Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.

This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.

Schmidt writes:

There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.

Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.

It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.

Journalism confronts power.

Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.

This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:

[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]

When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.

[Truman said:]

General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.

Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.

Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.

Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.

General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.

He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.

He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.

He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

*******************

Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.

Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial.
Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace: 

[Jackie Robinson’s eulogy by Reverend Jesse Jackson.]

Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.

There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.  

The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.

The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.

The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.

In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.

Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.

Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.