¶ Podcast Intro and Off-Topic Banter
Also media.
Ah, thanks very thanks for coming in with me on that one, Jamie's that was really helpful. I think we really, I think we knocked it out of the park. Yeah, that wouldn't have worked without you, you know, just one person kind of a tonally going ah nothing.
Yeah, one of you was great.
One of us is great. And you know what's not great. Sophie has a dying squirrel on her property.
We're gonna know, this is like ruined my entire Nay, Cannon.
It's cannon. Now, Sophie, it's cannon.
You're going to give it a name so it feels worse. No, sorry, I'm sorry.
How about Elizabeth Elizabeth the squirrel? Oh no, Elizabeth the terminally ill squirrel.
I'm not one hundred per centuries dying, but he's stuff really not moving very much.
Yeah, that's usually not a good sign for something like a squirrel.
Elizabeth has a lot of unfinished business. This is really sad.
Yeah, she didn't get her will prepared.
Robert, I just need you to come.
I just need you to come over here and do the humane thing because I'm a wolf.
I mean, kill it with a rock alleged. Yeah, I mean I don't know what else to do with, you know, suffering little animals. But yeah, when I lived, when I lived in the middle of nowhere, there would be lots of dead animals by or dying animals by the side of the road when I was on my runs, so I would have to be like usually, if I was doing a long enough run, I'd have to do at least one euthanasia on the way. It's like a fucking rabbit with its back legs crushed, should probably take care of this.
Okay, Yeah, that's an important part of her daily exercise regime.
Take a life is yeah, euthanasia.
When I was little, I had an outdoor cat, which we shouldn't have had. And here's why. There was one day I was like, something smelled weird in my yard and I found that my cat had like a massive like corpse pile, like he had symbol.
He was making his own a bone temple like in the New twenty eight Years Later movie.
I didn't understand at the time, but I was like, Wow, he just did that because he loved me so much.
Yeah, he loves you so much. He wanted you to have all of the corpses you need, you know, And that's not you know how many how many, how many guys will do that for you, right, you know that's why, that's why we have pets.
That's the main problem. I haven't seen the movie yet. Is it like all I've seen is like clickbait about it being like zombies with their cocks out?
Is that actually there's a lot of dicks? You know? When I heard that, I was like, we're probably gonna get one brief glimpse of a huge fucking monster hog. But no, they really there's a lot of cock in the New twenty eight movie.
I appreciate that they didn't undersell it. Okay, no, well.
No, no, there's there's a there's more more dick than you're expecting. That maybe less dick than I would have preferred, but more than you're expecting for sure.
Okay, I will I will go. I haven't seen the first two, but I love coming in at movie three or four.
It's okay, you're not gonna you know what a zombie movie is. It's set after a zombie apocalypse in England. That's all you need to know.
Right, there's there's enough like a need for context in our day to day work. I'm like, I'm not trying to learn more for fun. No, I'm not.
Showing other than I guess. In the twenty eight movies, the zombies aren't dead. They're just like people who have like a weird blood borne illness, so they're still alive.
So there are people with their cocks out.
Yeah, they're people with their cocks out, but it's okay. They had a child on set, so all the dicks are fake photo realistic with their fake I know, I don't know, but that's the way. That's the way movie law works. Apparently I was reading it because they were like, yeah, we had the main characters a kid, so there's always a kid on set, so we can't have any real dicks hag it out. But we can't have everyone wearing full time photorealistic penises that are faked.
Why child stardom should be illegal?
That is.
Ever heard. Look, they're like, no, you can't, you can't. Actually, that can't have been a traumatizing thing for you. The dicks weren't real.
Kids, dix weren't real. Didn't you guess that they were fake? Cot Like, it's so funny.
It's just so like an actor try to like comfort a child actor to be like no, no, no, it's not real, and then pulling the fake dick off of your body, like how is it?
It's so fad?
How did we get here?
I know I'm distracted by the dying squirrel, but what is happening?
People were just talking about movies, Sophie, because we really
¶ Introducing Pete Hegseth: Secretary of Defense
don't want to talk about the subject of today's episodes.
Oh no, okay.
Peter he Seth, Okay, I could.
Have taken a worse turn, a worse turn.
Yeah, I'd rather talk about zombie dicks than Pete egg Seth.
That's true. I mean Pete had the keg Seth is bad. I was. I was worried that we were heading Teal.
But uh no, no, we've done Teal, We've done.
Yeah. I was like, I was like, is there more? You're good at the Peter Teel addendum episode? Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, uh so yeah, let's let's let's get into it.
I guess that's the cold open done. You're welcome for all the dick talk.
We're back, okay, And well now I'm nice and warm to be made less horny than I've ever been in my entire life. Right, and a guy give any war crimes in real time. What a thrill.
I'm going to give you me a kolpi here. I had initially planned for this to just be a book episode, reading Pete Hegseth's terrible fascist book American Crusade, which unfortunately people do need to be aware of because he's the Secretary of Defense now. But then I wound up needing to give extra context, and so there is My initial thing was like, he's not really interesting enough for two episodes on the Motherfucker just as a person. He's not
that interesting. But anyway, I wound up it's kind of a hybrid book bTB episode, so you know, there's there's research here. There's also just a lot of chunks of his book that we'll be talking about because they matter. It's just a little bit of a weird episode, but I did it.
Okay, when did the book come out?
Twenty twenty? Okay, yeah, yeah, American Crusade was his like
election tie in book. So one of the funny things that you repeatedly come across is his dire warnings that like, if the Republicans don't win in twenty twenty, the whole country's over, which like, yeah, I some of this is like not aged well, but it also it's also a very like fascist Christian nationalist book that makes it very clear what kind of country Pete Hegseeth wants to use his powers to his Secretary of Defense to further right, because that's.
Published like about midway through his his run on Fox News.
Right, yeah, he starts in twenty fourteen, but he's just initially kind of a commentator. We'll talk about all that. So, okay, Pete Hegseth, our current secretary of Defense? Is it, you know, embarrassing? Yeah? Yeah. And he writes in twenty twenty a manifesto slash book called American Crusade, which is one of those both like
tie in, I'm trying to get more into politics. This is back when he was really fishing in the first Trump ad men to be made sec deaf and there were still too many adults in the room at that point for him to get made Secretary of Defense. Because as his backstory that I'm gonna give briefly will make clear, this is not a man who's ever been reliable in a position of power.
Right, I guess it never occurred to me that he could be No, I guess he's held down a job technically, not even.
Really, No, not even really actually unless you count Fox News as a job, but even that not really Okay. So Peter heg Seth was born on June sixth, nineteen eighty in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dad, Yes, yeah, he's.
