Clearly, Pete Hegseth Just Wants To Be Parodied On SNL Again [Op-Ed]

Here’s a question: Given how much Republican conservatives hate late-night TV and other left-leaning comedy shows, why do they insist on making their writers’ jobs so easy?

For example, if you’ve been anywhere on the political side of the internet for the last couple of days, you’re already expecting Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) to be the subject of SNL‘s cold open this Saturday night, after his line of questioning to former special counsel Jack Smith on the Senate floor on Tuesday resulted in him and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) going viral for all the reasons no serious politician wants to go viral for.

But, somehow, Schmitt might have competition on that front. Somehow, Schmitt thinking he had a smoking gun tying Smith to an Atlanta Hawks game — which he thought would connect Smith to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for whatever logic-defying reason — then finding out in real time that he mistook the Hawks for the Iowa Hawkeyes might not be the worst display of MAGA idiocy that we have seen this week.

Because that’s never a fair bet as long as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is around.

According to the New York Times, Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia for the same reason he ordered some 800 top U.S. military generals and admirals to gather at the same base on the same day last year: so he could remind military personnel that the only war he’s qualified to lead us into is the MAGA culture war.

From the Times:

Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.

“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.

As he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran.

“It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”

So, much like his orangey-dark overlord, President Donald Trump, Hegseth is defining treason the way only an authoritarian propagandist and/or dictator would: by calling the free press traitorous because he doesn’t like what they report, he doesn’t know what the words he uses mean, and he doesn’t care what the U.S. Constitution actually says on the matter.

But the really obnoxious thing about Hegseth is that he’s so one-note. If you’ve heard one white Christian nationalist anti-woke speech about “warrior ethos,” manly men and high testosterone, I assure you you’ve heard them all.

Actually, to be fair, this last speech got a little scarier than his usual diatribe of smart = woke, woke = weak, weak = testosterone treatment, and testosterone treatment = Braveheart, but ‘Murican. This speech also went a step further than his usual display of evangelical white supremacy with a side of Pulp Fiction plagiarism. In this speech, Hegseth announced that he is “establishing the Office of Religious Affairs” that “will report straight to the top, a direct line to the secretary … as Psalm 33:12 extols us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.”

So, Hegseth isn’t just a bigot, an anti-woke loser, a walking case study on comical male insecurity, and a wimp’s idea of a warrior; he’s a bigot, an anti-woke loser, a walking case study on comical male insecurity, a wimp’s idea of a warrior, and an anti-constitutionalist who wants to make theocracy great again.

See, this is why even Republicans in Congress have soured on Hegseth. If the party is trying to get away from its public perception as a roving, diet-Klan rally that wants to replace constitutional amendments with Bible verses and Mein Kampf excerpts, Trump’s little commander-in-Signal-chat-leaks is the exact kind of MAGA minion who needs to get the ax.

And seriously — I’m pretty sure the Secretary of Watching Too Much GI Joe As A Kid is just auditioning for another SNL spotlight.

Hegseth has made his mission to de-woke-ify the military his entire personality, and it’s nothing but useless political theater that does nothing to strengthen our armed forces, but does everything to make the U.S. government look like a playpen of wannabe bullies, crying because they can’t find their binkies.

Yes, he’s dangerous. He’s also a weird little dweeb, whose masculinity is so paper-thin he can’t stop projecting his insecurity onto everything he touches.

Sad.

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