trump’s recent messaging. Trump has been adamant that the war is ending, sooner rather than later, and even told a crowd in Kentucky that it had already been won.

Hegseth told the “today will be yet again the highest volume of strikes America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran. Ramping up and only up." He’s extremely committed to murdering as many Iranians as possible, and if U.S. servicemembers are harmed or killed as a result, don’t expect any sympathy from Hegseth, who allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in 2017.

The woman is identified only as Jane Doe in the police document. She told an investigator that late one night, while in Hegseth’s room at a hotel that was hosting a Republican women’s conference, he took her cellphone and “blocked the door with his body,” according to the report.

She also said they then had a sexual encounter, and in the ensuing days as other events triggered memories, she “went to the hospital because she believed she was sexually assaulted by [Hegseth],” an officer wrote in the report.

The incidents described in the police report occurred over several hours, from Saturday evening, Oct. 7, into the early hours of Sunday, Oct. 8. When police contacted Hegseth later that month, his version of events differed from Doe’s; as he told an investigator that he and Doe had had sex -- but that it was consensual.

Now he gets to abuse the troops under his command, the people of Iran, and anyone else he can point a bomb at, while blubbering to media who don’t cover it in a way he approves of.