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

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
All right, listeners, update.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I went over to Elizabeth the not so Dying Squirrel,
and she's scurried.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Away and welcome to behind the bastards.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
But to the sipe, yeah, what a funk off.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
You're gonna do a good You're gonna do a normal intro.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Some of us professional someone.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Just to say, maybe I was right not to smash
her with a rock and to feel sadness on the inside,
and maybe she's.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
To evaluate her with myself. So I just said, if
she's suffering, you should smash her with the rock. That's
the humane thing to do.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
You know, Well, in that case, I mean smash We're
we're all suffering in a.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Way, and are we not all praying.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
For begging to be smashed the rock?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
At the end of the.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I hope Elizabeth and not so dying squirrel scurried away
and now is like.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
You know, I hope she's fine now an acorn if
you're not. If something's not fine, you always have rocks.
A big enough rock can stop anyone's pain. You know,
that's about rock.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I always have my phone that can call you who
has rocks.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
I've got thoughts. I got so many rocks.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
I'm not throwing a rock at Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
You don't throw the rock. That's not nearly like. That's
the odds of you missing and just injuring the animal.
You know, that's just inhumane.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Carry I've been carrying around the same rock for for
twenty years, and I'm shocked. I'm shocked how easy it
is to get a rock onto I mean, I mean, Jimmy.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
You're very experienced killing, like we've we've established that on
the show.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Start this shit again, Okay, listen, I can't afford this anymore.
This has followed me. I just got back from my
book tour and these accusations have followed me around the country.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
That's right, that's right. I've been yeah, yeah for those
for those deaths, and fuck what was the town I
made up? You killing people?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
And oh my god, I can't forget. I can't at
me all the time. Unbelievable. There's so many people who like,
I've signed a book and then they've leaned in conspiratorially
and said, I'm okay with what you did in Grand Rabbids.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Good.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
You know there's sickos.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
We're manufacturing consent so that when you do have to
kill somebody, everyone's like, it's fine for Jamie to do this.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
This is a psychological experiment.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
I'm giving you a get it out of jail free
card here.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Look, and now I feel like I shouldn't even say it, Like,
but how easy it's.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Take out the jewelry pool. It's gonna be like a
fucking Luigi situation. She must have had a reason.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Look in his defense, I mean, Louis. The Luigi defense
is you're honored? Will we put this hotty behind bars?
I think not Rod, He's too He's just simply too.
Are you not foaming? Are you not foaming? Come on,
I just I've been bringing I've gotten a rock, like
a rock that could proble probably do some damage through

(03:02):
like airport security all the time. It's really just.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Because the rocks don't set off the metal detectors. I
don't think there's specifically a rule against taking a rock
on a plane, because like there's gym girls. You know
it's I think it's probably fine to take a big
rock on a plane.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
You know, I can I can confirm you will not
have a problem with the rocks.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know what, I'm a company money to book like
twenty different flights in the course of like two weeks
and just repeatedly take flights with larger start with a
small rock, and just to go up by like a
half inch diameter each time and see at what point
they're like, you can't take that on a plane.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
I bet my guess is they'll be a point where
they'll be they'll ask, and then there's going to be
a point where they say we cut off, and then
you should, and then you should just be like, where's
the rule? Yeah, where's the r It's like airbud, what's
the rule that says a dog can't play basketball? What's
the rule that I can't have a rock on a plane.
It's a souvenir you can't.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
It's a souvenir rock from wherever I found it. So, Jamie,
this has all been fun. You know, it's not going
to be fun with the rest of the Returning to
Pete Hegseth's Fascist Manifesto.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
I cannot believe. I've thought for sure we were you
were finishing the book, but it was just starting.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
No. No, there's so many there's almost a normal book's
number of words in this book, or roughly a normal
book's number of words in this book. Shocking.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
I feel like they're they're like, really, you know, pamphlety.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
I mean, you know, actually I happen to agree. You know,
some of the some of the quotes on the back
of the book. One of them stated, this is this
is Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog, which, since it came out
a couple of years before your book, was a weird
statement to make. But you know, it is true that
publishers who commune regularly with the sacred spirits of the
Oracle of Delphi have been awaiting your book for generations.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
You know, it's it. Look, I realized that it was
fulfilling your prophecy of sorts.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, there are references to Raw Dog, and oh fuck,
it was going to be a great joke. I forgot
the name of the oldest story ever, fuck with the
with the fucking the monster and the guy with the sword.
God damn it.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
What's the oldest book in the world.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, like the oldest like proper no idea, not novel.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Uh, you're talking about the epic of.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Gilgames Gilgamesh, God damn it, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Okay, so what were you what were you gonna say,
Robert about the epic.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Of I was going to say there were references to
raw Dog and the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I forgot
the name of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I just
ruined the whole bit. It's fucked.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
It's okay. I fact checked it for you.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Thank you, thank you, Sophie, Jesus Christ. Oh God.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Technically it was a poem, but you know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
It's a poem. Whatever, it counts. Just like Pete Ra
raw Dog, Yeah, the American Crusade.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
I love a good name competition. It would be it
would be great if there was a right wing book
that couldn't use the title raw Dog.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
I was just thinking how funny it would be if,
like you get made Secretary of Defense next and like
journalists at like New York Magazine are like quoting from
Raw Dog to try to determine how you'll run the military.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
A bunch of woke bullshit.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
We really don't know where she's gonna go. Actually, this
is this is anybody's game. Impossible to predict your policy
on Iran based on this hot talk book.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Look, there's a I think some of my policies are
in there. My international policy remains absolutely inscrutable.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
I know, and you do spend there is that weird
chunk in the middle of Raw Dog where you spend
forty pages arguing in favor of the littoral defense ships
that the US Navy was building for a while, which I.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Think that when you read it it sounds out of context,
but when you read it, it actually makes quite a
lot of sense. Why it's there.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
They are the hot dogs of the sea, a lot
of sailor seas.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's exactly it.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
So we're now seven minutes in. Pete's next chapter is
called twenty twenty Death, Divorce or Dawn, which I do love,
like for a man who's been divorced this many times,
Death divorce or don Right, that's him talking about the
different paths the country could go down. We can either die,
we can have a national divorce, or we can have

(07:18):
a new Dawn. Right. So it opens with him talking
about how much he regrets that he was a never
Trumper at one point, or he was almost a never Trumper, right,
And this is a necessary mea culpa from a guy
who was on record as when Trump first started running,
he was backing Marco Rubio, right, and heg Seth was
a more mainstream Republican in this period, although he is
still very he's always been very far right. He just

(07:40):
didn't think Trump could win. And also Trump was like
a weird New York real estate guy, right, he didn't
seem like a real conservative because he's not right.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
He's a politician, he has to hedges bets.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, he's just a dick and a fascist. Anyway, his
journey is one we've seen a lot of Trump's inner
circle go on.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
The reason why they've been able to go from this
guy should never could absolutely never be president, be a
disaster to uh, you know what, maybe he's the savior
of the people. Right. The reason that they went through
that is because the only thing any of these people
Pete included, believe is that, like, I should be close
to power, right, And yeah, so you just kind of

(08:17):
have to know if you're in Pete's position, where you
have some documentation as being on the other side of things,
you have to like explain how you turned around to
licking the boot right. So here's what he gives is
his first conversion moment. My first conversion moment was watching
a televised Trump rally in April twenty sixteen in southern California.
The protests on the street were so fierce that Trump
and his staff had to leave their cars walk along

(08:39):
a highway to be escorted into a back entrance of
the venue. Helicopters followed as every moved, and leftists were delighted.
What was he talking about that was so controversial? America?
Make America great again? Build the Wall America First. Outside
the arena, the left wing protesters seethed with rage. Many
of them waved Mexican flags and confronted police. Now, there's
no reason to believe that this actually had an impact. Pete.

(09:01):
The reason he brings this up is it fits established narrative, right.
I like pethe yeah, I like that, But it fits
the narrative that like, we're only fascist because of the
radical left right, that's what made us be fascist.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
And obviously Pete's documented history shows this. This is a
guy who always wanted politics and always had really regressive
right wing views that he largely used to attack people
he thought were less than him.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
I like, I just just I mean, where do you
in southern California do you think he was when you
saw when he saw this? Do you think he is
like Disneyland.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
He's hammered it not very farm Probably he's got a
puke on a roller coaster.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
He's in the fast pass line for Great Thunder Mountain.
He's like, you know what I'm going to give.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
So one thing I do believe is when Pete asserts
that Trump taught him how to wage political combat, which
is accurate from what we can see, right, because this
is a guy who failed to get a start in
politics because he didn't really understand what Trump did, right,
And Trump proved you don't have to pretend to be respectable,
you don't have to pretend to be nice. You can
be you can lie and cry havoc, and people who

(10:10):
are just as shitty as you will hate whoever you're
yelling at, because their lives are only filled if they
have hate, right Like that, That's what Trump understood, and
that's what Pete learns from him. And I do think
he's being accurate here when he says that Trump taught
me how to fight in the political sense, because there's
absolutely no evidence he knew how to do it previously.
I find it interesting that Trump credits him for giving

(10:32):
him a Trump spine, and he writes that Trump taught
him how to quote live the lyrics of my favorite
rock band, I feel safe inside the violence right of
the political arena. Right, that's that's a And now I
bet you're wondering what song is that from?