Already like old fascists. He's aging terribly.
Oh yeah, no, he looks like shit. Yes, that's kind of what happens when you drink the way Pete Hegseth drinks.
Yeah, fair enough. Wow, I would have guessed he's at least ten years older. Yeah, I was like Jamie shocked at the video, but all.
The Yeah, I mean, it doesn't it's not. He's not like the most obvious Minneapolis guy. But I'm not shocked to hear that he's from Minneapolis, right that.
That was not the shock. It was that he's under fifty.
Yeah, he's under fifty, much younger than you'd expect. His dad was a basketball coach for high school, which you know, he's got son of a fucking high school coach energy for sure.
Yeah, Mom, how many crimes could be prevented if you're if daddy didn't bench you, Daddy.
Didn't bench you. Well, here's the other thing. What's the only thing that a parent could be that's worse than a high school sports coach? And it's his mom was an executive business coach even worse. Somehow they found a worst kind of coach to be.
What does that even mean? That's like a made up That.
Means that you get paid like a mid six figure income for sitting in a room and going, oh, that's a good idea. Uh, that's that's it.
Basically does boss whom is girl off?
I don't know.
It's a consultant, that's what she does.
I love. Yeah, it's like the job we're at. Like at the turn of this century, you'd be like, hey, have you considered firing people and replacing more people?
What if we outsourced? And now they're all saying what if AI? Right, Like it's it's just it's just people who come from good families that have connections but don't have any skills. That's the executive business coach community position, the consultant community. Right. So his family, they have money and they have very strong conservative bonafidees, right Like his mom and dad are both very strong Republicans and politically involved. Pete graduates from the Forest Lake Area High School in
¶ Early Life, Princeton, and Controversial Views
nineteen ninety nine, is valedictorian. He is good at something. At one point in his life as an adult, he goes to Princeton where he helps to run and again family Money, where he helps to run the school's conservative newspaper. He becomes editor eventually of like the right wing paper on campus. As editor, he like publishes a promise that he will defend Western civilization from quote the distractions of diversity.
So like, I know that they're everywhere, I'm aware that they're but I'm still so disturbed by like just the idea of a young, like a teenage Republican is such a bizarre image to me. It's like seeing a twin at age sixty. Yeah, you don't want to imagine them that young.
Yeah, you don't want to, but you have to because they're there. And it's what Pete's going to He's going to try a couple of things later in life, Like he's initially kind of more on the Republican mainstream side of things that gets eaten up by Trump. So he has to a big part of this book we're going to read is him like giving his mea culpa of like, oh, you know, I was a rhino. I was lost, and then I realized, you know, Donald Trump really was, you know,
our brilliant savior and stuff. And one of the points that I think his backstory makes is that he was always pretty extreme conservative. Like the whole reason why he wouldn't have gotten behind Trump is that he didn't believe Trump was really a conservative until it became clear that Trump was going to win. But like the weird right wing stuff, the hatred of diversity that's been there his
whole life. Like he talks about himself as if he'd been a political as a young man, but he never really was.
Well no, yeah, if he's he's the editor of the conservative Princeton papers.
Sure is, and yeah, that's just a bad group of people to exist under his guidance. The paper attacked halle Berry for accepting an oscar over her performance in Monsters Ball because it was racist, oh, against white people. I think I don't know, I didn't need to feel the need to go and read that article, but yeah, that's the kind of like conservative paper.
This is.
It's like it's time to go to war with halle Berry for her oscar.
Yeah, I imagine conservative papers there like that are just like ninety percent vaguely racist editorials.
Yes, yes, yeah. During his time as editor, Hegseth published another student's commentary mocking the school's policy that sex with an unconscious partner should count as rape. An article for The New Yorkers cites jud Leghum's newsletter Popular Information when
he summarized the article, and hegcest paper this way. The commentary claim that rape required both a failure to consent and duress, which a passed how woman couldn't experience So great, guy, Pete, Yeah, put a pin in that because we'll talk about some sex crimesies.
Yeah no, I mean really he really walks the walk in that regard.
Yeah, allegedly.
Yeah sure. It's so like, I don't know, the fact that you're thinking about doing that so much that you publish like essentially intent is just like it's mind.
Blowing, Yeah, the whole like, yeah, well, they can't be sad if they're unconscious. It's just like the darkest, evilest way to make that argument. It's somehow worse than like arguing like oh no, they they they wanted it secretly. It's just like they, oh, because they're unconscious. It doesn't. What the fuck man, how do you write that and not burst into flames? I mean, yeah, so I can like tattoo you if you pass out drunk, and that's legal, right because you're not aware of it.
Because you're not right. That's it's just like, well if if you're quote unquote asleep, anything that happens, it's like the international waters of consent, like it's fucking crazy sane.
Yeah, if you if you try to extend that anywhere else, it just becomes increasing like it's it's just nuts.
Oh yeah. And of course, like that rule wouldn't apply to him. If yeah, if.
If you drew a dick on Pete heg'sa's face when he's passed out drunk in a Pentagon closet, you would get in trouble.
Drone strike you, Yeah, drone strike your house.
He would try to. So Pete is, in short, exactly the kind of right wing dipshit you'd expect him to be as a kid based on his current trajectory. He goes on to work in finance. He works for Bear that's his first job out of college, Just fucking Bear Stern,
great stuff. And he volunteers for the National Guard because nine to eleven, and he winds up well, he gets into ROTC first when he's in college, but then he joins the National Guard as he's starting his fintech career, and after a year or so, I think his fintech career is interrupted when he deploys to Iraq, uh. So he does a tour there, which we will talk about later. This comes up in the book, so i'll talk a little. I'll talk more about Hegsat's military career in that portion.
But after doing his tour, he winds up back in New York, where he's just kind of like, then, this is not an uncommon thing. He does seek combat a lot of combat vets when they come back, like the things really get bad for them, you know, not when they're over there and not when they're in the ship. When you wind up like just kind of locking yourself alone in an apartment, and yeah, he starts drinking very heavily. Again, not an uncommon story. He feels aimless and eventually solves
this by taking a job. Initially, he's like volunteering as an assistant director at Vets for Freedom, which is a five oh one C four group that he ultimately comes to lead as the paid director of the organization.
It's no good because while he was in New York, he could have just like gone to see Rent on Broadway.
On Rent, he could have developed a fatal addiction to Heroin.
You know, you you know, like he could have seen.
Alone off Broadway, you know, just just finally slip away, you know, Yeah, he just.
Go see Billy Elliott, you know, have a wine spritzer calling a day.
