Part One: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'

Robert sits down with Jamie Loftus to talk about Pete Hegseth's life, times and horrible 2020 book.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Ah, thanks very thanks for coming in with me on
that one, Jamie's that was really helpful. I think we really,
I think we knocked it out of the park. Yeah,
that wouldn't have worked without you, you know, just one
person kind of a tonally going ah nothing.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah, one of you was great.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
One of us is great. And you know what's not great.
Sophie has a dying squirrel on her property.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
We're gonna know, this is like ruined my entire Nay, Cannon.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's cannon. Now, Sophie, it's cannon.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
You're going to give it a name so it feels worse. No, sorry,
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
How about Elizabeth Elizabeth the squirrel? Oh no, Elizabeth the
terminally ill squirrel.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I'm not one hundred per centuries dying, but he's stuff
really not moving very much.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, that's usually not a good sign for something like
a squirrel.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Elizabeth has a lot of unfinished business. This is really sad.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, she didn't get her will prepared.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Robert, I just need you to come.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I just need you to come over here and do
the humane thing because I'm a wolf.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I mean, kill it with a rock alleged. Yeah, I
mean I don't know what else to do with, you know,
suffering little animals. But yeah, when I lived, when I
lived in the middle of nowhere, there would be lots
of dead animals by or dying animals by the side
of the road when I was on my runs, so
I would have to be like usually, if I was
doing a long enough run, I'd have to do at
least one euthanasia on the way. It's like a fucking

(01:29):
rabbit with its back legs crushed, should probably take care
of this.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Okay, Yeah, that's an important part of her daily exercise regime.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Take a life is yeah, euthanasia.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
When I was little, I had an outdoor cat, which
we shouldn't have had. And here's why. There was one
day I was like, something smelled weird in my yard
and I found that my cat had like a massive
like corpse pile, like he had symbol.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
He was making his own a bone temple like in
the New twenty eight Years Later movie.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I didn't understand at the time, but I was like, Wow,
he just did that because he loved me so much.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, he loves you so much. He wanted you to
have all of the corpses you need, you know, And
that's not you know how many how many, how many
guys will do that for you, right, you know that's why,
that's why we have pets.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
That's the main problem. I haven't seen the movie yet.
Is it like all I've seen is like clickbait about
it being like zombies with their cocks out?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Is that actually there's a lot of dicks? You know?
When I heard that, I was like, we're probably gonna
get one brief glimpse of a huge fucking monster hog.
But no, they really there's a lot of cock in
the New twenty eight movie.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I appreciate that they didn't undersell it. Okay, no, well.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
No, no, there's there's a there's more more dick than
you're expecting. That maybe less dick than I would have preferred,
but more than you're expecting for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Okay, I will I will go. I haven't seen the
first two, but I love coming in at movie three
or four.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's okay, you're not gonna you know what a zombie
movie is. It's set after a zombie apocalypse in England.
That's all you need to know.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Right, there's there's enough like a need for context in
our day to day work. I'm like, I'm not trying
to learn more for fun. No, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Showing other than I guess. In the twenty eight movies,
the zombies aren't dead. They're just like people who have
like a weird blood borne illness, so they're still alive.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
So there are people with their cocks out.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, they're people with their cocks out, but it's okay.
They had a child on set, so all the dicks
are fake photo realistic with their fake I know, I
don't know, but that's the way. That's the way movie
law works. Apparently I was reading it because they were like, yeah,
we had the main characters a kid, so there's always
a kid on set, so we can't have any real
dicks hag it out. But we can't have everyone wearing

(03:46):
full time photorealistic penises that are faked.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Why child stardom should be illegal?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
That is.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Ever heard. Look, they're like, no, you can't, you can't. Actually,
that can't have been a traumatizing thing for you. The
dicks weren't real.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Kids, dix weren't real. Didn't you guess that they were fake?
Cot Like, it's so funny.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's just so like an actor try to like comfort
a child actor to be like no, no, no, it's
not real, and then pulling the fake dick off of
your body, like how is it?

Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's so fad?

Speaker 3 (04:18):
How did we get here?

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I know I'm distracted by the dying squirrel, but what
is happening?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
People were just talking about movies, Sophie, because we really
don't want to talk about the subject of today's episodes.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Oh no, okay.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Peter he Seth, Okay, I could.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Have taken a worse turn, a worse turn.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, I'd rather talk about zombie dicks than Pete egg Seth.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
That's true. I mean Pete had the keg Seth is bad.
I was. I was worried that we were heading Teal.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
But uh no, no, we've done Teal, We've done.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah. I was like, I was like, is there more?
You're good at the Peter Teel addendum episode? Okay, yeah, okay, yeah,
uh so yeah, let's let's let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
I guess that's the cold open done. You're welcome for
all the dick talk.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
We're back, okay, And well now I'm nice and warm
to be made less horny than I've ever been in
my entire life. Right, and a guy give any war
crimes in real time. What a thrill.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I'm going to give you me a kolpi here. I
had initially planned for this to just be a book episode,
reading Pete Hegseth's terrible fascist book American Crusade, which unfortunately
people do need to be aware of because he's the
Secretary of Defense now. But then I wound up needing
to give extra context, and so there is My initial
thing was like, he's not really interesting enough for two

(05:41):
episodes on the Motherfucker just as a person. He's not
that interesting. But anyway, I wound up it's kind of
a hybrid book bTB episode, so you know, there's there's
research here. There's also just a lot of chunks of
his book that we'll be talking about because they matter.
It's just a little bit of a weird episode, but
I did it.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Okay, when did the book come out?

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Twenty twenty? Okay, yeah, yeah, American Crusade was his like
election tie in book. So one of the funny things
that you repeatedly come across is his dire warnings that like,
if the Republicans don't win in twenty twenty, the whole
country's over, which like, yeah, I some of this is

(06:22):
like not aged well, but it also it's also a
very like fascist Christian nationalist book that makes it very
clear what kind of country Pete Hegseeth wants to use
his powers to his Secretary of Defense to further right,
because that's.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Published like about midway through his his run on Fox News.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right, yeah, he starts in twenty fourteen, but he's just
initially kind of a commentator. We'll talk about all that. So, okay,
Pete Hegseth, our current secretary of Defense? Is it, you know, embarrassing? Yeah? Yeah.
And he writes in twenty twenty a manifesto slash book
called American Crusade, which is one of those both like
tie in, I'm trying to get more into politics. This

(07:02):
is back when he was really fishing in the first
Trump ad men to be made sec deaf and there
were still too many adults in the room at that
point for him to get made Secretary of Defense. Because
as his backstory that I'm gonna give briefly will make clear,
this is not a man who's ever been reliable in
a position of power.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Right, I guess it never occurred to me that he
could be No, I guess he's held down a job technically,
not even.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Really, No, not even really actually unless you count Fox
News as a job, but even that not really Okay.
So Peter heg Seth was born on June sixth, nineteen
eighty in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dad, Yes, yeah, he's.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
Already like old fascists. He's aging terribly.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Oh yeah, no, he looks like shit. Yes, that's kind
of what happens when you drink the way Pete Hegseth drinks.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, fair enough. Wow, I would have guessed he's at
least ten years older. Yeah, I was like Jamie shocked
at the video, but all.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
The Yeah, I mean, it doesn't it's not. He's not
like the most obvious Minneapolis guy. But I'm not shocked
to hear that he's from Minneapolis, right that.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
That was not the shock. It was that he's under fifty.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, he's under fifty, much younger than you'd expect. His
dad was a basketball coach for high school, which you know,
he's got son of a fucking high school coach energy
for sure.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, Mom, how many crimes could be prevented if you're
if daddy didn't bench you, Daddy.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Didn't bench you. Well, here's the other thing. What's the
only thing that a parent could be that's worse than
a high school sports coach? And it's his mom was
an executive business coach even worse. Somehow they found a
worst kind of coach to be.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
What does that even mean? That's like a made up That.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Means that you get paid like a mid six figure
income for sitting in a room and going, oh, that's
a good idea. Uh, that's that's it.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Basically does boss whom is girl off?