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Right, I'm scared to know.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
It's from the Ever Clear song Santa Ana wind which
is very much a Southern California tune about being the
kind of person Pete hates.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, his favorite band is Ever.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Clear, Ever Clear right, which is fascinting, particularly weird because
the lead singer ever Clear, Art Alexakis, describes himself as
a left wing Christian who despises conservative Christianity and wrote
a song called Jesus was a Democrat?

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Has he listened to the listened to the very Clear?

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Also not a Santa Ana Windes. Not a song about
like fighting, really like, that's not what it's about. It.
It's about living in southern California. It's about the Santa
Ana Winds.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Really good, a trump spine just to stack a diet.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Come again, folks, don't make art, you know, burn, Go
go out there right now and you know, destroy a
bunch of vinyl records, you know, annihilate human culture. I'm
on the AI team now there's no.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Disco demolition the people. I think people should always make art,
especially if you're bad at it, because if you're bad
at it, keep bad, keep it.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
You're gotta say that, Jamie, until we get until we
get the fascist leader who's like holding up raw Dog
and he's like this, based on this book, we have
to expel all the immigrants.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
So many of his You should know better than anyone's history.
His greatest monsters were failed art. Is just keep making
the bad art. If George Bush had just painted his
damn landscape.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
You're right, you're right. I mean that. That is my
actual stance is that we need a whole government department
that like provides fake fans to untalented conservatives who want
to succeed in Hollywood. Oh yeah, everyone loves your TV show.
They can't get enough of it. Don't try going out
to any of the regular conventions. Go to this one
that we're putting on. Your fans will all be there.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
I would be a crisis actor in that department.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
It's just it's mission critical, Yeah, honestly, just some soft reinforcement. Yeah,
just like like an elite military corps who show up
at the stand up Nights that these guys put on
and are like they have like a Navy seal hell
week boot camp for how to pretend to laugh at them.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Although when you put it like that, they are kind
of doing that.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yes, no, this would be protecting the nation much more
than any military action in my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, like, we have to keep selling out those men
and women as long as I promise to never run
for office.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Oh my god, you had to listen to Michael Knowles's
stand up, like my country is a pus our bravest soldiers,
our bravest soldiers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
So it's like this whole chapter is like, I mean,
it's so diabolical where he he's acting like a rom
com character who's like and I could really be my
full self now I can just be awful.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
I could be like this song I clearly don't understand
because Trump taught me how to be racist and not
feel bad about it.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Now.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
The next few pages of Pete's book are accounting of
Trump's rise to be leader of the Republican Party, and again,
this isn't really worth going over. We all know what happened.
What is interesting is the account that Pete gives this
of his own first attempt at getting into politics his
twenty twelve Senate run in Minnesota. I A, which is
not what it's called. During Yeah, Minnesotia. During the Senate run,

(14:11):
he attempted to defeat Amy Klobachar. I say attempted because
he failed. He blames his loss, and he does not
succeed in getting the Republican nomination, right, he loses the primary.
He doesn't even get to go up against Amy. He
doesn't even get to get Kloba charted.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
I don't know, Jesus, they shocked that one.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
That looked they can't all be winter, they can't all
be winner. Cloba shocked. Yeah, that's got that's better. So
he blames his loss on the Star Tribune, which he
calls Minnesota's communist paper of record. Weirdly, and here's what's weird.
It's like so I look into him, like, oh, so
they must have like said, don't vote for Pete. Hegseth Right,
it's the opposite. They described Pete as a picture perfect

(14:51):
outsider who seemed like he had a really good chance
at winning the GOP candidacy because like, oh, he's a veteran, right,
maybe he could probably win. You know, that's that's old
electorally so miserable.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
When any type of fascist calls a centrist paper radical,
You're like, I wouldn't you wouldn't it. Yeah, it was
like now ultimately serving your project.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Phrasing the Star Tribune because they're their analysis was just shitty,
like wells of veterans will probably win, right, discounting the
fact that Pete hag Seth can't do anything right. That
like he's he sucked at the last time he ran.
At this point, he's had two different like NGO's that
he's been a part of, and he spent all the
money on drugs and partying. You know that veterans, Yeah, yeah,

(15:35):
veterans could be some of the most fucked up people
in the country. You know, often in a you know,
I've I've so I started doing drugs with was a
traumatized veteran. Actually, he would have been a really good
Minnesota Senate member, but you know, he's to get involved
in the Minnesota Senate. Yeah, man, can you imagine our

(15:56):
buddy greasy will in the Senate. I would vote for
him in a heartbeat, oh man. So yeah, So he loses,
and again he's angry at the Start Tribune because they
describe him as a really good candidate. And he's like, well,
this is why I lost, because like, no one likes

(16:17):
the mainstream media. And when they said that I, you know,
was good, that that doomed me, right, that doomed me
to my voter base. Right, it's their fault. They destroyed
me by being nice to me. The reality is Pete's
campaign was doomed from the start because he's bad at this. Right.
He's again, he can't he can't Pete. He can't run

(16:38):
an he can't run a charitable organization funneling money into
right wing politics because he's too fucking corrupt. Right, he
never had what it took to build any kind of
independent support or power. He's not very disciplined. Again, he's
hammered half the time here.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
He was like, doesn't it it sounds like that he's
like wasted money that was supposed to go to veterans before, right.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Well, it was supposed to be used by a veterans organization.
Is what right wing politics this? They were not helping
vests somebody like ultimately, they were trying to push more
support for the surge in Iraq, right, and then attack Obama.
You know, like, I'm not saying it was. I'm not
saying like, oh, it's a shame he wasted that money, right,
it's theoretically yeah. So I want to quote from an article,

(17:24):
another article I found on the Star Tribute in the
wake of Pete's defeat, and this is them talking about
it just kind of summarizes what an incoherent messis candidates.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
He was.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
So this is right after he loses the primary. Although
heg Seth had previously said he would not run in
a primary if he did not win his party's endorsement,
he sent out a cryptic email to supporters Wednesday that
raised serious doubts about that pledge. The email was titled
the Fight Continues and did not say he planned to
support state Representative Bills, who decisively won the GOP nod
at the state convention on Friday. Now, this all led

(17:53):
to days of speculation that he was going to run
against the GOP candidate who had been endorsed by the
Ron Paul organization. And it was the kind of thing
where like they just wouldn't clarify what that message had
meant for days until eventually, like they're basically cornered and
forced to say like, no, I'm not really going to
run like it was just a narcissist who could only

(18:15):
respond to losing with sad bluster, even though he had
been out organized and out fundraised and very obviously beaten. Right, right, I.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Love a good refuse to give up. Well, obviously needing
to give up.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Obviously, right, It's beautiful stuff. So in his book years later,
Pete would insist that he was glad now he's glad
that he didn't win, and he says specifically, I'm glad
that patriots didn't vote for me then, right, because they
were right. I was still a Rhino or Republican in
name only at that point, right, I didn't really know
the way. You know, I hadn't accepted Trump as my
word savior.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
People were thinking about of that yard.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
It's good that they wonn't because I wasn't. I wasn't
enough of a fascist yet.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, cope.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
So we conclude this chapter with another rant that the
American left is an exit sestential threat to freedom. Then
we have the obligatory call to violence that he swears
isn't a call to violence if left to succeed, and
turning it in it the United States into something else. Then,
as strident as it may seem, divorce is imminent. If
they turn into King George the Third, find me a
town square in Lexington or a bridge and conquered to

(19:16):
stand on. I believe millions of Americans, properly prepared and organized,
would do the same. Our great flag means nothing without freedom.
Better to go our separate ways a new freedom loving
country at all than be complicit in the destruction of America.
This is not a call to violence, not at all,
and it's not what anybody wants. It's cynthia recognition that
freedom loving Americans will not stand idly by and watch
our blessed freedoms be trampled. Now, among other things, what

(19:38):
are people pissed about King George the Third about? Was
it that he was like deporting people without like any
kind of trial. Was that like a big part of
the Declaration of Independence, that like his troops were just
like arresting and sending people away without any kind of
due process.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
There do a crusade with gun, There do a gun crusade,
And so actually make a lot of sense that it is.
It's just so fucking embarrassing. Yeah, good for him, Good.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
For now The chapter ends with one final little rant
about how twenty twenty is our last possible chance to
prevent the collapse of the United States. You know, no
more shots after this. The leftists will have taken too
much control.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Anyway, so it would be nice.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
The Pete Hegseath, who wrote American Crusade in twenty twenty,
was no less committed to forcing a far right Christian
theocracy on the rest of the country than the Pete
of today. But he was quieter about it, not a
lot quieter. But there's still even a little bit in
twenty twenty more kind of creepy. You gotta put onto
it so that it doesn't sound too bad, Like the
far right still kind of felt like they had to