Yeah, I mean yours is nicer than mine. But sure. So this is like a very political five oh one C four in like a shitty way. They spend millions of dollars doing a PR campaign to support the surge in Iraq. They spend another several million attacking Barack Obama's candidacy. So this is like a right wing vets org. And despite the fact that he winds up running it, he is awful at this job. It is a disaster for
the VFF. He runs up massive debts, he takes them into the red by well, part of it is, you know, they're carrying out these massive PR campaigns, but part of it is that he treats the organization's bank account allegedly
¶ Post-Military Struggles and Early Organizational Failures
like a personal party fund, right like he's spending it, he's traveling, he's doing a lot of drinking, good partying. A lot of people are right. There's allegations and we'll hear more allegations about the next org that he's involved in. But yeah, this does not go well and he's kind of his tenure is disastrous for the VFF.
Okay, So this is all in the mid two thousands.
Yeah, the mid auts two thousand and eight is when he got married. In like tas and four and two thousand and eight, his first wife files for divorce after he admits to cheating on her repeatedly, once with a journalist he'd introduced to her. Yeah, so he gets left a couple of years later or forced out of VFF. You'll hear both things, either that he left or that he's forced out. Anyway, he's gone.
From VFFA so sad.
Yeah, and he attempts to run for Senate in Minnesota, which we will talk about later. It doesn't work, right, He's bad at this. So since he's failed at everything else, he volunteers for another tour in Afghanistan. He does another a tour in Afghanistan, he's promoted to major. He comes back to the US, and in twenty twelve, he forms a pack to help like minded conservative candidates. Per The
New Yorker. According to a report by American Public Media, a third of the funds in Hegseth's pack were spent on parties for his friends and family, in less than half was spent on candidates.
So he sucks because it was like, like, I'm not against this money being misused for parties.
It's much better than if it's used appropriately, right, because it's a shitty organization, they both are, right.
Yeah, like it should you know, it should be spent on fancy food and alcohol.
But yeah, yeah, it's also it's just extremely funny to me, Like, yeah, he now has a pattern and it's either start or get you know, promoted to leading a charitable organization and then spend its money getting hammered. Cool as hell. Yeah, So is he.
Like is he so twenty twelve? Is this like tea party era? Like who is who is he running with? Who's his crowd?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah the tea party. Tea party has started a couple of years ago at this point. Yeah, so this is like that's all happening at this stage and he's when he loses his candidacy. It's to like the Ron Paul Organization backed candidate because he's like he's still too much establishment neocon. You know, he's a bush conservative at this point, which we used to see is extreme. But oh how the turn have table.
Now they're just wittle guys.
Yeah, they're just widow guys.
Yeah, he's got look at it. I mean, I don't know, I feel like some people not to put him in a box. Oh, but let's do it. Yeah, something about like guys that have like there it looks like their hair is just like welded to their head.
You're like, I don't trust there on there.
Like whatever product not. I mean, I know he by being a fascist honestly, but also you have to imagine some chemicals are seeping into the scalp there with that, what with the hair being welded directly.
Oh yes, no, no, no, no, they're getting in. That's that's what happened to Rudy Giuliani, Right, He had the same haircare routine as Pete. Hegseth and a lot of it leaked out of him, you know, and when he lost his goo, that's when he started losing all those lawsuits the goo was what was protecting him from the lawsuits.
¶ Political PAC Misuse and Continued Failures
Yeah, the goo is protecting him from being tricked into being in Borat two a loa in more ways than one.
Yeah, it was load bearing goo, brutal Jesus Christ. I forgot that happened. Fucking Juliani.
Oh my god, this bitch will do anything.
Well, we'll need to do an episode on of him when it's time for us to, like when when everyone's morale is even lower and we really need we need to win, like a happy episode.
Yeah, I mean there's just like no failure, Like there's it's fun. It's fun to do an episode where there's just no shortage of els sprinkled between their.
Christ It's nothing but else.
Yeah, who was he was?
He the saddest person we saw at the He was He wasn't my pillow guy.
He was my pillow guy. Was sadder because Juliani at least, like I had a nice fight with Rudy Giuliani, and like I did enjoy the fact that, like unlike every other major figure there that you would like try to engage, they were too pr trained and too smart to really want to get into it with some journalists. But Rudy was to me like, oh, yeah, let's fucking brawl. What
did you fight with Rudy about Ukraine? We had like tished an episode it could happen here about it, but like, yeah, we had like a fucking ten or fifteen minute like.
He was just hanging around the like radio because.
He wasn't welcome in the real conviction because the art. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, and he was bored as hell.
God. They should do a sequel to the James Wood Rudy Giuliani movie.
Oh god, I forgot that existed. Holy shit. Yeah, I know bag when he was America's mayor.
Fuck me, yeah, I mean it's a very sincere movie.
Yeah, it's sincerely stupid as shit.
Yeah yeah, called America's mayor.
No, I mean that's what we it might be, but that's what we call Rudy. Growing up as a conservative.
Like that go around too. I like that city that's got a dog for mayor.
I think, Yeah, I don't think mayor should be legal or I think we should. I think we should have, like you know, some of those cultures that would like ritualistically kill their leaders, that's what we should do to mayor's should be built into legal system that we had, like a Wickerman after every mayor's term.
That's Santa University rules. At the end, get university rules. You get one year tenure of Santa and then you're publicly executed.
Yeah. I think that we that's that's that's how we should that. That's like when we write our new constitution. That's how our elected leaders should work. Yeah, we're now doing a Wickerman for everybody.
Oh you care, what are you willing to put on the line.
You were a great alder man. Unfortunately your years up at every level, at every level, the fucking school board.
Yeah, this is the comptroller and like, sorry, brother.
Look, would it be a good system? No? Would it work better than our current system? Maybe?
Look, I think it's worth a shot.
Perhaps.
I think it's worth a shot, and it would really bring people together for particular individuals.
Speaking of things that bring people together, Jamie, the products and services that support this podcast.
I love to gather around a good product or service with my loved ones.
Gather around be warmed by it.
Right, Yeah, just like the corpse of a squirrel.
Like the corpse of a squirrel.
Damn it, guy, we're back.
Sophie is still not happy.
No, can you see it from your window? No, not from not from where I am. But okay, but that's probably. But I can see it in here. Elizabeth the Squirrel.
Yeah, she was a Fulbright scholar, Sophie Jesus fun.
She had a huge future ahead of hers. I really sad.
It's very tragic. Yeah, speaking of things that are tragic, the fact that Pete Hegseth exists.
The fact that Pete hegg Seth sentence.