Speaker 3 (08:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
It's a consultant, that's what she does.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
I love. Yeah, it's like the job we're at. Like
at the turn of this century, you'd be like, hey,
have you considered firing people and replacing more people?

Speaker 2 (09:10):
What if we outsourced? And now they're all saying what
if AI? Right, Like it's it's just it's just people
who come from good families that have connections but don't
have any skills. That's the executive business coach community position,
the consultant community. Right. So his family, they have money
and they have very strong conservative bonafidees, right Like his

(09:31):
mom and dad are both very strong Republicans and politically involved.
Pete graduates from the Forest Lake Area High School in
nineteen ninety nine, is valedictorian. He is good at something.
At one point in his life as an adult, he
goes to Princeton where he helps to run and again

(09:51):
family Money, where he helps to run the school's conservative newspaper.
He becomes editor eventually of like the right wing paper
on campus. As editor, he like publishes a promise that
he will defend Western civilization from quote the distractions of diversity.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
So like, I know that they're everywhere, I'm aware that
they're but I'm still so disturbed by like just the
idea of a young, like a teenage Republican is such
a bizarre image to me. It's like seeing a twin
at age sixty. Yeah, you don't want to imagine them
that young.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, you don't want to, but you have to because
they're there. And it's what Pete's going to He's going
to try a couple of things later in life, Like
he's initially kind of more on the Republican mainstream side
of things that gets eaten up by Trump. So he
has to a big part of this book we're going
to read is him like giving his mea culpa of like, oh,

(10:47):
you know, I was a rhino. I was lost, and
then I realized, you know, Donald Trump really was, you know,
our brilliant savior and stuff. And one of the points
that I think his backstory makes is that he was
always pretty extreme conservative. Like the whole reason why he
wouldn't have gotten behind Trump is that he didn't believe
Trump was really a conservative until it became clear that

(11:09):
Trump was going to win. But like the weird right
wing stuff, the hatred of diversity that's been there his
whole life. Like he talks about himself as if he'd
been a political as a young man, but he never
really was.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Well no, yeah, if he's he's the editor of the
conservative Princeton papers.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Sure is, and yeah, that's just a bad group of
people to exist under his guidance. The paper attacked halle
Berry for accepting an oscar over her performance in Monsters
Ball because it was racist, oh, against white people. I
think I don't know, I didn't need to feel the
need to go and read that article, but yeah, that's

(11:45):
the kind of like conservative paper.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
This is.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's like it's time to go to war with halle
Berry for her oscar.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yeah, I imagine conservative papers there like that are just
like ninety percent vaguely racist editorials.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yes, yes, yeah. During his time as editor, Hegseth published
another student's commentary mocking the school's policy that sex with
an unconscious partner should count as rape. An article for
The New Yorkers cites jud Leghum's newsletter Popular Information when
he summarized the article, and hegcest paper this way. The
commentary claim that rape required both a failure to consent

(12:18):
and duress, which a passed how woman couldn't experience So great, guy, Pete, Yeah,
put a pin in that because we'll talk about some
sex crimesies.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah no, I mean really he really walks the walk
in that regard.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, allegedly.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah sure. It's so like, I don't know, the fact
that you're thinking about doing that so much that you
publish like essentially intent is just like it's mind.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Blowing, Yeah, the whole like, yeah, well, they can't be
sad if they're unconscious. It's just like the darkest, evilest
way to make that argument. It's somehow worse than like
arguing like oh no, they they they wanted it secretly.
It's just like they, oh, because they're unconscious. It doesn't.
What the fuck man, how do you write that and
not burst into flames? I mean, yeah, so I can

(13:12):
like tattoo you if you pass out drunk, and that's legal,
right because you're not aware of it.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Because you're not right. That's it's just like, well if
if you're quote unquote asleep, anything that happens, it's like
the international waters of consent, like it's fucking crazy sane.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, if you if you try to extend that anywhere else,
it just becomes increasing like it's it's just nuts.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Oh yeah. And of course, like that rule wouldn't apply
to him. If yeah, if.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
If you drew a dick on Pete heg'sa's face when
he's passed out drunk in a Pentagon closet, you would
get in trouble.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Drone strike you, Yeah, drone strike your house.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
He would try to. So Pete is, in short, exactly
the kind of right wing dipshit you'd expect him to
be as a kid based on his current trajectory. He
goes on to work in finance. He works for Bear
that's his first job out of college, Just fucking Bear Stern,
great stuff. And he volunteers for the National Guard because

(14:10):
nine to eleven, and he winds up well, he gets
into ROTC first when he's in college, but then he
joins the National Guard as he's starting his fintech career,
and after a year or so, I think his fintech
career is interrupted when he deploys to Iraq, uh. So
he does a tour there, which we will talk about later.
This comes up in the book, so i'll talk a little.
I'll talk more about Hegsat's military career in that portion.

(14:32):
But after doing his tour, he winds up back in
New York, where he's just kind of like, then, this
is not an uncommon thing. He does seek combat a
lot of combat vets when they come back, like the
things really get bad for them, you know, not when
they're over there and not when they're in the ship.
When you wind up like just kind of locking yourself
alone in an apartment, and yeah, he starts drinking very heavily. Again,
not an uncommon story. He feels aimless and eventually solves

(14:56):
this by taking a job. Initially, he's like volunteering as
an assistant director at Vets for Freedom, which is a
five oh one C four group that he ultimately comes
to lead as the paid director of the organization.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
It's no good because while he was in New York,
he could have just like gone to see Rent on Broadway.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
On Rent, he could have developed a fatal addiction to Heroin.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
You know, you you know, like he could have seen.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Alone off Broadway, you know, just just finally slip away,
you know, Yeah, he just.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Go see Billy Elliott, you know, have a wine spritzer
calling a day.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, I mean yours is nicer than mine. But sure.
So this is like a very political five oh one
C four in like a shitty way. They spend millions
of dollars doing a PR campaign to support the surge
in Iraq. They spend another several million attacking Barack Obama's candidacy.
So this is like a right wing vets org. And

(15:51):
despite the fact that he winds up running it, he
is awful at this job. It is a disaster for
the VFF. He runs up massive debts, he takes them
into the red by well, part of it is, you know,
they're carrying out these massive PR campaigns, but part of
it is that he treats the organization's bank account allegedly
like a personal party fund, right like he's spending it,

