Trump has built a cabinet full of loyalists, but one member has clearly risen — or rather sunk — to the very bottom. That member is Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary who proved, in a single press briefing, just how far out of his depth he truly is.
On Friday, Hegseth stood at the Pentagon podium and called a CNN report “patently ridiculous.” The report said that Trump’s national security team had underestimated Iran’s ability to shut down global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Hegseth told reporters not to worry about it. The strait was, at that very moment, proving to be Iran’s most powerful weapon in the war.
“Patently ridiculous,” he said, even as oil markets rattled and gas prices climbed across the United States.
CNN was not wrong. The network cited multiple sources familiar with the matter. The New York Times separately reported that Trump had “downplayed the risks to the energy markets” in the days leading up to the U.S.-Israeli attack. Even The Wall Street Journal confirmed the story, reporting that Trump rejected direct warnings that Iran would retaliate by closing the strait.
Trump believed Iran would back down. He was wrong. Hegseth defended that miscalculation anyway.
Telling millions of Americans not to worry about soaring gas pump prices is not just false. It is insulting. The American public deserves honest answers about what the Trump administration is doing to address the economic damage caused by this war. Hegseth offered none.
Then came the moment that may define his tenure entirely. Hegseth said, on camera, “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
That one sentence is a confession. It confirms what many had long suspected: that Trump backed Ellison’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, specifically to silence critical coverage. The deal is still pending, and Hegseth just handed lawyers, attorneys general, and civil liberties groups a loaded weapon to fight it in court.
California’s attorney general has already signaled he may go to court to block the acquisition. The ACLU and Democrats in Congress may now join as well. Hegseth’s offhand comment could end up being the single most damaging thing said about that deal since it was announced.
The fallout inside CNN has already been severe. As Variety noted, Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett, Kasie Hunt, and Wolf Blitzer have all exited or faced pressure. One departing CBS News producer, working under Ellison’s ownership, wrote in a farewell memo that stories were being “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit” but on whether they fit a preferred political narrative. That is not journalism. That is state-adjacent media control.
Hegseth also denied that the United States bombed a school in Iran where nearly 175 children were killed. He insisted the U.S. “never targets civilians.” That claim is directly contradicted by the U.S. military’s own actions in the Caribbean, where at least 157 people on 40 small boats were killed without confirmed evidence they were narcoterrorists.
And this was all in one press conference.
Beyond Friday’s briefing, Hegseth’s track record is alarming. In the days before the U.S. attacked Iran, he was not focused on war strategy. He was attacking “wokeness” at American universities, fighting with Anthropic over AI safety guardrails, and forcing Scouting America to drop diversity programs. The country was hours away from war, and this is where his attention was.
He has dismissed war crimes as irrelevant. He has undermined the rules of engagement. He told reporters the U.S. would show “no quarter” to its enemies, which is not a tough-guy soundbite. Under international law, it is a war crime.
There are many weak links in Trump’s cabinet. Choosing the single dumbest was never going to be easy. But Pete Hegseth has made the decision remarkably simple. He is not just unqualified. He is actively making things worse, one press briefing at a time.
Pray for America. And pray for the world.