In twenty fourteen, heg Seth started making appearances on Fox News, and he was initially usually like a pinch hitter, right, he was even't have a show. He would come and be a talking head on segments. Right, He's a veteran. He leads a veterans organizations to talk about this. Right. He's doing that for a while, off and on, and you know, he's he's he's got whatever Fox likes, right, He's he's enough like of a Okay, this this guy is what our audience considers like a straight laced looking
military man. So yeah, we'll throw him in whenever we need somebody.
The helmet hair. It's the I feel like everyone at Fox News has the same lukewarm soup they bring to lunch, Yes, lukeworm soup and brown alcohol.
Yes, yeah, that's that's precisely right. And for Hegseth, it's basically all brown liquor. So he helps to lead. He also in this time he gets hired to lead another veterans organization CVA, or the Concerned Veterans for America. So here he exhibits the same kind of incompetence and corruption that had seen him pushed out of the VFF. He was, in fact, party is so bad, oh Jamie. Not just parties, it's there's so much about how bad he is at
this job. There is an internal whistleblower report that's commissioned about his three year tenure leading the organization. I'm going to read a summary from an article in The New
Yorker of like what this report reveals. The detailed seven page report, which was compiled by multiple formal CVA employees and sent to the organization's senior management in February twenty fifteen, states that at one point Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk, from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually
pursued the org organization's female staffers, who they divided into two groups, the party Girls and the not Party Girls.
In addition, the report asserts that under Hegseth's leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth's staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana Strip Club and a separate letter of complaint which was sent to the organization in late twenty fifteen.
A different employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early morning hours of May twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting kill a Muslim.
Oh cool guy, Wow, yes, shocking. He found time for all of that.
First of all, I do. Most of that's not enjoyable, but it is funny to be How often the words Louisiana Strip club show up in this article on beat Hegsath.
You didn't learn so much. I mean, and did he tip? That's something anything.
Strip took away. There's no single way, so Jamie, sorry.
One, it's an honor. It's an honor. We are one. Thank you, we are one. It's that's miserable. I mean, there, this is the way that a person acts when they can't live with themselves. Yeah, if nothing else, but there, I mean, there's just so many levels there because it's like in one way he's engaging in this very I don't know, like this very fraternity but also sorority behavior like the party girls versus non party girl sounds like some Regina George shit, Like that's just bizarre.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's just gross dude stuff, right Like we got the party girls that we hire because you know, you hire them because you would have fuck them, right Like. That's that's what's going on in this group right now. That's his management style, and.
It's and it's rich that he thinks he could, like you know, weed out a competent employee from a non competent one, given the fact that he seems like unable to do a single job that he has no.
No, no, Because again, it's all about just getting drunk and partying, right, and sexually harassing slash assaulting your colleagues and racism.
Right, So he's he's a racist molester.
Yeah, so he gets he gets allegedly he gets kicked out in twenty sixteen. There are that we have in the record a bunch of celebratory emails from his former colleagues being like, thank god, that guy's out right. One of these messages includes the claim that he quote treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to hook up with women on the road.
Who guy, So that's his third job, his third organization that he's been shitcanned from for massive corruption right through them. Yeah, he's just he's daring through these fucking things. I guess he doesn't get kicked out of the second because he starts in.
Are these mostly like lateral moves? Is he like moving his way up the ranks in any way? Or is his Are these mostly just lateral?
He's moved his way up at Fox's, he's getting more prominent within the conservative sphere because again, there's never any accountability to these guys. But like his former colleagues at these veterans organizations, even though they're all a lot conservative, are like this guy absolutely should never have any job with any responsibility. He's the worst.
Well, Fox in twenty sixteen, it's all but like required that you have some priors at being sexy.
Yes, you have the literal devil in your blood. Yes.
Yeah.
In twenty seventeen, during a Flag Day event hosted by Fox, Hegseth threw an axe and accidentally hit an injuredy US Military Academy drummer, causing serious injuries. There's a lawsuit over this. He claims long term damage.
Sorry, why was he throwing it? It's like there's like.
Ax throwing going on, you know. It's like like the kind of hobby thing, and that he's just shit at it because he sucks at everything, and he hits this drummer.
Boy, if you give an addict an axe.
You know, so funny, it's so funny.
God, did the drummer at least get a book deal?
No? No, I think there's a settlement probably, but no, he doesn't get shit because again we don't as Americans. Look, you celebrate the person who throws axes. Not the person who's dumb enough to get hit by an axe because they happen to be doing their job and don't expect that the future Secretary of Defense will herald an axe at them.
Wow, victim blaming our nation's great percussionists.
How can you? Yeah, I'm always look, you know, this is the only time I'll be on Heckseth's side. But if the other thing is a band kid.
I got okay, jealous jealous.
Anti band kid ass.
I pull up my obo case aarts shaking it.
Yeah, of course it was an obo.
Okay, okay, away so high. No, he's Sophia. Unfortunately, he's right.
¶ Fox News Rise and CVA Scandal
I need to take that. I need to take No, No, you're right, you're right. I have to. Obo's are a big bisexual indicator. Historically, it's just true history. That's just that's history. Players sound off in the chest.
There we go, There we go. The ob obon nation is going to fucking sound off.
Is literally I think it's like Oba playing the Obo and like getting really into a series of unfortunate events or major millennial Yeah, bisexual indicators. Who can say why?
Who can say saying that?
Because those were your only off.
Of us Yeah, there's gonna be a whole thread in the subreddit with like nine hundred replies about this.
Yeah, they're unionizing as we speak.
Everybody who felt weird reading the series of Unfortunate Event novels and yeah, played an obo or some kind of read instrument.
So many crush options.
Wow. So his career at Fox goes a lot better than his career leading you know, these organizations. He becomes an official co host in January of twenty seventeen, just as Trump begins his term, and he is able to get this job because he starts having sex with Initially, I think it's uh, I'm not sure. No, he would have been divorced by now. Anyway, he wounds up, winds up marrying the Fox producer Jennifer Roche keeps putting him on the air, and I think she's his third wife,
maybe a second. He has three. He's been divorced like three times. So great guy. Anyway, he hooks up with this Fox producer who keeps putting him on the air, and so he bounces around a few different shows he's on regularly, and he kind of makes a point of just taking whatever is the most radical take that will
learn him Trump's attention. It's just kind of like, I'm going to be a shameless boot licker on Fox because he watches Fox habitually, and so I want him to see me repeatedly being nice to him, right, And he's doing this to campaign to become the Secretary of Defense, which he can't manage during Trump's first term because Trump is still listening to a couple of adults a little too much who are like, I don't know, the guy who can't even run a fucking like in Goo without
spinning all of the money on hookers and blow probably shouldn't be running the army. We have a lot more money.