(16:13):
he's traveling, he's doing a lot of drinking, good partying.
A lot of people are right. There's allegations and we'll
hear more allegations about the next org that he's involved in.
But yeah, this does not go well and he's kind
of his tenure is disastrous for the VFF.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Okay, So this is all in the mid two thousands.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, the mid auts two thousand and eight is when
he got married. In like tas and four and two
thousand and eight, his first wife files for divorce after
he admits to cheating on her repeatedly, once with a
journalist he'd introduced to her. Yeah, so he gets left
a couple of years later or forced out of VFF.
You'll hear both things, either that he left or that
he's forced out. Anyway, he's gone.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
From VFFA so sad.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, and he attempts to run for Senate in Minnesota,
which we will talk about later. It doesn't work, right,
He's bad at this. So since he's failed at everything else,
he volunteers for another tour in Afghanistan. He does another
a tour in Afghanistan, he's promoted to major. He comes
back to the US, and in twenty twelve, he forms
a pack to help like minded conservative candidates. Per The

(17:17):
New Yorker. According to a report by American Public Media,
a third of the funds in Hegseth's pack were spent
on parties for his friends and family, in less than
half was spent on candidates.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
So he sucks because it was like, like, I'm not
against this money being misused for parties.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
It's much better than if it's used appropriately, right, because
it's a shitty organization, they both are, right.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, like it should you know, it should be spent
on fancy food and alcohol.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
But yeah, yeah, it's also it's just extremely funny to me, Like, yeah,
he now has a pattern and it's either start or
get you know, promoted to leading a charitable organization and
then spend its money getting hammered. Cool as hell. Yeah,
So is he.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Like is he so twenty twelve? Is this like tea
party era? Like who is who is he running with?
Who's his crowd?

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah the tea party. Tea party has started
a couple of years ago at this point. Yeah, so
this is like that's all happening at this stage and
he's when he loses his candidacy. It's to like the
Ron Paul Organization backed candidate because he's like he's still
too much establishment neocon. You know, he's a bush conservative
at this point, which we used to see is extreme.

(18:31):
But oh how the turn have table.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Now they're just wittle guys.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, they're just widow guys.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, he's got look at it. I mean, I don't know,
I feel like some people not to put him in
a box. Oh, but let's do it. Yeah, something about
like guys that have like there it looks like their
hair is just like welded to their head.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
You're like, I don't trust there on there.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Like whatever product not. I mean, I know he by
being a fascist honestly, but also you have to imagine
some chemicals are seeping into the scalp there with that,
what with the hair being welded directly.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Oh yes, no, no, no, no, they're getting in. That's
that's what happened to Rudy Giuliani, Right, He had the
same haircare routine as Pete. Hegseth and a lot of
it leaked out of him, you know, and when he
lost his goo, that's when he started losing all those
lawsuits the goo was what was protecting him from the lawsuits.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, the goo is protecting him from being tricked into
being in Borat two a loa in more ways than one.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, it was load bearing goo, brutal Jesus Christ. I
forgot that happened. Fucking Juliani.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Oh my god, this bitch will do anything.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, we'll need to do an episode on of him
when it's time for us to, like when when everyone's
morale is even lower and we really need we need
to win, like a happy episode.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, I mean there's just like no failure, Like there's
it's fun. It's fun to do an episode where there's
just no shortage of els sprinkled between their.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Christ It's nothing but else.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yeah, who was he was?

Speaker 1 (19:58):
He the saddest person we saw at the He was
He wasn't my pillow guy.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
He was my pillow guy. Was sadder because Juliani at least,
like I had a nice fight with Rudy Giuliani, and
like I did enjoy the fact that, like unlike every
other major figure there that you would like try to engage,
they were too pr trained and too smart to really
want to get into it with some journalists. But Rudy
was to me like, oh, yeah, let's fucking brawl. What
did you fight with Rudy about Ukraine? We had like

(20:25):
tished an episode it could happen here about it, but like, yeah,
we had like a fucking ten or fifteen minute like.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
He was just hanging around the like radio because.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
He wasn't welcome in the real conviction because the art. Yeah,
but yeah, I mean, and he was bored as hell.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
God. They should do a sequel to the James Wood
Rudy Giuliani movie.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh god, I forgot that existed. Holy shit. Yeah, I
know bag when he was America's mayor.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Fuck me, yeah, I mean it's a very sincere movie.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, it's sincerely stupid as shit.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah yeah, called America's mayor.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
No, I mean that's what we it might be, but
that's what we call Rudy. Growing up as a conservative.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Like that go around too. I like that city that's
got a dog for mayor.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
I think, Yeah, I don't think mayor should be legal
or I think we should. I think we should have,
like you know, some of those cultures that would like
ritualistically kill their leaders, that's what we should do to
mayor's should be built into legal system that we had,
like a Wickerman after every mayor's term.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's Santa University rules. At the end, get university rules.
You get one year tenure of Santa and then you're
publicly executed.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah. I think that we that's that's that's how we
should that. That's like when we write our new constitution.
That's how our elected leaders should work. Yeah, we're now
doing a Wickerman for everybody.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Oh you care, what are you willing to put on
the line.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
You were a great alder man. Unfortunately your years up
at every level, at every level, the fucking school board.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah, this is the comptroller and like, sorry, brother.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Look, would it be a good system? No? Would it
work better than our current system? Maybe?

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Look, I think it's worth a shot.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Perhaps.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
I think it's worth a shot, and it would really
bring people together for particular individuals.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Speaking of things that bring people together, Jamie, the products
and services that support this podcast.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
I love to gather around a good product or service
with my loved ones.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Gather around be warmed by it.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Right, Yeah, just like the corpse of a squirrel.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Like the corpse of a squirrel.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Damn it, guy, we're back.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Sophie is still not happy.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
No, can you see it from your window? No, not
from not from where I am. But okay, but that's probably.
But I can see it in here. Elizabeth the Squirrel.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, she was a Fulbright scholar, Sophie Jesus fun.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
She had a huge future ahead of hers. I really sad.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
It's very tragic. Yeah, speaking of things that are tragic,
the fact that Pete Hegseth exists.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
The fact that Pete hegg Seth sentence.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
In twenty fourteen, heg Seth started making appearances on Fox News,
and he was initially usually like a pinch hitter, right,
he was even't have a show. He would come and
be a talking head on segments. Right, He's a veteran.
He leads a veterans organizations to talk about this. Right.
He's doing that for a while, off and on, and
you know, he's he's he's got whatever Fox likes, right,

(23:36):
He's he's enough like of a Okay, this this guy
is what our audience considers like a straight laced looking
military man. So yeah, we'll throw him in whenever we
need somebody.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
The helmet hair. It's the I feel like everyone at
Fox News has the same lukewarm soup they bring to lunch, Yes,
lukeworm soup and brown alcohol.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yes, yeah, that's that's precisely right. And for Hegseth, it's
basically all brown liquor. So he helps to lead. He
also in this time he gets hired to lead another
veterans organization CVA, or the Concerned Veterans for America. So
here he exhibits the same kind of incompetence and corruption

(24:17):
that had seen him pushed out of the VFF. He was,
in fact, party is so bad, oh Jamie. Not just parties,
it's there's so much about how bad he is at
this job. There is an internal whistleblower report that's commissioned
about his three year tenure leading the organization. I'm going
to read a summary from an article in The New
Yorker of like what this report reveals. The detailed seven

(24:39):
page report, which was compiled by multiple formal CVA employees
and sent to the organization's senior management in February twenty fifteen,
states that at one point Hegseth had to be restrained
while drunk, from joining the dancers on the stage of
a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team
The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at
the time, and other members of his management team sexually
pursued the org organization's female staffers, who they divided into

(25:02):
two groups, the party Girls and the not Party Girls.
In addition, the report asserts that under Hegseth's leadership, the
organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety,
including an allegation made by a female employee that another
employee on Hegseth's staff had attempted to sexually assault her
at the Louisiana Strip Club and a separate letter of
complaint which was sent to the organization in late twenty fifteen.