(20:40):
respect some kinds of properly patriotic diversity, at least in public.
So when it comes to the actual timeline of like
when was Pete radicalized, when did he arrive at his
current beliefs, and what does he actually believe beyond I
should be important, that's harder for me to say.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Some of the evidence there might not be much more.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yeah, some of his evidence, the evidence from his time
in the service paints an image of a man less
convinced than his present iteration of like a lot of
the fascist stuff. He's gone on record about his upbringing
in a Christian home, but in keeping with the traditional
reborn and the spirit evangelical narrative, it's clear he doesn't
consider he will now claim that like young Pete wasn't
really a believer, right, not the way I am right

(21:22):
as a kid, I wasn't really I didn't. I wasn't
really committed to.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Christ, you know, right, Well, it sounds like, yeah, there's
a difference between growing up in a religious household and
like enacting and being religious.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
I mean, I think it's more because, as we'll talk about,
the evidence suggests he was very religious and always has been.
It's more, if you are talking to an evangelical audience,
there is an expectation that you will give your narrative
of like your own personal journey to faith has to
be a hero's journey. So it can't just be I've
always been religious and always been great. It has to

(21:54):
be like, no, I rejected God. I was living this
a moral life of the flesh. I used to be
up pill popper, tripper high rise and then lows sliding,
popping heads and busting reds, kicking in doors and banging whores.
But then I got a man who was hung up
from my hang ups. You know, it's gotta be that
kind of thing, right.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's still talk of the dome, Robert No.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
I stole that from the movie Margo, which I talked
about a lot on.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
This show often. That's terrific.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
It's beautiful stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
It's beautiful stuff, really really good.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Pete Hegseth has claimed in a recent interview with the
Nashville Christian Family that his parents were Baptist, but quote,
my home life was not political, but it was very
faith and family based. Now, again, this is nonsense. This
is a common sentiment from people who are raised in
very right wing environments that my upbringing wasn't political because
conservatism is just common sense, you know, it's not politics,

(22:47):
just common sense. It's like Christianity's not a religion. It's
just the truth, right.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Which I still think is more commonly accepted, like it
across the board than it should be.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
No, and it's one thing I'll give because I have
a lot of issues with my parents and the conservatism
I was raised with. But they never said we were a.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Politically they were are.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
We are very political right wingers, right. That was always
my parents' attitude. So at least there's that, right. I
just have no respect for this. So I wasn't political. Yeah,
my parents donated exclusively to Republicans, and like, I edited
a Republican newspaper in college, and we went to church
three times a week. But I wasn't really religious, you know.

(23:26):
So Pete first gave his life to Christ as a teenager,
but would complain after the fact that his public school
was secular, right, and kind of blamed that, like, oh,
you know, I give him my life to Christ, but
I still wasn't really Christian because of my public school. Quote,
it's fair to say I had a Christian veneer, but
a secular cores and thought I was ready to go
out into the world and prof and profess Christ. I wasn't.

(23:48):
And the reality is he didn't have any interest in
doing that, right, Neither it is he now. But he
was interested in getting rich and being successful, right, because
he's a rich kid and he wanted to content. He
wanted to do the thing that rich kids do, which
is get into finance and get richer. Right.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Barrister's what a pick I do It's so funny because
like the the narrative you're describing that he wants to
apply to himself, like it is kind of available to
him where he, you know, like lived a whether he
wants to admit it or not. A very real but yeah, right,
But you'd have to be willing to stop doing that
in order to have the narrative. So he's got to

(24:23):
make one up.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, yeah, he's got to make one up. And you
know what else we have to make up? What for
all of the people listening to this podcast for free
by going to ads right now? You sickos, you freaks,
you monsters. You I don't know, he roes. I love
you and we're back. You know, every time I say

(24:54):
I love you to the listeners, I'm thinking about one
specific listener, and it might be you, you don't know.
But everyone else I don't love. In fact, I hate,
and I'm actively working to sabotage. But one of you,
one of you I love. You're always in my thoughts.
You're the only thing that I care about, you know, everything.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Every time I hear you speak to your listeners, I'm
reminded that uh parasocial relationship could also be based in antagonism,
and it's oh, I've read the book.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah, that's that's the bible of how to be a
good podcast game gold Leaf?

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Did you know there's a gold Leaf like version of
that book?

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Why it's about it?

Speaker 2 (25:40):
I know, I know this one.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's like him and the guy who first came up
with the alpha wolf concept, just like, oh, man, I
I really this thing that made me famous and noteworthy
was a real mistake.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
This thing that made me millions and millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
I fucked up. I fucked up.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And then the humiliating pivot you get. Whereas the guy
who wrote the game, I think, Neil Neil Strass just
like we're just st gonna freaking love my wife.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah forget, I'm happy. Yeah, like like I just trid out.
This made me miserable, and loving and respecting a woman
is made me happy.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
I'm glad he knows he's wrong. But I'm also like, uh,
stop publishing book a.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Little faster, man. Maybe yeah, maybe you don't write any
more books. Maybe you think I feel differently about the
wolf guy, right, he really was just trying to do
good wolf research and just a just a fuck up.
You know, it's not his fault. Like he didn't try
to be like I'm gonna make alpha wolf a thing.
He was just describing wolf behavior, and weirdos ran with it.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
I guess I'm not as familiar with his trajectory. He
was literally just talking about wolves.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah, he was. The concept of the alpha wolf developed
from this wolf scientist who was studying wolves in captivity
and describing their hierarchy. I've read, yeah, and then and
then it turns out that like, actually in the wild
there's like alpha wolf behavior does we don't see it
because like it's not really evolutionarily beneficial. It's a thing
that happens when wolves are put in an unnatural situation. Basically,

(27:09):
it's a thing that happens in wolf prison, not in
the wild. Right, And he has spent the rest of
his career being like, no, the alpha will fit, Like
it's wrong. It's not a concept in anything. It's certainly
not a concept for humans. Like, stop talking about alpha's
you dicks. It's a bummer, yeah, speaking of alpha's eth
real real alpha male.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Looking for this. But the day of this book, I
saw a friend from college like a year ago, and
I was like puting up to She's like I'm getting
really into like wolf's smut, which was not the answer
I was expecting.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
No, No, that's probably just straight up pornography.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, but otherwise she was she was doing really well.
I mean, this is a part of it. But she
she like recommended a book and I listened to it
for a while, and you know, if this is your thing,
go with God. But I was like, oh my god,
there's First of all, there's so much. There's so many
of them. It was one of those like the Bodyguard's

(28:05):
Wife's Accountant type titles. I'm going to find it. Keep hegsathing,
I'm going to find this. So, you know.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Pete claims obviously that like, yeah, he was secular at
his core, he just had a Christian veneer I have.
The reality is that, you know, he's always been pretty
religiously far right and politically far right, but he was
as a young man just wanted money, right, Like that's
all he really gave a shit about. He claims that
the first thing that starts to radicalize him towards Christian nationalism.

(28:33):
As a class he takes at Princeton on Christianity quote
taught by an atheist famous for studying the Gnostic Gospels,
the proph belief Jesus died was buried at a shallow
grave and was eaten by dogs. I realized I was
not prepared to combat such thinking, and went to the
library to read dusty books that pointed to and explained
the veracity of the Gospels. Defending my faith became an
academic endeavor because I sensed faith in the Bible were.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Good and eaten by dogs, eaten by dogs.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Like, seriously, I get like, obviously, there's a very strong
arge be made that, Like, well, the Jesus of the
Bible was one that was probably conflating a couple of
different actual guys who are like Messianic guys who claimed
they were the Messiah wandering around the Holy Land in
that period, right, like eaten by dogs? How would you
even prove that? Why would that be an argument that
a professor would make it? And it was definitely eaten

(29:19):
by dogs.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
And why would this be the first we're hearing of it,
that is, speaking of dogs? Though I have got the
name of the wolf porn.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
I was, Oh, thank god, the audience has been on
the edge of their fucking seats for.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
This, And if this is your thing, I like, I
don't want to hear more about it, but I respect it.
Here is the name of the book that I read,
part of the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate, which is one
word too many, but it's got three points.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
It's a long title.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
It's got like we have similar scores on good Reads. Okay,
the Air, followed by the Air apparents rejected Mate, followed
by the Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Oh, real, rejected mate. Fetish going on? Here is what
I'm reading.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, it's all about Well, what is about is like
falling in love with a with a fuck ass wolf
who kind of is nagging you. There's a lot that's
how I would refer to, Okay, the Tyrant Delpha, but
you could also easily call the Tyrant Delpha a fuck
ass wolf.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Sure, yeah, that scans. So there's no real evidence for
any of what he's claiming about his fucking professor here,
or the fact that you know, he starts doing serious
Bible research that proves the historical I don't think he
does any research. Right. Again, He's raised to believe this shit,
and it like funds fuels his narcissistic sense of superiority.

(30:35):
He's always fitt in here, right, This is just the
explanation he has to give in the book because, as
I stated, evangelicals expect a certain kind of narrative.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
That's also yeah, for lack of a better like, he
needs to be not like other girls for this narrative
to work.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, And again, his initial goal is to get rich,
and then the global War on Terror gets in the
way and Pete winds up gravitating more towards the military.
He claims, though, that during this time he spends more
than a decade studying Christianity, which kind of conflates with
other things he says, because he's argued in this same
interview that his faith didn't become real until twenty eighteen.