There's a lot better you like, So there's far better sex criminals to run.
Ye, Yeah, we can find you sex criminals. Don't worry, you.
Know, We're aware of what needs to happen.
Right, Yeah. So, as part of his ongoing attempt to both identify himself with the ascendant Christian nationalist movement and to force Trump to take note of him, in twenty twenty, he publishes the book American Crusade, right, which is what you know, kind of the core of our episodes this week are going to be about. So let's get into
that wonderful book. American Crusade a nice innocuous title, so I suppose, first off, it's not surprising that this book starts off with a dedication to his family and his kids primarily. And his kids have his wives, really what I hear from him? They have the names you'd expect. You get a guess. Guess one of the names?
I mean, before we start, should we show Jamie the fucking cover?
Yeah, let's show Jamie the cover? Why not? Why not? Jimi? You want to describe that to our listeners on who are listening because of a podcast, and you should watch it on video. Hello, video listeners, we love you.
We love you so much. Stop looking at.
Us, Stop looking at us, freaks.
I'm guessing, Okay, I love you. Guess Uh Chase Griffin, uh Nathaniel.
Damn Jamie. No, No, that's a bunch of big big l's. Yeah. No, first one which you should have gotten, Gunner, Okay.
You should Havener Gunner Gunner Obama and.
Gunner Jackson. Peter Boone. And that's the one he gives two names for us. I'm guessing his first name is Peter Boone. Kinsey, Luke, Rex and gwendolet and Little Nuke, Little Nuke, Gunner and Rex are released, sending me, Wow, Gunner, good stuff. Man, I'm surprised there's not a Hunter in there.
Yeah, Hunter, that's okay, that that I might have gotten to Hunter. This cover is is nuts. He can't be
¶ Personal Misconduct and Axe Throwing Incident
his body. That's not his body.
He I mean, if he's on enough tested trend sure, I'm sure he's taken steroids.
You know. I'm really struggling with like the neck to head ratio. Yes, that is.
His shopping going down there. You can see a big WE the People tattoo on his forearm. He's like waving a flag. It's just like the dipshittiest cover.
The angle of the WE the People tattoo only makes sense in the context of this picture. Like if he if this that was normally the ankle it was at, it would be crooked.
But that's what But but this is clearly AI, this is this is this is not, this is this is not this is not his body. But there's there's things that we're done here.
But I appreciate that. I would love to see him actually try to do this. At the top of it, it says and quote peoples. No punches with this book, yeah, Sean Hannity, Yeah, nice, No, it's always it's always fun with this stuff because you're like, there's no way Sean Hanndity wrote this book. But then in some ways there's no way that Pete Hegseth wrote this book. Do you think he could it was ghost written or do you think you wrote it? Let's let's let's let Robert and then he does.
Right, you know, he's got this editorial position. He definitely writes some of it. I suspect it's a thing where it gets like, you know, massaged by a real writer, but there's a lot of it that seems very Pete right. In fact, the opening, after he lists his kids' names, uh, he gives a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Right, Every chapter opens with a quote from a great American, usually Donald Trump,
but this one's Theodore Roosevelt. There is not room in the country for any fifty to fifty American, nor can there be but one loyalty to the stars and stripes, right, which you know I might say that, well, if your loyalty is to your weird interpretation of Christianity over the Constitution, you know, maybe You're not one hundred anyway. Whatever, That's not how he sees it. So here's how the chapter opens,
Our American Crusade. Chapter one, Take a moment to consider your part in the miracle of the twenty sixteen election, the history we made as sons and daughters of freedom. For the left, that humiliating defeat strengthened their resolve to achieve their ultimate goal, erasing America's soul, culture and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way and have been targeted for annihilation.
Wow. I like that he adds it a little bit. He's like, on top of being a motherfucking piece of he's also kind of bitchy. He's like, I'm praying for my haters. I'm praying for all my haters on the left.
Oh no, he's not praying for him.
He is.
This is a book about how we need to kill the left. Right that is his and like every allegation here is an admission. Right that Like, because he's constantly talking the left wants to kill us all though, they want to wipe us all out. That's why we have to have total victory against them. Right, It's like it's this, you know, they're as bad as we are, so we have to do to them what we wanted to do to him anyway. But we can pretend we're defending ourselves, right right.
Yeah, they're even worse. We got to get him first.
Yeah. He goes out a claim that we the people, we all feel that quote. The other side, the left is not our friend. We are not esteemed colleagues, nor mere political opponents. And I think this part is valuable. I think there's some of this that I really would like to shove in the hands of, like especially a lot of elected Democrats, because Hegseth very neatly sweeps away the claims that are made by guys like Biden that like, well there's good Republicans, we got to work with them.
You know, we need a strong Republican party. It's just you know, some of this magas stuff. We got to dust off it. But like, it's good to have strong conservatives in government with us. And Hegseth is making the point that no, like there's no conservatives that you can trust because we the left, like we are not esteemed colleagues and we're not political opponents. We want to destroy you. You can't work with us. Right, and that's that is
the truth about modern conservatism, about the Republican Party. You can't work with them, right, They've made it clear it should be obvious, but a lot of Mainstreammocrats refuse to fucking believe.
I don't know, they're just so yeah. I mean, well, best of luck with that project, because it feels like if there's one thing mainstream Democrats aren't going to do, it's read a direct threat against them and take it seriously.
Right, right, and there are direct threats in here. Hegxeth goes on to say, we are foes. Either we win or they win. We agree on nothing else. Okay, maybe treat them like that, guys, you know that's what they're saying.
No, No, they just they we need to empathize, we need empathy with you.
I yeah, I'm done with that. I was raised these guys.
¶ American Crusade Book: Ideology and Context
I don't have empathy for me when I was this kind of person, like I suck. So Pete goes on to brag that the US has the top economy and military, but that our cultural and educational institutions, America's soul have succumbed to leftist rot and even a once in a generation electoral miracle like twenty sixteen won't be enough to save us, which is funny considering how twenty twenty four went down. A lot of this book is like darkly funny in light of the fact that they won in
twenty twenty four and lost in twenty twenty. So Pete says that our future existence as sons and daughters of freedom can only happen if after the quote categorical defeat of the Left. Thus, this time in our history calls for an all caps American crusade. Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom. Wow.
Title drops title mentioned t mentioned good stuff. I like that to put it in caps, just in case it wasn't clear.
You gotta put you gotta put it in caps. You gotta put in caps.
I mean the rhetoric is like, I guess kind of what I would expect. Does he get specific? Is there? Does he is? The book about the plan?