(25:25):
A different employee described Hegseth being at a bar in
the early morning hours of May twenty ninth, twenty fifteen,
while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly
chanting kill a Muslim.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Oh cool guy, Wow, yes, shocking. He found time for
all of that.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
First of all, I do. Most of that's not enjoyable,
but it is funny to be How often the words
Louisiana Strip club show up in this article on beat Hegsath.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
You didn't learn so much. I mean, and did he tip?
That's something anything.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Strip took away. There's no single way, so Jamie, sorry.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
One, it's an honor. It's an honor. We are one.
Thank you, we are one. It's that's miserable. I mean, there,
this is the way that a person acts when they
can't live with themselves. Yeah, if nothing else, but there,
I mean, there's just so many levels there because it's
like in one way he's engaging in this very I
don't know, like this very fraternity but also sorority behavior

(26:25):
like the party girls versus non party girl sounds like
some Regina George shit, Like that's just bizarre.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's just gross dude stuff,
right Like we got the party girls that we hire
because you know, you hire them because you would have
fuck them, right Like. That's that's what's going on in
this group right now. That's his management style, and.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
It's and it's rich that he thinks he could, like
you know, weed out a competent employee from a non
competent one, given the fact that he seems like unable
to do a single job that he has no.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
No, no, Because again, it's all about just getting drunk
and partying, right, and sexually harassing slash assaulting your colleagues
and racism.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Right, So he's he's a racist molester.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah, so he gets he gets allegedly he gets kicked
out in twenty sixteen. There are that we have in
the record a bunch of celebratory emails from his former
colleagues being like, thank god, that guy's out right. One
of these messages includes the claim that he quote treated
the organization funds like they were a personal expense account
for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more
than opportunities to hook up with women on the road.

(27:28):
Who guy, So that's his third job, his third organization
that he's been shitcanned from for massive corruption right through them. Yeah,
he's just he's daring through these fucking things. I guess
he doesn't get kicked out of the second because he
starts in.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Are these mostly like lateral moves? Is he like moving
his way up the ranks in any way? Or is
his Are these mostly just lateral?

Speaker 2 (27:50):
He's moved his way up at Fox's, he's getting more
prominent within the conservative sphere because again, there's never any
accountability to these guys. But like his former colleagues at
these veterans organizations, even though they're all a lot conservative,
are like this guy absolutely should never have any job
with any responsibility. He's the worst.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
Well, Fox in twenty sixteen, it's all but like required
that you have some priors at being sexy.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yes, you have the literal devil in your blood. Yes.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
In twenty seventeen, during a Flag Day event hosted by Fox,
Hegseth threw an axe and accidentally hit an injuredy US
Military Academy drummer, causing serious injuries. There's a lawsuit over this.
He claims long term damage.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Sorry, why was he throwing it? It's like there's like.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Ax throwing going on, you know. It's like like the
kind of hobby thing, and that he's just shit at
it because he sucks at everything, and he hits this drummer.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Boy, if you give an addict an axe.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
You know, so funny, it's so funny.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
God, did the drummer at least get a book deal?

Speaker 2 (28:49):
No? No, I think there's a settlement probably, but no,
he doesn't get shit because again we don't as Americans. Look,
you celebrate the person who throws axes. Not the person
who's dumb enough to get hit by an axe because
they happen to be doing their job and don't expect
that the future Secretary of Defense will herald an axe
at them.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Wow, victim blaming our nation's great percussionists.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
How can you? Yeah, I'm always look, you know, this
is the only time I'll be on Heckseth's side. But
if the other thing is a band kid.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
I got okay, jealous jealous.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Anti band kid ass.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
I pull up my obo case aarts shaking it.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, of course it was an obo.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Okay, okay, away so high. No, he's Sophia. Unfortunately, he's right.
I need to take that. I need to take No, No,
you're right, you're right. I have to. Obo's are a
big bisexual indicator. Historically, it's just true history. That's just

(29:56):
that's history. Players sound off in the chest.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
There we go, There we go. The ob obon nation
is going to fucking sound off.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Is literally I think it's like Oba playing the Obo
and like getting really into a series of unfortunate events
or major millennial Yeah, bisexual indicators. Who can say why?

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Who can say saying that?

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Because those were your only off.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Of us Yeah, there's gonna be a whole thread in
the subreddit with like nine hundred replies about this.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, they're unionizing as we speak.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Everybody who felt weird reading the series of Unfortunate Event
novels and yeah, played an obo or some kind of
read instrument.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
So many crush options.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Wow. So his career at Fox goes a lot better
than his career leading you know, these organizations. He becomes
an official co host in January of twenty seventeen, just
as Trump begins his term, and he is able to
get this job because he starts having sex with Initially,
I think it's uh, I'm not sure. No, he would
have been divorced by now. Anyway, he wounds up, winds
up marrying the Fox producer Jennifer Roche keeps putting him

(31:02):
on the air, and I think she's his third wife,
maybe a second. He has three. He's been divorced like
three times. So great guy. Anyway, he hooks up with
this Fox producer who keeps putting him on the air,
and so he bounces around a few different shows he's
on regularly, and he kind of makes a point of
just taking whatever is the most radical take that will

(31:24):
learn him Trump's attention. It's just kind of like, I'm
going to be a shameless boot licker on Fox because
he watches Fox habitually, and so I want him to
see me repeatedly being nice to him, right, And he's
doing this to campaign to become the Secretary of Defense,
which he can't manage during Trump's first term because Trump
is still listening to a couple of adults a little
too much who are like, I don't know, the guy

(31:44):
who can't even run a fucking like in Goo without
spinning all of the money on hookers and blow probably
shouldn't be running the army. We have a lot more money.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
There's a lot better you like, So there's far better
sex criminals to run.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Ye, Yeah, we can find you sex criminals. Don't worry, you.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Know, We're aware of what needs to happen.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Right, Yeah. So, as part of his ongoing attempt to
both identify himself with the ascendant Christian nationalist movement and
to force Trump to take note of him, in twenty twenty,
he publishes the book American Crusade, right, which is what
you know, kind of the core of our episodes this
week are going to be about. So let's get into

(32:28):
that wonderful book. American Crusade a nice innocuous title, so
I suppose, first off, it's not surprising that this book
starts off with a dedication to his family and his
kids primarily. And his kids have his wives, really what
I hear from him? They have the names you'd expect.
You get a guess. Guess one of the names?

Speaker 1 (32:48):
I mean, before we start, should we show Jamie the
fucking cover?