(31:12):
This is when he claims that he was properly saved
and born again, just in time for him to jettison
the last of his Rhino credentials and hop on to
the Trump train. The fact that those things happened around
the same time that he's like, oh, I was saved
at the same time I realized Trump was God's pick
to save America. This is not really trustworthy, right, Although again,

(31:34):
I think the thing he's lying about is he's always
been this guy, right, he covered his body with Christian
fascist tattoos, you know, and other fucking we the people shit,
you know. Like, I don't think he's lying about being
a Christian nationalist or being a fascist. I think he's
lying about the fact that this was a journey, you know, right.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I mean it seems like he has no issue with
any of this at any point in his life. But
he needs the narrative. He needs the narrative there and
and I would be so curious. I feel like this
happens in all sectors of public life. Of how many
times you're going to keep telling the same story about
yourself to keep yourself like relevant and to keep yourself
kind of an underdog.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Right, you always have to be an underdog, even once
you've like succeeded, you know. Yeah, I mean that's a
big part of my ego. Right, Nobody believed that we
could have the largest history podcast on the internet, you know, No,
aside from all the people who believed in me and
fought for me and advocated for me and guested on
the show and whatnot. Like, nobody nobody believed believes you, right,

(32:36):
aside from most people.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right, you were, yeah, you were, you were podcasting from Uh,
you know, just like prostrate on the floor. Nothing you had.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
Not exactly exactly I was. I was at the lowest
demand can be, you know, living in an apartment on
the edge of Santa Monica.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
So in a way you also found God in idea. Yeah,
you have that in common.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
My God was was the pod. Uh you know, yeah, Sophie,
if we register as a church, do we get to
stop paying taxes?

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Also strick in the book.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Oh shit, I shook. All right, we're going offline. We'll
talk in some more about this offline. So in like
the kind of early chunk of the Trump years.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
He and his family first moved to New Jersey to
attend a community church called Colt's Neck, led by pastor
Chris Durkin. I found a year old YouTube video published
by the church in which Pastor Dirkin reads out five
ways Christian families are under attack, which proves that Christian
media is always about a decade behind because they've only
just discovered listicles, right, this is like twenty twenty fucking four.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Now, the video does not have a lot of views,
but Dirkin is a guy that Hagstef is later going
to claim was like a big influence on him, and
so it's kind of worth listening to some of what
he says. Uh. In a summary for the video, Durkin writes,
more than any time in our lives, it feels like
Christian families are under attack. Are these contemporary attacks random
or is there a deeper battle going on beneath surface?
He spells, they're wrong, But I'm just being petty here.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Well, no, no hand is asked to him. Also, I mean,
do you do have to hand it to him that
he did not change his name from dark and he
didn't know.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
And he really should have he really that's why he
hasn't blown up in the way the next preacher we're
going to talk about has.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
But should have been Gunner.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
I will say. The way he talks his speech is
so the speech is written so similarly to how heg
Seth talks. It's either just evidence of how much this
guy influenced heg Seth, or maybe they shared a writer, right,
I don't know, not impossible. It's also probably the case
that this is more the result of Christian grievance, conservative
grievance culture just being very predictable. Right. The overarching message

(34:44):
is always that you, the good, normal people are under
siege from the evil outsiders, you know, the leftists or
the enemy within right. And since the chief enemy of
Christianity is the devil, anyone advocating for a lifestyle different
than yours is literally the devil.

Speaker 4 (34:59):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
It's made very clear in this segment of the five
ways Christian Families are under attack speech by Pastor Chris Derekin,
which Sohi's going to play for you now.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Designed by God as a gift from God, that through marriage,
not only is it good because it's not good for
man to be alone, that through marriage not only are
we commanded to be fruitful and to multiply, but also
in the New Testament, marriage is a picture of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ itself, whether you're talking about God's

(35:29):
character and plan and creation, or even talking about Jesus Christ,
his life, his death is resurrection, his love for his people,
his bride, the church. This is going to fill hell
with all kinds of fury and it's going to be
aimed at your family and.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Right, the argument there he's making is that like, yeah,
gay marriage, all of these different culture like it's literally
the devil right, like anything anytime you urge anything outside
of like what Christians believe about this, Like no, God
decreed what marriage is. So you are literally on the
side of Satan, right, yeah, which is you can't have
a secular society with these people. You can't be free

(36:12):
with these people in your country.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
And this is like his reality.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
This is baseline, This is his baseline. Theistical nature really
does crack me up.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
I do love that it's alistical.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, my college, what do they call it? The guy
who talked at my college, did my commencement speaker, mister j.
Leno delivered No, no, he delivered his speech in the
form of a list, and that was ten years ago
and it was old Laurance.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so yeah, let's so let's let's
get back to this lovely stuff, this lovely, lovely esipode.
So yeah. The underlying truth that is revealed by reading
American Crusade is that people like Pete Hegzeth and his
fellow event angelical dominionists have no desire to coexist with

(37:02):
anyone else. That's why they have to portray this as
an existential battle, because only by pretending their enemies are
the same as them can they morally justify the kind
of violence that they are going to try to do.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
What little fun there is in reading American Crusade comes
from looking at hegxa's predictions for what will happen if
the left wins in twenty twenty and comparing that to
what actually happened. My favorite example of this comes right
at the end of chapter two. If Trump loses in
twenty twenty, I fear America is doomed. The Democrats, on
track to nominate a radical leftist would complete the political
domination they already maintain in our culture, media, and schoolhouses.

(37:37):
The ivory towers of the Ivy League would become the
policies of Washington speech codes instead of free speech, Bye
bye Second Amendment, anti Israel and pro Islamist foreign policy,
naked socialism, government run everything. Yeah, that's all what happened
when radical leftist Joe Biden got elected certainly embraced it,
anti Israel policies.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Let's just say that what in particular, fuck it sticks
out like ASORTA.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well, just how immediately all of these Ivy League institutions,
like most of them just caved Trump.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Like you know, yeah, it's incredible, incredible well, Pete, unfortunately
you didn't call that one, and I mean no, certainly
is benefiting from that not having happened.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Once again, we desperately wish for a Democratic party that
functions the way Republicans pretend it functions. Yeah, like, how
nice that would be.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Radical leftists, anti Israel, radical leftists.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah what God oops? So again the big takeaway, the
actual practical takeaway you should get from reading lines like this,
is that there was never any hope for the Democratic
Party to pull away modern Republicans or fracture Trump space right.
That was never possible, not from Biden, not from Harris right.
Any Democrat, no matter what they do, no matter how

(38:51):
nice they try to be to conservatives, no matter how
much they attacked to the middle in their politics, will
always be attacked as being anti Israel and a radical
leftist right. Tacking to the middle and backing that Yahoo
just cabbed off people who might otherwise have voted Democrat.
You know, it's just a disastrous strategy. I need to
write something about this. But like part of when I
knew what I started to get really worried about Harris's

(39:13):
campaign was when she started like campaigning around with Cheney,
and I could tell like, Okay, she's doing this because
she she wants to get She thinks that she can
get Republicans like my mom to vote for Harris. And
my mom was a lifetime Republican, loved John McCain, loved
Dick Cheney, loved George W. Bush, hated guns like, was

(39:35):
fine with banning guns, was not like and so, and
was very pro abortion right and so you would, I
guarantee you if you would like bring up the profile
of someone like my mom to Kamala Harris right or
to do Biden the oh, we can get this voter,
we can get this voter right. This is someone as
long as you know we're not too radically left, we
can speak their language and convince them. And no, you can't.

(39:57):
My mom would have died before voting Democrat right. She
would have chosen death over voting for the Democratic Party period.
You know, like, there was never any chance of you
getting her right. And the instant I realized they're betting
on that as opposed to trying to get anyone, you know,
any moderates or people further on the left, like on

(40:18):
board with actual like policies that will help them was like, Okay,
we might be in trouble here.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Well, yeah, I mean it's yeah, something that just like
another example of the right, big, far more like organized
for lack of a better term, than the left, is
because there are people who didn't vote for Kamla because
she would not move left, Like I don't know.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
It's just the the idea that there are good Republicans
buried inside the party and we can shake them out
of voting this. No, no, no, Even the people who
are like good, who have more reasonable stances, who you know,
had issues with Trump, what they wanted most is to
win and as soon as you like like because of
this is the project of twenty something thirty years of

(41:02):
right wing media. This was what Fox News accomplished. What
matters most to the majority of Republican like dedicated Republican voters,
And obviously there's a sizable chunk of people who voted
a Republican last election who flip flopped between and those
people are reachable, which is why they flip flop so often.
When we're talking about the core of the party. Their
primary motivation is hurting Democrats, is hurting immigrants, is hurting

(41:27):
the groups of people they hate, and have been taught
to hate by year at this point, a couple of
generations of conservative media. You know, it's it's inflicting pain
on their enemies, and so you can't win them over
by being like, but look, we adopted one of your policies.
You know, don't you like this? Now? Aren't we better
than that Trump guy? I know, because that Trump guy

(41:48):
is promising to kick somebody, and they want to see
somebody in pain. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
I reflect often on that, like that the phase of
her campaign where there is a series of cam paining
commercials that were encouraging women, like conservative women to vote
for her behind their husband's backs. Do you remember that?