I mean kind of. Pete's not a great planning guy. He's not a great knowing how he's you know, not going to be a great war leader guy.
For that reason, one allocate one third of the budget to parties for me.
There's some of that, but it's mainly about getting It's mainly about like getting everybody like riled up for an existential battle that he believes twenty twenty was going to be, right like this, this crusade of you know, it's trying to get people on the side of extermination, right heg Seth then directly cites the First Crusade as his example of what we need to return to. He describes the
First Crusade as happening a thousand years ago. After years of Christians, or of Europeans ceding land to Muslim hordes, the Pope finally got around to declaring a crusade in order to save Europe, and his nights march to war under the cry Deus volt or God wills it. Now I should interject here because Pete has a deis volt tattoo, and this is a meaningful term on the far right and the neo Nazi rite right to interject here. First off, all of the history here is nonsense, right, Like his
history of the Crusades is not accurate. The Guardian interviewed pus.
My question, I was like this does this doesn't sound.
That that's we're gonna talk about that first?
Okay?
The Guardian interviewed Matthew Gabriel, who's a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech, and he pointed out there were absolutely no incursions to mainland Europe. If anything. Islam was kind of on the retreat in Iberia and other places as well, so there was no large geopolitical shift or any kind of immediate threat of Islam taking over Europe right like they were not, in fact on the defensive when the crusade started.
Well, that doesn't sound good and it doesn't serve his point. This is just another reminder that in mainstream publishing, fact checking is not an allocated part of the budget.
No, it's not you got to do that's not crazy. Today they don't give a shit anymore.
You got to pay out a pocket if you want that shit.
Yeah, no, because there's no money and being accurate.
Yeh, books wouldn't sell as well.
So Pete is not at all alone in taking deis vault on as a rallying cry. White supremacists have used it as a catchphrase for years now, and he's mainly noteworthy for being the most prominent political figure in the country to do so. After the first Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which is the first time many reporters and regular Americans saw the phrase in use by Nazis
and other white supremacist marchers. Outlets like NPR published interviews with experts like Medieval Academy of America had Lisa Davis, who pointed out that Europe during the Crusade period was not white, and that far right marchers at Charlottesville adorned themselves with symbols like that of Saint Maurice, who was regularly featured on Crusader livery and was himself an Egyptian man,
¶ Call for Annihilation and Distorted History
right that, like even a lot of these things that they're like, we were all white, like this, this beautiful saint that the Crusader's march under mother father was born in Egypt, Like that is simply an African man.
Like insid. I mean, I'm like, is this just like a group of I mean, obviously just brain dead people, But like I think about how many older movies and then also movies I grew up on that essentially portray Egyptian people as white or at best Italian looking.
It's in part because like they're in Yeah, I mean, one one reality of it is that everyone in the Mediterranean basin looks more Mediterranean than like they do anything else, right, which you get right up to the like because there's a lot of interchange between those cultures, right. And the other thing is that at this period of time, whiteness
doesn't exist as a concept. Right, if you were to go back, I think about it, go back to the Roman Empire and tell them, like, this guy is not as much of a person to you because of their skin color. They'd be like, what are you talking about? This guy's less of a person because he's not a Roman like that what matters.
You're like, make no mistakes, is not a person to me, but not for the reasons you've got.
For that reason, No, he's less human than me because he was born in a different place.
It is fascinating watching, Yeah, just like how everything needs to serve like his thesis and it really doesn't matter, just.
Doesn't None of it works out, And none of these people actually know anything about the Crusades.
Right, And the problem is, yeah, like I'm glad that there were like medieval scholars that like corrected the record, but his followers don't care.
No, and it doesn't matter. I'm doing this in part because like yeah, this is that's the kind of episode that this is. Right when you go through this and you're like, all right, what's accurate? What's not? But like this doesn't like no one listening to this was like coming in as a pete hegseth fan because of the crusade stuff, and it's going to be like Mike, he was wrong. Like that's just not the way any.
Changes everything for me. I wonder if there's one person. Yeah.
Now, I should also note here that because he uses deis volt, he's got a tattooed on his body because he believes it was the rallying cry that crusaders marched to war under during the First Crusade. This is very likely to be untrue, right, This is actually the result
of propaganda that came later. Marburg historian George Strack has pointed out to the Catholic News Agency that Pope Urban the Second, who declared the First Crusade, never used the phrase deis volt himself, and quote only one chronicle, that of Robert the Monk, which was written around ten years after the Pope's called a crusade at a synod in Clairemont, France, quotes the exclamation at all Strak explained, the author was aware from another chronicle that the Northern French crusaders used
deis volt as a war cry or a sign of recognition among themselves. Robert's aim was to present the crusade as a vine and papally led project, which is why he claimed that Urban the second had heard the war cry deis Vault and Claremont and approved of it. From the historian's point of view, however, this is implausible. Even Robert's medieval can temporaries would have placed little trust in the chronicler. It was only under the humanists of the
fifteenth century that the monks rhetoric received favorable attention. Again, they found Robert's chronicle plausible, and so the war cried dais Fold was quoted very frequently from then on, and soon the other reports about Urban's call from Claremont were forgotten,
says Strack. So this is probably propaganda from the beginning that there's not much evidence of at the time, that no one would have taken very seriously at the time that five hundred years later, like you know, chuds adopt fifteen hundreds Chuds.
Right, never trust a Robert. That's what I've never.
Trust to Robert. That's that's war of history, of historiography, speaking of things that spew only lies. Just one of our sponsors, the other sponsors completely trustworthy. One of our sponsors tells nothing but lies, and we won't tell you which. You know who you are, You know who you are.
Place your bets. It's gonna be your fucking sports better yet.
Yeah, no, the sports betting people are honest. Right, you'll go broke, But they're honest.
They're like, but you'll have a great time doing it.
You'll have a great time doing it. We'll really tickle those dopamine receptors. We've made it as addictive as drugs. H drugs. Jesus, Robert, what we're back. So for the sake of morale, it might be good for us to
¶ Misinterpreting the Crusades and Deus Vult
recall here that the Crusades were not successes in the traditional military sense of the word. The First Crusade did have some initial victories and resulted in temporary Christian control of parts of the Holy Land, but this did not last long. By eleven eighty seven, less than one hundred years,
the great general Saladin had surrounded Jerusalem. Right the long train of disasters for organized Christian militaries during the crusades led to a surgeon support from maniac cult leaders like Peter the Hermit, who gathered an army of starving hermits to march on the Holy Land. Andrew Curry writes quote Peter's success was cited over and over again in the
years to come. The defeat suffered by better or organized crusades led many to believe that it was the humble who were destined to succeed, not the proud, rich military classes. In the end, these people's crusades ended in disaster too. None ever reached the Holy Land, and most of the peasant crusaders were either slaughtered as they plundered their way across Europe or disbanded before ever reaching a port. Without the resources to reach the Holy Land, most turned on
more conventional targets, namely Europe's Jewish communities. Why are we going to seek out our profanity and to take vengeance on the ishmae lights for our Messiah when here are the Jews who murdered and crucified him, was the rationale, as recorded by a Jewish eyewitness. Again, most of the a large chunk of the real crusaders, and even Crusade. They just went and murdered juice right in Europe.