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, let's show Jamie the cover? Why not? Why not? Jimi?
You want to describe that to our listeners on who
are listening because of a podcast, and you should watch
it on video. Hello, video listeners, we love you.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
We love you so much. Stop looking at.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Us, Stop looking at us, freaks.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
I'm guessing, Okay, I love you. Guess Uh Chase Griffin,
uh Nathaniel.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Damn Jamie. No, No, that's a bunch of big big l's. Yeah. No,
first one which you should have gotten, Gunner, Okay.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
You should Havener Gunner Gunner Obama and.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Gunner Jackson. Peter Boone. And that's the one he gives
two names for us. I'm guessing his first name is
Peter Boone. Kinsey, Luke, Rex and gwendolet and Little Nuke,
Little Nuke, Gunner and Rex are released, sending me, Wow, Gunner,
good stuff. Man, I'm surprised there's not a Hunter in there.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, Hunter, that's okay, that that I might have gotten
to Hunter. This cover is is nuts. He can't be
his body. That's not his body.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
He I mean, if he's on enough tested trend sure,
I'm sure he's taken steroids.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
You know. I'm really struggling with like the neck to
head ratio. Yes, that is.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
His shopping going down there. You can see a big
WE the People tattoo on his forearm. He's like waving
a flag. It's just like the dipshittiest cover.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
The angle of the WE the People tattoo only makes
sense in the context of this picture. Like if he
if this that was normally the ankle it was at,
it would be crooked.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
But that's what But but this is clearly AI, this
is this is this is not, this is this is
not this is not his body. But there's there's things
that we're done here.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
But I appreciate that. I would love to see him
actually try to do this. At the top of it,
it says and quote peoples. No punches with this book, yeah,
Sean Hannity, Yeah, nice, No, it's always it's always fun
with this stuff because you're like, there's no way Sean
Hanndity wrote this book. But then in some ways there's
no way that Pete Hegseth wrote this book. Do you

(35:13):
think he could it was ghost written or do you
think you wrote it? Let's let's let's let Robert and
then he does.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Right, you know, he's got this editorial position. He definitely
writes some of it. I suspect it's a thing where
it gets like, you know, massaged by a real writer,
but there's a lot of it that seems very Pete right.
In fact, the opening, after he lists his kids' names, uh,
he gives a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Right, Every chapter
opens with a quote from a great American, usually Donald Trump,

(35:41):
but this one's Theodore Roosevelt. There is not room in
the country for any fifty to fifty American, nor can
there be but one loyalty to the stars and stripes, right,
which you know I might say that, well, if your
loyalty is to your weird interpretation of Christianity over the Constitution,
you know, maybe You're not one hundred anyway. Whatever, That's
not how he sees it. So here's how the chapter opens,

(36:04):
Our American Crusade. Chapter one, Take a moment to consider
your part in the miracle of the twenty sixteen election,
the history we made as sons and daughters of freedom.
For the left, that humiliating defeat strengthened their resolve to
achieve their ultimate goal, erasing America's soul, culture and institutions.
We are the ones standing in their way and have
been targeted for annihilation.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Wow. I like that he adds it a little bit.
He's like, on top of being a motherfucking piece of
he's also kind of bitchy. He's like, I'm praying for
my haters. I'm praying for all my haters on the left.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Oh no, he's not praying for him.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
He is.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
This is a book about how we need to kill
the left. Right that is his and like every allegation
here is an admission. Right that Like, because he's constantly
talking the left wants to kill us all though, they
want to wipe us all out. That's why we have
to have total victory against them. Right, It's like it's this,
you know, they're as bad as we are, so we
have to do to them what we wanted to do

(36:57):
to him anyway. But we can pretend we're defending ourselves,
right right.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah, they're even worse. We got to get him first.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah. He goes out a claim that we the people,
we all feel that quote. The other side, the left
is not our friend. We are not esteemed colleagues, nor
mere political opponents. And I think this part is valuable.
I think there's some of this that I really would
like to shove in the hands of, like especially a
lot of elected Democrats, because Hegseth very neatly sweeps away

(37:25):
the claims that are made by guys like Biden that like,
well there's good Republicans, we got to work with them.
You know, we need a strong Republican party. It's just
you know, some of this magas stuff. We got to
dust off it. But like, it's good to have strong
conservatives in government with us. And Hegseth is making the
point that no, like there's no conservatives that you can
trust because we the left, like we are not esteemed
colleagues and we're not political opponents. We want to destroy you.

(37:47):
You can't work with us. Right, and that's that is
the truth about modern conservatism, about the Republican Party. You
can't work with them, right, They've made it clear it
should be obvious, but a lot of Mainstreammocrats refuse to
fucking believe.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
I don't know, they're just so yeah. I mean, well,
best of luck with that project, because it feels like
if there's one thing mainstream Democrats aren't going to do,
it's read a direct threat against them and take it seriously.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Right, right, and there are direct threats in here. Hegxeth
goes on to say, we are foes. Either we win
or they win. We agree on nothing else. Okay, maybe
treat them like that, guys, you know that's what they're saying.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
No, No, they just they we need to empathize, we
need empathy with you.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
I yeah, I'm done with that. I was raised these guys.
I don't have empathy for me when I was this
kind of person, like I suck. So Pete goes on
to brag that the US has the top economy and military,
but that our cultural and educational institutions, America's soul have
succumbed to leftist rot and even a once in a

(38:51):
generation electoral miracle like twenty sixteen won't be enough to
save us, which is funny considering how twenty twenty four
went down. A lot of this book is like darkly
funny in light of the fact that they won in
twenty twenty four and lost in twenty twenty. So Pete
says that our future existence as sons and daughters of
freedom can only happen if after the quote categorical defeat

(39:13):
of the Left. Thus, this time in our history calls
for an all caps American crusade. Yes, a holy war
for the righteous cause of human freedom. Wow.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Title drops title mentioned t mentioned good stuff. I like
that to put it in caps, just in case it
wasn't clear.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
You gotta put you gotta put it in caps. You
gotta put in caps.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
I mean the rhetoric is like, I guess kind of
what I would expect. Does he get specific? Is there?
Does he is? The book about the plan?

Speaker 2 (39:41):
I mean kind of. Pete's not a great planning guy.
He's not a great knowing how he's you know, not
going to be a great war leader guy.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
For that reason, one allocate one third of the budget
to parties for me.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
There's some of that, but it's mainly about getting It's
mainly about like getting everybody like riled up for an
existential battle that he believes twenty twenty was going to be,
right like this, this crusade of you know, it's trying
to get people on the side of extermination, right heg
Seth then directly cites the First Crusade as his example

(40:12):
of what we need to return to. He describes the
First Crusade as happening a thousand years ago. After years
of Christians, or of Europeans ceding land to Muslim hordes,
the Pope finally got around to declaring a crusade in
order to save Europe, and his nights march to war
under the cry Deus volt or God wills it. Now

(40:33):
I should interject here because Pete has a deis volt tattoo,
and this is a meaningful term on the far right
and the neo Nazi rite right to interject here. First off,
all of the history here is nonsense, right, Like his
history of the Crusades is not accurate. The Guardian interviewed pus.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
My question, I was like this does this doesn't sound.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
That that's we're gonna talk about that first?