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, that's just gonna offend people, Like, it's not gonna
you don't. It's just just bad choices, just bad choices.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
I do. I do believe that there were probably voters
like that, but it's like, that's not the fucking way too,
and that's not gonna exactly, that's not as that's not
as effective as actually moving left.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Again, Like oh wow, you know this swing state has
a massive number of like Muslim voters. I wonder if
they'll be angry at us completely failing to reign israel
In on a genocide. Probably not. They'll vote for Blue
no matter who.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
We don't need it, of course, it's it's them who
gets blamed by cool.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
That's not the only reason Harris lost, right, That's that
explains like one state. There's a bunch of reasons, but
the whole we're going we can we can get these people,
you know, we can. We can break off a lot
of them because they're basically reasonable people. Doesn't work because
they're not. They're not. Their brains have been damaged by
decades of propaganda, and the damage is permanent. Anyway, This

(43:16):
is good vibes, good vibes, the vibes anyway. I will
say there's a weird kind of comfort I get from
reading Hegseth's book, not because it's less awful or even
less homicidal than I'd feared, but because the it's validating.
It's the conservatism I know, and it's the conservatism I
was raised inside put on full display, right, and in

(43:39):
a way that I think I really would encourage. I
found the free copy of this book online. By the way,
I didn't pay for it. If you just google full
text free you can find it too. I don't know
the legal status of this, but it's not hard to find.
I want to get Democrats who think they can reach
out to Republicans to read this book, because it really clearly,

(43:59):
it really points out like why it's that attempt is
so fundamentally doomed. Right Like anyway, there's another mask off moment,
a useful one later in the book, when Pete has
a chance to lay out the things he.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Had, A useful one.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
A useful one, yes, Ok. Pete winds up in a
passage laying out the things he admires about Islam, and
this is part of he's still he's making the broader
case that it's an existential threat to Americans in freedom.
But he writes this, almost every single Muslim child grows
up listening to and learning to read from the Koran.
Contrast this with our secular American schools, in which the

(44:36):
Bible is nowhere to be found, and you'll understand why
Muslim's worldview is more coherent than ours. First off, hmm,
not entirely inaccurate statement about the Muslim world, about schools
in the Muslim world, Like, yeah, that describes some people,
But I don't know. I guess I've just talked to
more school teachers interact than Pete has, who co repeatedly

(45:00):
that they just didn't have books anymore, and they hadn't
since Saddam left.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
I don't think that was Pete's focus and around school teachers. Okay, So,
I mean it's just more Christian fundamentalism that.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Wow, they're all reading the Bible, they're all perfectly informed
about their religion. They're constantly thinking about it, as opposed
to like, yeah, most Muslims are like most members of
any other religion where they're like, yeah, you know, on
the holiday or whatever, but like, I got shit to
do the rest of the time. You know, maybe I
get more serious about it if I get sick or something,
but like the people, yeah, they're people, right, they got

(45:34):
other shit going on. Pete goes on to argue that
the Islamic Holy books, and he describes the Islamic Holy
books as being the Koran and the Hadith, if reordered
and read chronologically, show in an exorable passage from peaceful
writing towards violence, right, that if you reorder all of
the different like the Islamic Holy texts, the Holy Books,

(45:57):
it re ordered them to read chronologically you'll that Islam
inherently moves towards violence.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Right, Yeah, and if you play the record, yeah, like
there couldn't be anything more conspiratorial, Like well if you
like okay, and.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Yeah, he's like in this mirror Muhammad's own journey, right,
because Muhammad was like a military leader, right.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
And basically the point he's making is that Islam inherently
leads to violence if you follow it honestly. Now, this
is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, a
few chapters earlier, when he was talking about his friend
Texas Omar, he'd made a big point that Omar is
a practicing Muslim and also one hundred percent American, which
seems like it's not something that really should be possible
based on how heg Seth describes Islam here. But he's

(46:39):
also wrong about Islam a whole lot. Right. For one thing, again,
he states that the holy books of Islam are the
Koran and the Hadith. The Hadith like, it's not a
it's not a title of a book, right, it's the
name for a collection of sayings attributed to the prophet
Muhammad over a long period of time, right, And it's

(47:00):
not really it wouldn't be right to call it a
holy book of Islam. Right, It's certainly a text holy
text in Islam, but it's not really a holy book
because there are holy books in the faith. Obviously, there's
the Koran. There's also the Taalat, which is the Torah,
and the Zabr, which is their book of Psalms, and
the last of these Islamic holy books is the angel
which is the New Testament. Right, these are all holy

(47:22):
books in the Muslim faith, right, But.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
He forsakes three and it just adds one.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, well, and he just doesn't really understand what the
hideths are that like, it's a collection of sayings. It's
not really a book in the traditional sense. Discussing Islamic
religious texts in a way that's accurate isn't something he
can do because then you have to acknowledge it, like,
oh wait, wait, the Torah is like venerated in Islam,
and so is the New Testament, even though they don't
believe Jesus was the Messiah. Well, then that makes the

(47:49):
case that Islam's actually much more tolerant towards other faiths
than heg Seth wants to pretend. And he goes on
to note, quote, non Muslims paid a second class citizen tax,
convert to Islam or were killed, whichever way they submitted,
and like it is in fact true that there is
a tax that non Muslims are supposed to pay and

(48:10):
paid under the like the first Islamic empires, right, like
a specific tax for being like a not a member
of the faith. But also what he's leaving out here
is that, like this is a pretty significantly better deal
than you would get in Christendom as a non Christian.
Like this is actually kind of like a big mark
of the relative tolerance of Islam during the period of

(48:31):
time where it was like this expanding empire, because once
if non believers were paying their tax, they enjoyed state protection. Right,
they're people of the book, and in fact there's commandments
against abusing people of the book. And I'm not going
to say it's perfect right, and obviously there's you do
you are not an equal citizen in like these early
Muslim empires if you're Jewish or Christian, but you do

(48:54):
have rights, right, and you have a better deal than
Muslims are going to get in Christendom, right, And often
we just talked about how after the Crusades stalled, crusaders
just massacred Jewish communities in Europe, right, Like, you were
better off in a lot of cases being a Jew
in these Muslim like these areas dominated by these like

(49:14):
Islamic empires, then you would have been like in fucking
somewhere in Europe, right, Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
You would always Europe.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Right.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
It's better to pay a tax and have some rights
than be tortured by the inquisition.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
You know, not a fair ask.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah. Again, I'm not trying to whitewash any of these
Islamic empires. They're empires. They did some pretty terrible things,
like all empires do. I'm just saying, if you've got
to choose between being massacred by drunk peasant crusaders in
a pagram or like pay an attax, most people probably say,
pay the tax. It's a better deal.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
I guess. It's just I mean, it's so his like
binary thinking. It's every chapter so far has been like, well,
here's here's what I agree with, including a I am
increasingly convinced he made up.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
And it's also just like this whole obsession that they
all have with like European history, Western history, you know,
the great works of philosophy, you know, Plato and Aristotle, these,
like a lot of great classic European think and Western thinkers.
We only have a lot of their writing because it
was preserved by Muslim scholars during the period which Christians

(50:25):
were destroying everything that was pre Christians. So anyway, again
not to whitewash any faith. All religions were all organized.
Major religions, especially when they have armies, do nightmarish things,
and you can find plenty of horrible crimes committed like
the Honormans, you know, by the Umayids and the Opposites.

(50:45):
But right, you know, it's just the truth of the
matter is that for its day, like Islam was a
much more tolerant faith than Christianity, you know, at that
period of time.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
So which is interestingly demonstrated through the work and actions
of one Pete heg Seth.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Of one Peter heg Seth. Yes, so right after this
paragraph he tries to do a minor mia culpa, and
he winds up being both historically wrong and committing heresy.
There's so much inaccurate in this next paragraph. I don't
know how to summarize it. So I'm just going to
read it to you. First, prior to the Life and
Teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, many of these
same things could have been said of the Bible in Christianity.

