Pete Hegseth Really Gets To Me - by Liza Donnelly

Pete Hegseth is an embarrassment. The words in the speech balloons are his, the words in the thought balloons are mine

I woke too early this morning and began reading the news, which is of course so worrisome. We cannot get to the midterms fast enough and take down Trump by winning back the Congress. It won’t be easy, because the GOP is working hard to mess with polls, voter registration and voter maps. I have confidence, though, that many concerned lawmakers and activists are on it. Maybe my next post will look into what is going on with that: as usual, Trump is trying to distract us from those activities— and the Epstein Files— by going to war.

In her opinion today, “Trump’s Fantasy Is Crashing Down, one of my favorite writers, Lydia Polgreen of The NY Times writes :“The postwar consensus was built partly on a set of noble ideas about human rights and international law, but in truth its backstop was economic interdependence. And not since World War II has there been a conflict that unfolded in a crucial global financial center. America’s major wars since then took place in nations that were on the economic periphery: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.”

Trump has crippled global commerce to a degree. The Gulf is home to about half of the world’s proven reserves of oil and this war, and this conflict has virtually shut down the Strait of Hormuz where a large portion of the energy traffic for the globe centers. Airports are closed, crippling businesses and commerce that have increasingly centered in that region. So much of Trump’s wealth is tied up in the region, so it puzzles me to no end: did they not get that this would happen? And that Iran would attack our allies in the region (and beyond)?

Missles have been shot down headed to Turkey and two missles entered Azerbaijan, injuring two people. Trump’s administration has asked Ukraine president Zelinsky for help in battling drones. Ironic. Zelinsky said he would provide the expertise.

Trump says he wants to be involved in the selection the next leader of Iran, he said so, in public.

Lydia Polgreen, whom I quote above from her excellent Op-Ed piece, ends with this:

“If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, perhaps it will also serve as a lesson to Trump. It should be a simple one: Other places and other people are real, possessing their own agendas and agency — and America’s actions have consequences it cannot control. Anything else is pure fantasy.”

I mentioned the other day that Pete Hegseth almost gets under my skin more than Trump, but not quite. It’s his attitude of macho glee, seeming to enjoy having the “toys” of war at his disposal and using pumped-up, aggressive, military-like rhetoric. Yesterday at a press briefing, Pete Hegseth said:"Iran is toast, and they know it, or at least, soon enough, they will know it.” and the US will rain “death and destruction” down on Iran, and vowed that the US can keep fighting “as long as we need to. Iran will be able to do nothing about it,” he warned. “Death and destruction from the sky. All day long.” Iran is “toast, and they know it,” he said, “or at least, soon enough, they will know it.”

Hegseth said the we will keep fighting “as long as we need to,” although he admitted that the US “can’t stop everything” coming at us from Tehran, hinting at future US casualties. “We will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense-industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders, and their military leaders,” continuing to say Iranian leaders will look up and only see US and Israeli airpower, “every minute of every day until we decide that it’s over.”

“Iran will be able to do nothing about it. Death and destruction from the sky. All day long.” US pilots “have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” he added. Rules of engagement “are designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them when they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

I quote him a lot because I just cannot believe his rhetoric.

Hegseth seems to want to control the media and got upset when press focussed on the US service people killed. In the first strikes on Feb 28, an elementary school was hit. Analysis indicates that it was from a US strike. Iranian health officials and state media said the strike had killed at least 175 people, many of them children. Here is the analysis. This extremely sad narrative is not one that the Trump administration wants to have us pay any attention to.

In case you missed it, Trump fired Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. She had spent $200 million on ad campaigns (mostly to make herself look good), and claimed she got Trump’s approval. He said she didn’t. She is being replaced by a Senator from Oklahoma, who won’t be any better according to some reports. But at least we won’t have to see Noem’s grotesque self agrandizing performances anymore.

A live drawing of Noem that I did a few years ago, before she was a part of the Trump cabal

Trump has been eyeing Cuba. He told Politico,“People are loving what’s happening,” Trump said. He predicted that Iran’s government would not be the last to buckle in a Trump-initiated confrontation:

“Cuba’s going to fall, too.”

“Well, it’s because of my intervention, intervention that is happening. Obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t have this problem. We cut off all oil, all money, … everything coming in from Venezuela, which was the sole source. How long have you been hearing about Cuba — Cuba, Cuba — for 50 years?” Trump added. “And that’s one of the small ones for me.”

Our country is being run by a madman and by his equally mad sidekicks.

The DOJ released more FBI documents from the Epstein Files that they had omitted, saying they were erroniously left out; officials called it a mistaken determination that they were duplicates. They contain notes on four interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who said she had been sexually assaulted by both Epstein and Trump. She came forward shortly after Mr. Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking. Her accusations against Trump—which are uncorraborated— date back to the 1980s, when she was a teenager.

Thanks for being here. I hope you have a good Friday, if you can.

Our documentary, WOMEN LAUGHING, is screening this weekend at the Athena Film Festival in NYC! Sunday, March 8th at 3pm, it runs 38 minutes. Tickets are still available if you are in town, link here! Come say hi if you are at the screening.

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My husband died on May 4, 2025 from complications of a stem cell transplant. If he had known about this war, I think that he would have felt despair as I do.

Hegseth must not have learned the value of humanity. Trump never learned to look for anything in the world other than what had a dollar sign.

As I continue to grieve the loss of my husband and the life I had, I am alone with despair about the government in charge on the country's almost 250th anniversary.

in pain over it all and of course contrary to Trumps smug implication that at first this would be easy, it isn’t and now he implies it will be a forever war

and

oh by the way he says of course there will be deaths

but the world will be better.

Has he not read history?

Oh wait no he hasn’t.

Wars beget wars

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Sorry to rant

It’s helpful to me

And your dedication and writing here along with other journalists helps us feel less alone.

💙🇺🇸💙

Excerpt from your essay:

“Trump has crippled global commerce to a degree. The Gulf is home to about half of the world’s proven reserves of oil and this war, and this conflict has virtually shut down the Strait of Hormuz where a large portion of the energy traffic for the globe centers.”