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (40:54):
The Guardian interviewed Matthew Gabriel, who's a professor of medieval
studies at Virginia Tech, and he pointed out there were
absolutely no incursions to mainland Europe. If anything. Islam was
kind of on the retreat in Iberia and other places
as well, so there was no large geopolitical shift or
any kind of immediate threat of Islam taking over Europe
right like they were not, in fact on the defensive
when the crusade started.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Well, that doesn't sound good and it doesn't serve his point.
This is just another reminder that in mainstream publishing, fact
checking is not an allocated part of the budget.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
No, it's not you got to do that's not crazy.
Today they don't give a shit anymore.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
You got to pay out a pocket if you want
that shit.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, no, because there's no money and being accurate.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeh, books wouldn't sell as well.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
So Pete is not at all alone in taking deis
vault on as a rallying cry. White supremacists have used
it as a catchphrase for years now, and he's mainly
noteworthy for being the most prominent political figure in the
country to do so. After the first Unite the Right
rally in Charlottesville, which is the first time many reporters
and regular Americans saw the phrase in use by Nazis

(41:58):
and other white supremacist marchers. Outlets like NPR published interviews
with experts like Medieval Academy of America had Lisa Davis,
who pointed out that Europe during the Crusade period was
not white, and that far right marchers at Charlottesville adorned
themselves with symbols like that of Saint Maurice, who was
regularly featured on Crusader livery and was himself an Egyptian man,
right that, like even a lot of these things that

(42:19):
they're like, we were all white, like this, this beautiful
saint that the Crusader's march under mother father was born
in Egypt, Like that is simply an African man.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
Like insid. I mean, I'm like, is this just like
a group of I mean, obviously just brain dead people,
But like I think about how many older movies and
then also movies I grew up on that essentially portray
Egyptian people as white or at best Italian looking.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
It's in part because like they're in Yeah, I mean,
one one reality of it is that everyone in the
Mediterranean basin looks more Mediterranean than like they do anything else, right,
which you get right up to the like because there's
a lot of interchange between those cultures, right. And the
other thing is that at this period of time, whiteness
doesn't exist as a concept. Right, if you were to
go back, I think about it, go back to the

(43:04):
Roman Empire and tell them, like, this guy is not
as much of a person to you because of their
skin color. They'd be like, what are you talking about?
This guy's less of a person because he's not a
Roman like that what matters.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
You're like, make no mistakes, is not a person to me,
but not for the reasons you've got.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
For that reason, No, he's less human than me because
he was born in a different place.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
It is fascinating watching, Yeah, just like how everything needs
to serve like his thesis and it really doesn't matter, just.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Doesn't None of it works out, And none of these
people actually know anything about the Crusades.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Right, And the problem is, yeah, like I'm glad that
there were like medieval scholars that like corrected the record,
but his followers don't care.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
No, and it doesn't matter. I'm doing this in part
because like yeah, this is that's the kind of episode
that this is. Right when you go through this and
you're like, all right, what's accurate? What's not? But like
this doesn't like no one listening to this was like
coming in as a pete hegseth fan because of the
crusade stuff, and it's going to be like Mike, he
was wrong. Like that's just not the way any.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Changes everything for me. I wonder if there's one person. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Now, I should also note here that because he uses
deis volt, he's got a tattooed on his body because
he believes it was the rallying cry that crusaders marched
to war under during the First Crusade. This is very
likely to be untrue, right, This is actually the result
of propaganda that came later. Marburg historian George Strack has
pointed out to the Catholic News Agency that Pope Urban
the Second, who declared the First Crusade, never used the

(44:28):
phrase deis volt himself, and quote only one chronicle, that
of Robert the Monk, which was written around ten years
after the Pope's called a crusade at a synod in Clairemont, France,
quotes the exclamation at all Strak explained, the author was
aware from another chronicle that the Northern French crusaders used
deis volt as a war cry or a sign of
recognition among themselves. Robert's aim was to present the crusade

(44:48):
as a vine and papally led project, which is why
he claimed that Urban the second had heard the war
cry deis Vault and Claremont and approved of it. From
the historian's point of view, however, this is implausible. Even
Robert's medieval can temporaries would have placed little trust in
the chronicler. It was only under the humanists of the
fifteenth century that the monks rhetoric received favorable attention. Again,
they found Robert's chronicle plausible, and so the war cried

(45:10):
dais Fold was quoted very frequently from then on, and
soon the other reports about Urban's call from Claremont were forgotten,
says Strack. So this is probably propaganda from the beginning
that there's not much evidence of at the time, that
no one would have taken very seriously at the time
that five hundred years later, like you know, chuds adopt
fifteen hundreds Chuds.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Right, never trust a Robert. That's what I've never.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Trust to Robert. That's that's war of history, of historiography,
speaking of things that spew only lies. Just one of
our sponsors, the other sponsors completely trustworthy. One of our
sponsors tells nothing but lies, and we won't tell you which.
You know who you are, You know who you are.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Place your bets. It's gonna be your fucking sports better yet.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, no, the sports betting people are honest. Right, you'll
go broke, But they're honest.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
They're like, but you'll have a great time doing it.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
You'll have a great time doing it. We'll really tickle
those dopamine receptors. We've made it as addictive as drugs.
H drugs. Jesus, Robert, what we're back. So for the

(46:22):
sake of morale, it might be good for us to
recall here that the Crusades were not successes in the
traditional military sense of the word. The First Crusade did
have some initial victories and resulted in temporary Christian control
of parts of the Holy Land, but this did not
last long. By eleven eighty seven, less than one hundred years,
the great general Saladin had surrounded Jerusalem. Right the long

(46:43):
train of disasters for organized Christian militaries during the crusades
led to a surgeon support from maniac cult leaders like
Peter the Hermit, who gathered an army of starving hermits
to march on the Holy Land. Andrew Curry writes quote
Peter's success was cited over and over again in the
years to come. The defeat suffered by better or organized
crusades led many to believe that it was the humble
who were destined to succeed, not the proud, rich military classes.

(47:05):
In the end, these people's crusades ended in disaster too.
None ever reached the Holy Land, and most of the
peasant crusaders were either slaughtered as they plundered their way
across Europe or disbanded before ever reaching a port. Without
the resources to reach the Holy Land, most turned on
more conventional targets, namely Europe's Jewish communities. Why are we
going to seek out our profanity and to take vengeance
on the ishmae lights for our Messiah when here are

(47:27):
the Jews who murdered and crucified him, was the rationale,
as recorded by a Jewish eyewitness. Again, most of the
a large chunk of the real crusaders, and even Crusade.
They just went and murdered juice right in Europe.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, well, okay, do we think yeah, Pete Hegseth knows
any of this. No, I don't think he really reads much,
genuinely curious.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
I don't think it would matter. He would just wouldn't
trust any account you told him if it's different from
what he already believes.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Right, that's I mean, I didn't. I don't know this
about the Crusades. I'm not. I gotta say I'm not
a crusade's head.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Well, the gist of it, and this is a quote
from medieval studies professor Matthew Gabriel, the Crusaders lost, they
lost everything.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
An American crusade not a bad an idea.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Watch the documentary Kingdom of Heaven for more still holds
up banger of a film. So again, none of this
stuff works as a gotcha, Right, you're not going to
convince anyone to change their politics. But being like, actually
the Crusades sucked, right, But I do think it's valuable
to look at this history for our own like edification

(48:40):
is a reminder that this too shall pass, and that
these kinds of people never managed to win the way
they think they will in the long run because they
suck itt shit. But also the mere fact that they've
doomed themselves doesn't mean that they won't cause even more
suffering in their failures. Right. Those people's crusades were all disasters,
but a lot of Jewish communities suffered as a result. Right, anyway,

(49:02):
let's continue with Pete. He goes from the Crusades to
the American Revolution, probably the only periods in history that
he's taken a passing interest in. He notes that like
crusaders and patriots passed, the red maga hat is a
symbol for the need for violent action to secure liberty.
Only by going on offense against a left that surrounds them.
Conservatives survive. Now, the fact that this is written in