(51:25):
The God of the Old Testament was violent, vengeful, and
very judgmental. But a key distinction makes these two Abrahamic
religions very different. The Koran has no New Testament, and
he goes on to argue that the lack of a
New Testament means Islam as centuries away from becoming a
civilized faith. Right that, Like, well, obviously, first off, there's
again there's so much wrong here. First off, he says
that like prior to the Life and Teachings of Jesus,

(51:48):
many of these things could have been said of the
Bible in Christianity. But there wasn't Christianity before the Life
and Teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. What do
you mean prior what do you mean Christianity prior to that? Like?
What are you talking about? Because he does he specifically doesn't, Right,
the same things could have been said of like Judaism,
right that, Like, oh, before the New Testament, you know,
like the God of the Old Testament was violent, judgmental,

(52:09):
But no, he says, specifically before the life and teachings
of Jesus in the New Testament, this could have been
set of Christianity in the Bible, which is like, first off, again, man,
you can't even get your own fucking religion right. And
second again, he says that the Koran has no New Testament,
and as we noted earlier, the New Testament is in
fact venerated in Islam, like right, and he.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Just ignored it in his list of holy because it.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Was again, they don't view Jesus as the Messiah, right,
they don't believe the same things about it, But like
there is that is in the faith, right, Yeah, it's
just wrong to say that it's completely absent any point.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Whether whether he actually knows this or not, it's just
like it's so clear that like this book is just
predicated on how poorly educated his his target audience is.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
And it's this very common thing with conservatives that like
Islam whatever is the most radical thing you can find
that was ever written by a Muslim. That's what everyone
believes and does at all times, as opposed to like, no,
I mean, Islam's like Christianity and other religion where like, well,
you can find some awful things and people who are
like and that awful thing is exactly how you should
act at all times. And you can also find some

(53:19):
stuff that's not awful, and some people who say that, like, no,
the awful stuff's bullshit. You know this is in is
everyone just kind of picking and choosing what to believe
because it makes them more comfortable. Yes, that's what everyone
does with everything, Like that's that's how human beings are,
with politics, with whatever, right I.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Mean personally, my holy texts are are are titles like
the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate, but it is interesting.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Learning that is that is my religious text as well?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Yeah, what about Installment number four, His Curving No, see,
I'm actually I consider that like the Gnostic Gospels, like
that's that's not canon.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
After the we had our own Council of Nicia, which
was held in Atlantic City. To be honest, we didn't
really get around to deciding what was cannon we were
We were mostly just partying.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
I'm very devout. I've I've read His Curvy Rejected Mate
forty times once.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Yeah, you've memorized it like like like like Muslim students
are supposed to memorize the Karan, yes, but like, yeah,
there's there's lots of bullshit people like the common conservative
belief that like yeah, you just put pigs, you know,
pig fat on the bullets and then they can't go
to heaven. That's not part of Islam. Like that's just
you'd being racist. There's nothing that says if you you

(54:38):
don't go to heaven, right, you're not You're even you're
allowed to eat pork in Islam if you're starving, right, Like,
none of these even within the text of the of
the faith itself, like all of this, like during Ramadan
you're supposed to fast, but there's specific exemptions for like well,
if you're in a desperate situation and dying, or if
you're fighting in a war, like if there's extenuating circumstances,

(55:02):
you don't have to fast. You can eat and drink water.
Because like even like during the earliest days of the faith,
Mom was like, well, I don't want this to be
a straight jacket, right right, Yeah, but again you can't.
There's no actual understanding of like how the faith is living.
It's just a bunch of like talking points that you
can use to demonize these people, right.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's just like his whole platform depends on Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Now, the wrongest part of that paragraph, and the thing
that I really recognized because my dad used to make
the same argument, is the idea that virtue was human
beings couldn't be good before Christianity. There weren't really good
people before the New Testament. It was impossible to truly
be ethical, right, Like my dad would talk a lot
about like, well, you know, ancient Greece and Rome were
probably like the best societies possible prior to Christianity, right

(55:50):
because they were you know, like it's this idea that
like decency was invented by Christians, and people just couldn't
be good before it.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Yea, you could, you could be all right, that's such
a weird like you know, scale to be on Like
you could be okay, you could be all right, you
could inch towards goodness. But it wasn't until yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
It wasn't until Christianity that we really knew how to
be good people. It just wasn't possible. And again, let's
go back to those drunken peasant crusaders who just decided
to massacre all the Jews in their neighborhood because they
didn't have enough money for a boat to the fucking
Middle East.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Right, really christ like behavior.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Yeah, Jesus would have loved that. He hated his own people. Yeah.
So Hegseeth attacks Islam for being quote not just a
religion but also a system of governance. And I find
this really interesting, and he brings out sharia law as
the usual bugbear here. But the statements like this kind

(56:45):
of lack the teeth they used to have when you
live in twenty twenty five, because in the years since
publishing American Crusade, Hegseeth has become a direct advocate for
Christian control of the government and the supremacy of Christian
religious law over the lives of Americans, even those who
do not practice the faith. And he's done this. He's
like talking about, like Islam's a system of government. That's wrong.
Christianity also should be our system of government.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
Right.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
He's done all this while complaining about the injustice. This
is a big thing he winds about in later writings
that because he writes another book about fucking warrior ethos
shit that we'll talk about at some point. But in
twenty twenty one, he gets like basically, I'm gonna quote
from the New York Times here. He has said that
he was barred from participating in the military security detail

(57:30):
for President Biden's inauguration in twenty twenty one because of
a tattoo on his chest depicting a Jerusalem cross, a
religious symbol that was also a symbol used by crusaders.
Reuters and others reported that his tattoos, including the deis
volt motto that has been used by white supremacists, prompted
a fellow service member to flag mister Hegseth as a
potential insider threat. And first off, good work, fellow service member.

(57:51):
He was probably shouldn't have that guy near fucking Joe
Biden with a weapon, right, But he doesn't get fired,
but he claims that, like, well, this is why I
had to stop lead my military careers. I got sidelined
because they called me an extremist for simply being a
Christian who has the exact same tattoos as the guys
who committed a series of hate crimes in Charlottesville.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Yeah, Sam Weird kicked him off of Wiki feet for
speaking truth to power, Like you're okay, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
Now you know who will never get kicked off of Wiki.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Feet, the products and services robot.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
No, they are the foundation of Wiki feet. You know,
send them pictures up your feet, be nice to them.
They'll love that.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
And don't check before you do it. Yeah, it should
be a nice surprise.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Yeah, yeah, let it be a surprise. We're back. We're
all sending feet picks to whoever sponsors the podcast. They're
gonna love that. And also now, thank god, well now
that we have a Trump is the presidency again. Feet

(58:58):
picks are legal. You know that. You can use them
for currency, you can use things.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
They can bathwater.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, they count as assets if you're trying to get
a mortgage. You know.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
I'm on wikifeet dot com. I think they have a
for sure, I just had this open. I think they
have a dating dot com. Everyone check out matchsouls dot com.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
You know that's actually that's not a bad name. That's
not a bad name.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
You know what it was right there?

Speaker 3 (59:26):
You get a couple, you get it, you get some
kudos for that.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
They've updated their interface. Anyways, Okay, sorry, get to eat
Pete Heg Seth.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah he's Pete Seth right, So continuing, Pete Hegg Seth's
book right after Uh talking about how awful Sharia law
is and how Islam is evil because it's a political
system as well as a religion. He writes, voting as
a weapon, but it's not enough. We don't want to fight,
but like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we

(59:55):
must oh great again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Well, why you ain't got no alibi?

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
That's literally what he sat. So after the twenty twenty
election ended with Joe Biden winning, and if you believe
Fete or Pete feet. If you believe Pete, his military
career ends shortly thereafter due to anti Christian persecution. He
moves his family to Tennessee, where they attend the Pilgrim
Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is part of the Communion of

(01:00:23):
Evangelical Churches, which is basically a denomination, right, It's like
an organization for a specific denomination of weird evangelicals. And
this sub denomination was founded by Idaho based pastor Doug Wilson.
And if you know anything about Idaho, you know that
there's no more sinister series of words in the English
language than Idaho based pastor. So about a month before

(01:00:46):
I put these episodes together, Politico described Doug Wilson as
quote the new rights favorite pastor. He is famous for
claiming that the Gospels give believers a stark choice quote
Christ or chaos, and he argues that up to this point,
America has choosen chaos. Quote reality is optional. That's why
you have people saying that a girl can be a

(01:01:07):
boy and a boy can be a girl. Thank you.
I know that's how he really sounds. It's easy to
see why hegseeth is drawn to this motherfucker. American Crusade
is a book that advocates for Christian theocracy, and Wilson's
entire career for like half a century, has been dedicated
to per that Politico article, creating quote a comprehensive blueprint

(01:01:28):
for a spiritual and political reformation that would transform America
into a kind of Christian republic. And Wilson is the
real deal. He is a serious, lifelong, committed Christian fascist.
Pete is not the real deal. You know. You can
call him a Johnny come lately. Not that I don't
think he's a fascist, but like he is, he primarily

(01:01:51):
cares about himself and his own personal advancement as opposed
to the cause. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
It's not even a positive thing. But he does care
about his own bottom line more than he cares about
the project of fascism. It sounds like this idahope his
pastor would really put a lot on the line for fascism.
But even the way that he's writing this book is
he's writing to meet the moment of the amount of
fascism you can get away with and still be viable

(01:02:17):
at the exact time this book comes out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
That is precisely what he's doing, right, which is why
he's more milk toast than present Pete in some sections,
because he just didn't think some of that stuff was acceptable. Right,
And it's worth noting again, Wilson's written a bunch of
books laying out a blueprint for how Christians should and
must take over the country and dominate violently everyone else.