Yeah, well, okay, do we think yeah, Pete Hegseth knows any of this. No, I don't think he really reads much, genuinely curious.
I don't think it would matter. He would just wouldn't trust any account you told him if it's different from what he already believes.
Right, that's I mean, I didn't. I don't know this about the Crusades. I'm not. I gotta say I'm not a crusade's head.
Well, the gist of it, and this is a quote from medieval studies professor Matthew Gabriel, the Crusaders lost, they lost everything.
An American crusade not a bad an idea.
Watch the documentary Kingdom of Heaven for more still holds up banger of a film. So again, none of this stuff works as a gotcha, Right, you're not going to convince anyone to change their politics. But being like, actually the Crusades sucked, right, But I do think it's valuable to look at this history for our own like edification is a reminder that this too shall pass, and that these kinds of people never managed to win the way they think they will in the long run because they
suck itt shit. But also the mere fact that they've doomed themselves doesn't mean that they won't cause even more suffering in their failures. Right. Those people's crusades were all disasters, but a lot of Jewish communities suffered as a result. Right, anyway, let's continue with Pete. He goes from the Crusades to the American Revolution, probably the only periods in history that
he's taken a passing interest in. He notes that like crusaders and patriots passed, the red maga hat is a symbol for the need for violent action to secure liberty. Only by going on offense against a left that surrounds them. Conservatives survive. Now, the fact that this is written in the run up to twenty twenty, and the fact that that election went against them should say a few things
to you. Right. We know now this was not the decisive or the last battle, but Hegseth writes as if it was, and that the left would cause total annihilation if they won in twenty twenty. He notes that while there are millions of patriots, the country also houses hordes of people who don't share their allegiance and that their ignorance and ideologies threaten national survival. Okay, so yeah, again, like the language here is very unsparing, and this is
how most of them think. You can't. Again, it's just a important that Democrats understand you can't talk it out with someone like this. They're not willing to talk to.
You, right, And I mean that's like they're that's their whole thing. It is interesting anytime you hear I mean, I guess you hear it basically every day now, but over time, I think in the last ten years where you just hear the US versus them in an increasingly upward line. Did the point where he's just like straightforwardly saying they're like, the people who agree with me are Americans? Yeah, they don't, aren't. Yeah, yeah, which is like, I mean, continued to Yeah.
So the next section of his book is about the two Americas, which he describes as America and the Left, and in order to highlight this, he gives us the story of two different immigrants, both named Omar Samara. Omar who is in Iraqi who fought with Hegzeth. He was an interpreter after the US invasion and later immigrated to the US legally. The other Omar is, of course illan Omar, who he calls the Omar.
Oh, we're out of it.
Oh no, he's this is I mean, this is like peak Illin Omar brainworms period twenty twenty. Not that it's much less now.
I feel like it's still got worse.
It's still pretty bad. It's still bad. Like it's just there's it's more of a topic of discussion. I guess, yeah, okay, maybe just just this way.
Lord, it's nuts.
His attitude is the common one you'll see on the right, that Illin was graciously led into this country and has done nothing but spit in its face. I don't think we really need to deal with this point, save to note that even in the America of twenty twenty five, even someone like Pete's you know, interpreter Omar, who fought alongside US soldiers, aren't qualified to stay here. Earlier this year, the United States revoked special status to Afghan people who
helped the United States and its war against the Taliban. PERMSNBC, the Trump administration told them, quote that they've got to self deport by May twentieth back to a Taliban controlled Afghanistan if America can't honor its word to those who bled for it. A retired US colonel told me, why would anyone trust us? Again, this isn't just immigration policy.
It's a test of our moral credibility, and we're failing now, Jamie. Yes, I've seen the US in enough war zones and talk to enough people who believed in our promises to them when they fought alongside us that I can say there's no point in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone listening to the show in which we had moral credibility or we're trustworthy friends. Right, It's like we're also recording this period of time you're talking about.
We're also recording this at a time of where again, like both of his examples are people who could just get plucked off of the street and kidnapped by ice, Like the citizenship has nothing to do with it.
Well, again, that's part of what's interesting about the timing this comes in is that in twenty twenty as even as like a Pete Haig Seth Republican, you still had to pretend that you were like okay with multiculturalism as
¶ The Two Omars and Questionable Military Service
long as they were pro American, Right that like, no, this Iraqi interpretive. Mine is a great American. He's fully integrated. Right, he gets to stay here because he did all the right things and as soon as they got into power, like, oh, actually no, we don't give a shit. All that matters is your skin color, right, Like that's and that's the reality right under the regime that has given Pete Hegseth power.
But he spends a lot of his book talking about the Omar who fought with him, who he calls Texas Omar now because he successfully immigrated to the and integrated into the Houston suburbs. So we should talk a little bit here about Pete Hegseth's wartime experiences in Samara, which is less than about a hunt. I think it's like eighty miles or something northwest of Baghdad. At age twenty six, Pete was a lieutenant in the Army and National Guard when he joined the one hundred and first third Brigade
Combat Team. He was deployed in two thousand and five. Prior to this, heg Seth had experienced which you might call an atypical Global War on Terror career. Again, he graduated from Princeton, he'd started working at Bear Stearns, and you know, the same time he'd got in a position
with the doomed finance company. He enlisted in the National Guard, and he was first deployed after nine to eleven to Guantanamo Bay, before coming back and working in finance for a while and then volunteering to fight in Iraq, where he became a tune leader. He seems to have served like functionally, did the job reasonably. Well. There's not like shocking, you know, shocking reports or anything on it. He was kept away from liquor. Probably I s.
Wood to say. I was like, what, why did he do that job competently?
Although he hadn't really kept drinking it started drinking heavily.
At this point, right, because that was after he got back.
Okay, And there's a there's an interesting Washington Post article that quotes one of his fellow officers who was active duty. He was like, I was actually surprised to see a National Guard guy doing the things heg Seth was doing. And I just assumed that it was because he was planning for a political career and thought a combat tour
would help. Right. Yeah, And you run into you if you've known people who were in like If you know enough military guys, they all have stories of like Yet his guy was definitely doing it because he was trying to like set up a career later down the line and wanted, you know, a combat action badge or something.