(49:26):
the run up to twenty twenty, and the fact that
that election went against them should say a few things
to you. Right. We know now this was not the
decisive or the last battle, but Hegseth writes as if
it was, and that the left would cause total annihilation
if they won in twenty twenty. He notes that while
there are millions of patriots, the country also houses hordes
of people who don't share their allegiance and that their

(49:47):
ignorance and ideologies threaten national survival. Okay, so yeah, again,
like the language here is very unsparing, and this is
how most of them think. You can't. Again, it's just
a important that Democrats understand you can't talk it out
with someone like this. They're not willing to talk to.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
You, right, And I mean that's like they're that's their
whole thing. It is interesting anytime you hear I mean,
I guess you hear it basically every day now, but
over time, I think in the last ten years where
you just hear the US versus them in an increasingly
upward line. Did the point where he's just like straightforwardly

(50:25):
saying they're like, the people who agree with me are Americans? Yeah,
they don't, aren't. Yeah, yeah, which is like, I mean,
continued to Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
So the next section of his book is about the
two Americas, which he describes as America and the Left,
and in order to highlight this, he gives us the
story of two different immigrants, both named Omar Samara. Omar
who is in Iraqi who fought with Hegzeth. He was
an interpreter after the US invasion and later immigrated to
the US legally. The other Omar is, of course illan Omar,

(50:58):
who he calls the Omar.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Oh, we're out of it.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Oh no, he's this is I mean, this is like
peak Illin Omar brainworms period twenty twenty. Not that it's
much less now.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
I feel like it's still got worse.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
It's still pretty bad. It's still bad. Like it's just
there's it's more of a topic of discussion. I guess, yeah, okay,
maybe just just this way.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Lord, it's nuts.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
His attitude is the common one you'll see on the right,
that Illin was graciously led into this country and has
done nothing but spit in its face. I don't think
we really need to deal with this point, save to
note that even in the America of twenty twenty five,
even someone like Pete's you know, interpreter Omar, who fought
alongside US soldiers, aren't qualified to stay here. Earlier this year,
the United States revoked special status to Afghan people who

(51:45):
helped the United States and its war against the Taliban. PERMSNBC,
the Trump administration told them, quote that they've got to
self deport by May twentieth back to a Taliban controlled
Afghanistan if America can't honor its word to those who
bled for it. A retired US colonel told me, why
would anyone trust us? Again, this isn't just immigration policy.
It's a test of our moral credibility, and we're failing now, Jamie. Yes,

(52:08):
I've seen the US in enough war zones and talk
to enough people who believed in our promises to them
when they fought alongside us that I can say there's
no point in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone
listening to the show in which we had moral credibility
or we're trustworthy friends. Right, It's like we're also recording
this period of time you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
We're also recording this at a time of where again,
like both of his examples are people who could just
get plucked off of the street and kidnapped by ice,
Like the citizenship has nothing to do with it.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Well, again, that's part of what's interesting about the timing
this comes in is that in twenty twenty as even
as like a Pete Haig Seth Republican, you still had
to pretend that you were like okay with multiculturalism as
long as they were pro American, Right that like, no,
this Iraqi interpretive. Mine is a great American. He's fully integrated. Right,
he gets to stay here because he did all the
right things and as soon as they got into power, like, oh,

(52:57):
actually no, we don't give a shit. All that matters
is your skin color, right, Like that's and that's the
reality right under the regime that has given Pete Hegseth power.
But he spends a lot of his book talking about
the Omar who fought with him, who he calls Texas
Omar now because he successfully immigrated to the and integrated
into the Houston suburbs. So we should talk a little

(53:19):
bit here about Pete Hegseth's wartime experiences in Samara, which
is less than about a hunt. I think it's like
eighty miles or something northwest of Baghdad. At age twenty six,
Pete was a lieutenant in the Army and National Guard
when he joined the one hundred and first third Brigade
Combat Team. He was deployed in two thousand and five.
Prior to this, heg Seth had experienced which you might

(53:39):
call an atypical Global War on Terror career. Again, he
graduated from Princeton, he'd started working at Bear Stearns, and
you know, the same time he'd got in a position
with the doomed finance company. He enlisted in the National Guard,
and he was first deployed after nine to eleven to
Guantanamo Bay, before coming back and working in finance for
a while and then volunteering to fight in Iraq, where
he became a tune leader. He seems to have served

(54:02):
like functionally, did the job reasonably. Well. There's not like shocking,
you know, shocking reports or anything on it. He was
kept away from liquor. Probably I s.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
Wood to say. I was like, what, why did he
do that job competently?

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Although he hadn't really kept drinking it started drinking heavily.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
At this point, right, because that was after he got back.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Okay, And there's a there's an interesting Washington Post article
that quotes one of his fellow officers who was active duty.
He was like, I was actually surprised to see a
National Guard guy doing the things heg Seth was doing.
And I just assumed that it was because he was
planning for a political career and thought a combat tour
would help. Right. Yeah, And you run into you if
you've known people who were in like If you know
enough military guys, they all have stories of like Yet

(54:42):
his guy was definitely doing it because he was trying
to like set up a career later down the line
and wanted, you know, a combat action badge or something.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
It's like seeing an influencer at a volunteer event. I'm
sure interesting.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
So I'm going to quote from the Post's article here.
Charlie Company, numbering about a hunt ThReD and forty men,
was considered the brigade's most aggressive unit, engaging threats with
a bravado that would later draw scrutiny from senior leaders,
said people familiar with the deployment. As recounted by The
New Yorker in two thousand and nine, Charlie Company was
nicknamed Kill Company and maintained a whiteboard listing confirmed kills,
including civilians, that each platoon had notched. The former officer,

(55:18):
who served in another company within the battalion said the
behavior exhibited by Hegsat's Infantry company was viewed as a
little bit strange by those on the outside. We joked
sometimes that they were on their own crusade down there.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Great stuff, okay, great stuff, good lord, Okay.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Now what's interesting is when The New Yorker reports in
this initially, Hegseth would claim that I actually complained about
how aggressive we were to our company commander and its
specifically that he complained about how they were ordered to
have their weapons ready when they were entering targeted buildings
because he believed that basically having fingers on the trigger
would lead to higher civilian casualties, and that after making
these complaints he was reassigned. I don't know how true

(55:55):
this is, right, I looved That's something he made up
when he thought it would sound better.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Yeah, right, When was that interview conducted.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
I was like two thousand and nine that I knew.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
I wonder how I yeah today, so he.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Wouldn't claim it at least, right, Yeah, But his old
unit remained in the field after he got transferred, and
as the insurgency hit a new peak of violence. They
wound up as part of a raid on an island
believed to be a training center for Abu Musabl's or
Kawi's Aqy or al Qaida in Iraq. This is like
the precursor organization to ISIS. A number of civilians are
massacred during this attack. The soldiers who killed them claim

(56:30):
initially that they're all military aged males, which is a
term for we shot some fucking teenager, but like, look,
he's pretty big. An army investigation revealed that the civilians
had been detained and executed well detained, and that the
killings had been covered up. Two soldiers ultimately pled guilty
to murder and related charges and received eighteen year sentences.