(01:02:40):
Pete his book is not a blueprint, right, He's advocating
for the same things. He's clearly supportive, even though he says,
I'm not saying violence, but we also literally need to
go to war, right, a literal crusade. Voting isn't enough,
but also no violence, right. You know, Pete's book is
not really giving a comprehensive blueprint right, because Pete is
not that smart and is not a strategic thinker. It
is your standard wanna be politician book right. It's meant

(01:03:03):
to stake out a place for its author in the
movement by saying the right schibaletes. But the writing is
both lazy and shallow, and it provides no real implementation insight.
It's just no ideas. It's just like Islamophobia for chapters.
It is scattered in somewhat desperate signposting for like pick me,
pick me, like me, like me right, Like that's what

(01:03:24):
he's doing, you know. Whereas Doug Wilson has spent his
whole adult life building an actual power base in Moscow, Idaho, where,
per Politico quote, Wilson overseas a network of allied institutions
that includes christ Church, a publishing house, a classic Christian
grade school, a Christian Liberal arts college, and a ministerial
training program. Beyond Moscow, the network of churches that Wilson

(01:03:45):
founded in the late nineteen nineties, called the Communion of
Reformed Evangelical Churches or CREC, has grown to include over
one hundred and fifty congregations across four continents. An association
of classical Christian schools that Wilson co founded in nineteen
ninety three now counts over five hundred member schools across
the country.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Hot. Okay, So he's so he's an effective.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
He is an effective building and again not just in
it for himself and his own birth, like in it
to build a movement.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
He's very different from Pete. I would be shocked if
he really likes to respects the guy. But he's also
very smart. He knows how to use a guy like Pete. Right,
And he's you know the fact that he before he
became the sec deaf, was seeing that this guy had
had the potential to go somewhere if Trump won again,
because like you know, especially after Trump got out, he

(01:04:34):
really gravitated to the people who were just complete toadies
and lickspittles, right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
And for this exact kind of guy exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
And Wilson was smart enough to be like, this guy
might go somewhere. I should start getting in good with him, right,
And Wilson, this, this guy is so committed. Even during
the period of time in which evangelical like Christian nationalist
figures had to pretend they weren't, he would openly preach
his support for a theocracy. He has refused for years
to refer to the Civil War as anything but the

(01:05:02):
war between the States, and has described his personal politics
as slightly to the right of Jeb Stewart, a Confederate general.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Great cool, awesome, yardstick.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
A nice stuff. So while head Seth was, by his
own admission, squishy for most of his adult life, Wilson
has been a howling committed fascist for decades. My interpretation
of their relationship behind the scenes is that Wilson recognized
hag Seth as a useful person who was desperate for
a place in the movement, and Wilson was happy to
give him that in exchange for having a future Secretary

(01:05:37):
of Defense on his side. We see the kind of
desperation Pete had to be involved with and feel like
a part of this movement despite his belated entrants in
chapter eight of his stupid book Secularism Deporting God from America,
which opens with the stunning paragraph Wow, what after deal?
After the election of Donald Trump in twenty sixteen, one

(01:05:58):
of the most powerful things to happen to our country
and to me was the Christian conversion of the rapper
Kanye West Wait the conversion of a rapper was a
powerful movement in America in my life, yes it was.
At first, like many others, I was skeptical of his authenticity.
Is this a PR stunt? But when I watched Kanye
live and listen to his songs, I was convinced he

(01:06:18):
loves Jesus and wants to share him with the world.
Even better, he went all in, not content to live
a private life of faith in order to protect his
iconic image. What a shot of adrenaline for the home team.
If Kanye is with us, who can be against us.
Kanye is a changed man, but not a perfect man.
As often happens throughout history and in our country, the
imperfect people become the best messagers. I should note that

(01:06:41):
this was five years before Kanye would release his new
hit song Hyle Hitler.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Wow called it, called it, and he's now going by
ya ya yay, yes, no, no, no ya ya he
changed it again.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Oh I missed that update, thank you, So.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
I stopped keeping that. That was funny. That was.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
Kanye is on he can't lose, He'll never lose his mind.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
Well, which arguably like he already had.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, he's very.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
He was an active crisis. Well, uh cool, so we've
got ever Clear and Kanye West.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Ye, Kanye West, God my two heroes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
You know wow talk about building a coalition.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
And putting together a team.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
My favorite part of that quoes when he said here
he what he when he's talking about how like he
he went, all.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Really do it? And You're like, yes, you're not broken, clock,
You're right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Yeah. So we get another example after this of how
inconsistent Pete's own account of his own past is. Hag
Seth tries to draw comparison between kanye upbringing, which he
describes as rooted in good Christian values, in his own
claiming that faith in Jesus was front and center in
his childhood upbringing, which is the opposite of the claim
he's made more recently in that Christian magazine. Now we

(01:08:12):
can look at the actual things Pete claimed and say, dude,
you were always raised to be the guy you are.
At no point did secular society step in to force
you to stop being religious. At no point did you
have anything but like complete support for being the kind
of right wing Christian nationalist weirdo that you are from
our society.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
But it's like he's he's so committed to this conception
he has of himself. Yeah, but the more we talk
about it, the more I'm like, you know what you're described.
It's like technically less compelling, but it makes him seem
more competent than he is of like I was like
born to occupy this role. I feel like that is
an equally compelling narrative that he's just too insecure to

(01:08:53):
even admit. Right, Yeah, like I was born to be
a far right like yeah fails sun that rises the
power that seems to be true?

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Yeah, I mean yes, that is like you were crafted
in a lab to be this exact shithead. Yes, and
nothing about our society did anything but encourage it. So
in the next segment of the book, he claims to
be self aware of his sinful nature, and he says this,
without knowing, fearing, and recognizing God, I would be like
a ship lost at sea, wrecked and sunk. You get

(01:09:24):
wrecked plenty as it is, buddy, And trust me, I
have almost been sunk more times than I can admit
on these pages. Yeah you have. I've only seen forty
short years on this earth, and I've been divorced twice,
almost gone bankrupt once and been deployed with a bunch
of toxically max feel and dudes thrice one tour of
one tour of which included a war crimes controversy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Oh my god, he's so controversy. He's so oppressed, you
guysse about it. I think, you know, really brave of
him to call the American military toxic masculine.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
I think he may. He's making fun of the left here, right,
Like that's the point of it. But it's also very
fun to be like, yeah, there was a war crimes controversy. Like, dude,
per your own claims to the New Yorker, you complained
that you were scared your unit was going to commit
war crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Well two nine. Pete can't come to the phone, right,
Yeah he can.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
Also, he notes in this that there's there's too much
to write about in terms of his like sins and failings.
He can't. I can't actually go into all that detail,
right Like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Well, legally, yeah, he probably can't.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Legally he shouldn't, but we can, Jay Jimmy Loftus, we
absolutely can. Yeah, So let's talk about the allegations against
Pete hag seth are sexual assault. We've already heard about
all of his drinking and carousing and spending the money
from his different charities in order to party and pursue women,

(01:10:49):
and repeated claims in that whistleblower report that he and
others sexually harassed women who worked for the orgs that
he was at. Now, that all existed prior to Pete's,
you know, getting nominated to be the Secretary of Defense.
But then once it became clear that he was Trump's
pick for sec def, a new set of allegations kind

(01:11:10):
of hit the public. And these these went back to
twenty seventeen when Pete Hegseeth was at a hotel for
like a I think it was like some sort of
a work conference. It was a Republican women's conference. And
he met, yes, he did, he did. He met a
woman known as you know, Jane Doe for you know,

(01:11:31):
legal obvious purposes. He met this Jane Doe at the
conference and they talked. Other people who were there were
call them having a loud argument at one point, and
it's kind of unclear like precisely what happened, but they
were both drinking. They had a loud argument around one
thirty am, which prompted an employee to be like, hey,

(01:11:54):
you guys need to like quiet down, and heg Seth
responded by cursing at the employee and saying I got
freedom speach, and then the.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
James Patriot even at his slowest.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Yeah, and then per npr Dough then intervened, telling the
employee that they were Republicans and apologized for heg Seth's behavior. Right,
I love I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
That's the shorthand for a drunken argument. And no, no, no, no, officer,
you don't understand. We're Republicans. We're supposed to act this way.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
And because of the lawsuit that comes later, we have
this woman's texts from that night, and some of them
she like one of them. She says he wears a
ring on his pointer finger. It creeps me out. Like
these messages, they're pretty There's one. I'm just gonna read
the message chain. Do you know Pete Hegseeth? She asks,
name sounds familiar. Who is he? He's a Fox contributor.

(01:12:42):
I guess he does Outnumbered and Fox and Friends. Anyway,
our ladies are freaking drooling over him. Oh okay, he
is TDB light Mini TDB. Oh you mean the man
who tried to have sex with my wife. Not a
good first impression for Pete, right, So they're talking about like, yeah,
this guy's a he's trying to like fuck everybody. Yeah,

(01:13:03):
and she says that he creeps him out. Later in
the evening, Doe told investigators that she saw heg Seth
rubbing women's legs and quote giving off a creeper vibe.
She recalls because she is drinking too. She recalls that
the argument that they had was that she got angry
at him for repeatedly touching women at the conference, and
so they have this loud argument and Doe remembers heg

(01:13:25):
Seth saying I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy.
And then quote from NPR, Doe said that the next
memory she had was when she was in an unknown room.
This is from the police report. Doe did not know
where she was or how she got to the room.
Heg Seth was in the room with her, so this
is she blacks out. Presumably I think she had it.

