A word has emerged to describe Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s performance as head of the Pentagon. The word is incompetent.
Hegseth did little to inspire confidence during a House hearing, where he sounded more like a cult member than a government official as he repeated his hopes and talking points while failing to provide answers to basic questions about the Iran war.
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Consider this exchange between Hegseth and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) early in the hearing.
Hegseth talks about Iran being “determined to get a nuclear weapon and bring it to the point where it is at the negotiating table, giving it up, in a way that it has not done and should never have.”
Smith asked, “So they’re not broken yet?”
Hegseth continued: “We haven’t gotten there yet, well their nuclear facilities have been destroyed. Underground they’re buried and we’re monitoring them. 24 7. So we know where the nuclear materials are.”
Smith interrupted: “A quick second. We had to start this war that you just said 60 days ago. Because nuclear weapons were an imminent threat. Now you’re saying it’s been completely wiped out.”
Hegseth addressed the talking points: “They had not abandoned their nuclear ambitions and they had a conventional shield of several thousand people. »
Smith responded, “So Operation Midnight Hammer didn’t accomplish anything substantial. It left us in exactly the same place as before.”
Hegseth claimed that Iran is using North Korea’s strategy and that “President Trump saw Iran at its weakest moment. He took steps to ensure that only the United States of America could do this with our Israeli partners.”
Smith reminded Hegseth that Iran still possesses nuclear material.
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Things did not improve for Hegseth as he was later branded incompetent.