(56:50):
One soldier who testified was sentenced to nine months, and
another who didn't was convicted of negligent homicide, which was
overturned on appeal. Now there is speculation that heg Seth
has since seized upon the issue of US troops being
tried for war crimes. As a result of this, and
for the entirety of his time in the political spotlight,
he has since backed prosecuted soldiers, including war criminal Navy

(57:10):
Seal Eddie Gallagher, claiming the rules of war unfairly tie
the hands of men in the field. That Washington Post article,
which interviewed a number of his colleagues, ends on this note.
The former Army officer who served with Hegxeth in Iraq
said he believes he has latched onto populous scenarios in
a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth's potential
nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in

(57:30):
touch with one another, the former officer said. One text
he received especially stood out. All it said was WTF
question Mark, Yeah, stuff, all right, stuff.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
It's everything that leads to horrific war crimes in the
modern age are deeply embarrassing, Like just really really lazy texting.
And also the fact that in between his stints in
the service that he found time time to work at
bear Stearns, he found a little bit of time to

(58:05):
the American economy. Like it's just it's you know, what
a what a multi high phenate really, yeah, I mean
this in your review, I mean this just seems like
he's slowly, you know, working behind the scenes to justify
civilian deaths so that he can ideally escalate to the job.
He is now killing civilians with no consequences for anyone.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yeah, yep, so okay. The next chapter of this book,
he compares, spent several pages comparing different statements by Illin
Omar and his buddy Texas Omar in order to talk
about how much it Illin hates the United States. One
of his points is that his friend describes US helicopters
as looking like angels because at one point he was

(58:52):
under fire and he got rescued by a helicopter. And
Illin describes them as looking like the devil because she
was a civilian in Somalia and saw US helicopters kill civilians. Oh, like,
no civilians were killed by Americans in the Battle of
Mogadishu in nineteen ninety three, right, she describes as a
heroic defensive action by US forces, And the reality is uglier. Well,

(59:13):
we don't have perfect accounts for how many civilians died
in the fighting. It was between three hundred and seven
hundred people who died total, and at least two to
three hundred of those were civilians. Right, And I'll personally
note I have watched an Apache helicopter destroyed, like basically
murder an apartment building, and yeah, it looks like the devil.
Have you ever seen one of those things empty its

(59:34):
entire payload? It's a fucking nightmare. It's very cherry.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Yes, objectively, I mean it's like, not only is it
obviously racist to have this like weird chart of two
people with the same last name, but like to just
present it with a total void of context. He just
like doesn't even understand how war works that you'd be
terrified of.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
The thing not on your side that is very deadly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Yeah, we're killing people around you, Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
It's one of those things like yeah, man, if you're
like I get it, if you're completely surrounded by the
enemy and then a chopper comes in and blows them
all away, you'd be like that thing ripped. That think's cool.
But people have just had experiences with helicopters, you know,
like depending on whether or not they're being shot at
by them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Not to come down too hard on the other, Omar,
but like weird to call a helicopter at angel as
it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I don't know. Again, we
don't actually ever get to talk with that Omar. I
haven't found any articles interviewing him. He doesn't like I've
googled around trying to find anyone who talked to this guy.
We only have Pete's recollection of him.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
How much do you want to met he bet he
made up a guy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
I don't know. He certainly if he's real, there's no
way he's going to talk out and like correct the record.
If Pete digit because then they'll get.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Deported, right, yeah, stays far away from.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
So I don't know. I don't And the important part
is that Pete does not bring in this Omar as
a real person with a real story. He brings him
in as a foil to his created image of a
social justice warrior who never had to fight for anything. Right.
Such people, he argues, take advantage of fifty to fifty
Americans who lack grittiness and historical perspective. He describes these people,

(01:01:19):
So you've got the evil leftists and they take advantage
of these kind of like milk toast fifty to fifty
Americans who call squishies right for their lack of rulingness.
Does they call them Squishyes, because they're not willing to
fight because they're not racist and violent, right, Like, they're
too squishy, they're too they're not willing to kill the
left right, they think we can coexist.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
It's him talking about like conservatives who are not like
outright fascists, right that those are the squishies. Okay, so
it's cool, it's good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Okay, Sorry, apologies to the squishies. I love you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Sorry, squishies. Yeah, great stuff. And it's interesting, you know
the thing he's trying to do here, because he has
a whole bit in this about how like the people
don't like to see themselves as political and that's a
problem because like we're in a political war. His whole
thing is he's trying he has to convince these people that, like,
you need to become political in order to embrace the

(01:02:12):
politics of defensive annihilation against the left. Right, and the
left is everything but Trump, you know, Like that's what
he's trying to convince these these like moderate Republicans to do. Quote.
For me, awakening has been a progression over many years,
informed by multiple iterations of learning and mostly failure. First
I had to get informed. Then I denied the magnitude
of the leftist problem. Next, being idealistic, even new to

(01:02:33):
the political arena, I played within the confines of the
status quo. Now, as I have some worldly success in
a large family, protecting my nest is tempting, I understand
what is required of one hundred percent American. The sacrifice,
the struggle, the uncertainty, like the uncertainty of stealing from
two different veterans organizations to get drunk, yes, the uncertainty
of playing grab ass with all your secretaries, yes, sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Yeah, separating your employees by party and not party there. Look,
these are the things ultimately that are going to protect Gunner.
Heg seth.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Yeah. These are who's finally finally Yes, Okay, we in
the introduction the first chapter with a call to arms
and follow it chapter that's chapter one, baby, and we
follow it with two more quotes. These are both from
Donald Trump, and I find them funnier than I should.
Quote one, You're a sleez candidate Donald Trump to a

(01:03:27):
reporter from ABC News twenty sixteen. You're a warrior, Pete,
A fucking warrior, President Donald Trump, November twenty nineteen. What
are those Why are those together? Why is it like?
Why are you contracted? It's just contrasting him shit, talking
ABC to him, saying nice things to him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
He's telling a story.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
It's just so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
It's like, wow, okay, Pete, we're all very impressed.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
As warrior is to me a smiley face.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
It's so funny. It's so funny. Yeah. Yeah, it's good stuff.
So yeah, well we'll we'll talk about the next chapter.
But I think it's probably time to end Part one
Jamie Coftus. Yeah, yeah, Donna plug anything.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Yeah, my book Rod Dog, The Naked Truth about hot
Dogs just came out and Pickerback and I just released
a I just did an audio book for the one
and only Chuck Tingle.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
We're donating all of the proceeds to the LA the
LA Street Vendors Fund, because in LA, they're kidnapping is
is kidnapping people off the streets. So we're raising money to,
you know, help street vendors stay in while maintaining their living.
The name of the audio book is this lesbian hot

(01:04:44):
Dog gets Me off. Also she is a doctor. Also
she's vegan.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Uh wow, that's a title. That's so much better than
American Crusade. And it's a.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Story is a tale. So if you want to listen
to that, donate five books to the Street Vendors Fund.
If if you don't want to listen to that, if
you don't want to listen to me, read Chuck Tingle
Hot Dogs Mount. You're wrong, but you should don't.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
You're wrong and a bad person. Let's just say it, Jamie.
Let's just say it. You're a bad person. And God
will not recognize you on the day of judgment.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
You won't know your faith to not listen to this
lesbian hot dog gets me off. Also she's a doctor.
Also she's vegan. Is not just homophobic, it's anti women
and stems. Really think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Yeah, absolutely, well this is good. Yeah, plug's done. Go
to hell everyone, I love you, Love you do.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
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Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
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