(01:13:46):
I believe she had a talk screen because she goes
to the police, but I don't know. It may not
have been soon enough that would have shown if there
was something else in her drink, but you know, blacking
out is anyway. She winds up.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Refer to Pete's previous writing on the subject.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
And she she says, I do recall saying no to
him repeatedly, right, And you know, she eventually files a
sexual assault claim against him, right, that he sexually assaulted her. Right.
He maintains that any physical interaction was consensual. I wouldn't
be surprised if he was blacked out too, given his
own Like, I don't know what memory Pete actually has

(01:14:23):
of this. But ultimately, the police do not wind up
prosecuting this because they say they don't have enough evidence
to go on, and hag Seth settles out of court
with her in a civil suit. He pays her fifty
thousand dollars as part of a and makes her sign
a confidentiality agreement. It's just like perdocuments obtained by CNN.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Yeah, this is just fucking vile. I mean, it's not
surprising at all that it didn't move forward, but the
fact that it went far enough that she had to
submit her text. I mean, were there like kids done
or anything like that, Like I that's.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
Yeah, I don't think like I think by the time
because she didn't initially want to report it at all,
Like it's the case it often takes long enough that
like you don't get as early as you need for
that kind of screens. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I read a really interesting book. I was just randomly
recommend it, but I just finished it last week called
The Secret I think it's called The Secret History of
the Rave Kit, and it's really good of just like
how how much technology there is there that is just
not used. But in any case, that's I mean not

(01:15:37):
surprising at all that they didn't move forward with the case,
but just the idea of like, well, what does constitute
enough enough evidence quote unquote, like and I know it
varies from state to state too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Yeah, and it does. And I got to read in
terms of because again Pete makes the statement that like, oh, yeah,
I was a bad guy, but like he's he's basically
pretending and like the bad stuff is I wasn't enough
of an outright fascist, right, Like yeah, that's like mostly
the kind of claim that he's making is that like, yeah,
I imperfect because like I wasn't as big a piece

(01:16:09):
of shit as I am today. As a result of that,
as a result of Pete being like you know I've
almost been sunk more times than I can admit on
these pages. I want to read one more quote about
some of the sins that Pete leaves awe out in
his Mia culpa. Okay, this is from The New Yorker's
article Pete heg Seth's Secret History. Hag Seth appeared in
October twenty seventeen as a dinner speaker at the California

(01:16:31):
Federation of Republican Women's fortieth Biennial Convention in Monterey, California.
His personal life was in tumult. In twenty ten, he
had married a second time to Samantha Dering, a coworker
at That's for Freedom. He admitted in an essay that
year that he had fathered a child out of wedlock
before marrying her. At The Times reported then in August
of twenty seventeen, Well, still married to Deering, he fathered
a daughter with another woman, a producer at Fox, Jennifer Rausche,

(01:16:55):
who he eventually married in twenty nineteen. As he Endearing
wrangled their way through a difficult as The Times first reported,
his mother, Penelope Hegxeth, sent him an email excoriating him
as an abuser of women. Who belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around,
and uses women for his own power and ego. She
admonished him get some help and take an honest look
at yourself. That say his mom.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Oh my, well that's what I call good business consulting.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Yeah, that's oh my god, I mean that's his fucking mother,
like Jesus nic anyway. Yeah, I just love it when
he's like, oh, you know, I'm imperfect, but God uses
imperfect people. It sounds a lot better than like, no,
I'm a real fucking piece of shit, Like I am
a gigantic who does not at all live consistently with

(01:17:40):
my stated values. I violate every rule God set for
human beings.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
On a weekly basis, on.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
A constant basis.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Yes, it is interesting, like he's presenting like even as
like a piece of effective propaganda. This bo is a
fair because it's so inconsistent with like who does he
want to be perceived as? You know, like it just
seems like he'll say he'll switch the narrative from moment
to moment depending on what is the most effective thing here,
what are you going to like the most? What makes

(01:18:12):
me look the coolest? Which varies from chapter to chapter,
like in this he's a wounded bird who had to like,
and then another one's he's a born warrior because Donald Trump,
like that slid out of his mouth.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
You know, it's just uh, it's awesome. It's good shit, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
The yeah, the allegation together, it's like even, I mean,
and that's unfortunately, is like a pretty standard allegation for
a guy like this. And of course it's just like
means nothing not to mention the civilian jets. I like, well,
this guy rocks.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
So we're gonna wrap up here. The second to the
last chapter, though, I should note is chapter thirteen is
called the front Lines Education in Israel, and it's ninety
percent of it is about how evil the education system is.
Pete is like, you can't send your kids to colleges
because you're fun the enemy. You should destroy literally burn
your own like graduation certificate or whatever, like, and he

(01:19:08):
goes he will later, he doesn't do it. Now. He
says like, oh, I'm going to destroy my diplomas from
Princeton Anne Harvard right as a protest, which he does.
He destroys. He claims to have mailed sent back his
Harvard diploma years later as a result of woke. But like,
he doesn't actually do that immediately. I don't know that
he actually did that at all. It might just be.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
That story is Israel as omar from Texas, as far
as I'm concerned.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
After complaining that like college is evil, because this is
the whole theme of this chapter, is that like college
is evil because of what it makes Americans think about Israel.
So after several pages of branding about colleges, he writes,
you might ask, what in the world does the state
of Israel have to do with any of this? I
live in the United States. Why is Israel the front line?

(01:19:54):
And of course the answer to that is that Israel
is quote central to the story of Western civilization, of
which America is the greatest manifestation. Pete advises everyone to
watch a bunch of prigger you videos about Israel's history,
and then goes through summarizes Israeli history and like a
page and neatly leaves out the Palestinians completely right, Like
there's just nobody there. It's like that's not a factor

(01:20:17):
in the story at all. It He celebrates the beautiful
army Israel has and talks about their unmatched standard of living,
something that might surprise people in Gaza and says that
because Israel is such a great place to live, that's
why American crusaders have to fight for it as strongly
as they fight for the United States. Pete ends the
chapter with these lines, with the front lines identified, Let's

(01:20:39):
put a full on American crusade into action. And the
last chapter is just titled make the Crusade Great Again.
It's not really it's just a rehash of shit he
said previously in the book. This chapter is not necessary
and it's not really worth getting into other than this
line near the end. The American crusade can be one,
but not through negotiation. Stale thinking and bipartisan consensus have

(01:21:03):
betrayed us. This moment requires a total commitment to victory,
which includes co opting the successful tactics the left has
used for years. We must be smart, tough, proactive, and bold. Anyway,
that's Pete in his stupid book. I hope everyone had.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
A week going going out on a chapter at Israel.
I guess I didn't expect better, but Jesus fucking And
then he wrote another book called The War on Warriors.

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that one day. That's his
book about Yeah, how America like we don't make people
want to be violent enough, right, like we we shamelan
for killing and stuff and like yeah, it's just it's
just we'll get into it one of these days. But no,
rush rushay not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
I fucking hated every second of that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
Yeah, no, so so an average episode.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
There a normal episode of Behind the Bastards. Yes, this
was meant to be like an easier week for me,
but I still wound up having to do a bunch
of research because God, there's just you can't just not
talk about the reality of Pete when you're looking at
like what he claims about himself.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
No, because I mean one thing I was I mean
not necessarily surprised about. But there's so many approaches to
this kind of book and he approaches and I wonder
how much of it is just legal But like he
says stunningly little about himself while also presenting no ideas.
It's really just racism.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
Yeah, it's just racism. And you know, like callow self interest, right,
he wants to be a big man, an important man.
That's all that really matters.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
Look at the cover. Yeah, I was like, you could
kind of like glean the contents of the book by
looking at the cover. It's a book by a deeply
insecure man who's about to get an undue amount of power.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
Right. Ah, God, we love it when deeply insecure men
get great amounts of power that they absolutely are not
prepared to wield.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
It's the American tradition.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
It's the American tradition. So go out take power for
yourself and then get corrupt and you know, destroy huge
swaths of the human race. You know, that's my challenge
to all of you listeners. Go take power somewhere in
the world, become corrupted by it, and you know, send
us further down the slalom to complete collapse.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
And I'll all say, is Michigan, don't believe what you've heard.
I'm a good person.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
Yeah, and let her into your corner store hand or
an acts. It's safe.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
I'm not saying you could and you would be fine.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
It's absolutely safe. For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
I hope to be welcomed in your borders and in
due time, but I understand the healing is only just begun.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
That's right. Well, you got anything to plug?

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
Yes, I should plug my Cool Zone Media Podcast, sixteenth
minute We are currently on hiatus, but it is a
weekly podcast in which I talk to and reflect on
the main characters of the inner, catch up with them
years later, and uh talk about how how broken the
Internet has made us. Check that out. Check out my

(01:24:09):
book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about Hot Dogs and
in paperback now so it doesn't cost as much money,
or just get it from the library or honestly even
steal it. It's fine. I don't think I'm going to
get any royalties. Yeah, and yeah, that's what I get.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
Well, I think you are royalty, Jamie, Queen of podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
That's way better than what you usually call me, which
is a murderer. So I'll take it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
Look name a queen. It wasn't a murderer, Jamie.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
That's so true. Okay, I take it back, I take it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
Yeah, all right, everybody, I Love you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
a pod casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind
the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

Speaker 2 (01:25:07):
Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com. Slash at behind
the Bastards

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'