It's like seeing an influencer at a volunteer event. I'm sure interesting.
So I'm going to quote from the Post's article here. Charlie Company, numbering about a hunt ThReD and forty men, was considered the brigade's most aggressive unit, engaging threats with a bravado that would later draw scrutiny from senior leaders, said people familiar with the deployment. As recounted by The New Yorker in two thousand and nine, Charlie Company was nicknamed Kill Company and maintained a whiteboard listing confirmed kills,
including civilians, that each platoon had notched. The former officer, who served in another company within the battalion said the behavior exhibited by Hegsat's Infantry company was viewed as a little bit strange by those on the outside. We joked sometimes that they were on their own crusade down there.
Great stuff, okay, great stuff, good lord, Okay.
Now what's interesting is when The New Yorker reports in this initially, Hegseth would claim that I actually complained about how aggressive we were to our company commander and its specifically that he complained about how they were ordered to have their weapons ready when they were entering targeted buildings because he believed that basically having fingers on the trigger would lead to higher civilian casualties, and that after making
these complaints he was reassigned. I don't know how true this is, right, I looved That's something he made up when he thought it would sound better.
Yeah, right, When was that interview conducted.
I was like two thousand and nine that I knew.
I wonder how I yeah today, so he.
Wouldn't claim it at least, right, Yeah, But his old unit remained in the field after he got transferred, and as the insurgency hit a new peak of violence. They wound up as part of a raid on an island believed to be a training center for Abu Musabl's or Kawi's Aqy or al Qaida in Iraq. This is like the precursor organization to ISIS. A number of civilians are
massacred during this attack. The soldiers who killed them claim initially that they're all military aged males, which is a term for we shot some fucking teenager, but like, look, he's pretty big. An army investigation revealed that the civilians had been detained and executed well detained, and that the killings had been covered up. Two soldiers ultimately pled guilty to murder and related charges and received eighteen year sentences.
One soldier who testified was sentenced to nine months, and another who didn't was convicted of negligent homicide, which was overturned on appeal. Now there is speculation that heg Seth has since seized upon the issue of US troops being tried for war crimes. As a result of this, and for the entirety of his time in the political spotlight, he has since backed prosecuted soldiers, including war criminal Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, claiming the rules of war unfairly tie
the hands of men in the field. That Washington Post article, which interviewed a number of his colleagues, ends on this note. The former Army officer who served with Hegxeth in Iraq said he believes he has latched onto populous scenarios in a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth's potential nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in touch with one another, the former officer said. One text
he received especially stood out. All it said was WTF question Mark, Yeah, stuff, all right, stuff.
It's everything that leads to horrific war crimes in the modern age are deeply embarrassing, Like just really really lazy texting. And also the fact that in between his stints in the service that he found time time to work at bear Stearns, he found a little bit of time to
the American economy. Like it's just it's you know, what a what a multi high phenate really, yeah, I mean this in your review, I mean this just seems like he's slowly, you know, working behind the scenes to justify civilian deaths so that he can ideally escalate to the job. He is now killing civilians with no consequences for anyone.
Yeah, yep, so okay. The next chapter of this book, he compares, spent several pages comparing different statements by Illin Omar and his buddy Texas Omar in order to talk about how much it Illin hates the United States. One of his points is that his friend describes US helicopters as looking like angels because at one point he was under fire and he got rescued by a helicopter. And Illin describes them as looking like the devil because she
was a civilian in Somalia and saw US helicopters kill civilians. Oh, like, no civilians were killed by Americans in the Battle of Mogadishu in nineteen ninety three, right, she describes as a heroic defensive action by US forces, And the reality is uglier. Well, we don't have perfect accounts for how many civilians died in the fighting. It was between three hundred and seven hundred people who died total, and at least two to
three hundred of those were civilians. Right, And I'll personally note I have watched an Apache helicopter destroyed, like basically murder an apartment building, and yeah, it looks like the devil. Have you ever seen one of those things empty its entire payload? It's a fucking nightmare. It's very cherry.
Yes, objectively, I mean it's like, not only is it obviously racist to have this like weird chart of two people with the same last name, but like to just present it with a total void of context. He just like doesn't even understand how war works that you'd be terrified of.
The thing not on your side that is very deadly.
Yeah, we're killing people around you, Okay, okay.
It's one of those things like yeah, man, if you're like I get it, if you're completely surrounded by the enemy and then a chopper comes in and blows them all away, you'd be like that thing ripped. That think's cool. But people have just had experiences with helicopters, you know, like depending on whether or not they're being shot at by them.
Not to come down too hard on the other, Omar, but like weird to call a helicopter at angel as it is.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I don't know. Again, we don't actually ever get to talk with that Omar. I haven't found any articles interviewing him. He doesn't like I've googled around trying to find anyone who talked to this guy. We only have Pete's recollection of him.
How much do you want to met he bet he made up a guy.
I don't know. He certainly if he's real, there's no way he's going to talk out and like correct the record. If Pete digit because then they'll get.
Deported, right, yeah, stays far away from.
So I don't know. I don't And the important part is that Pete does not bring in this Omar as a real person with a real story. He brings him in as a foil to his created image of a social justice warrior who never had to fight for anything. Right. Such people, he argues, take advantage of fifty to fifty
Americans who lack grittiness and historical perspective. He describes these people, So you've got the evil leftists and they take advantage of these kind of like milk toast fifty to fifty Americans who call squishies right for their lack of rulingness. Does they call them Squishyes, because they're not willing to fight because they're not racist and violent, right, Like, they're too squishy, they're too they're not willing to kill the left right, they think we can coexist.
I don't like that.
It's him talking about like conservatives who are not like outright fascists, right that those are the squishies. Okay, so it's cool, it's good stuff.
Okay, Sorry, apologies to the squishies. I love you guys.
Sorry, squishies. Yeah, great stuff. And it's interesting, you know the thing he's trying to do here, because he has a whole bit in this about how like the people don't like to see themselves as political and that's a problem because like we're in a political war. His whole thing is he's trying he has to convince these people that, like, you need to become political in order to embrace the
politics of defensive annihilation against the left. Right, and the left is everything but Trump, you know, Like that's what he's trying to convince these these like moderate Republicans to do. Quote. For me, awakening has been a progression over many years, informed by multiple iterations of learning and mostly failure. First I had to get informed. Then I denied the magnitude of the leftist problem. Next, being idealistic, even new to the political arena, I played within the confines of the
status quo. Now, as I have some worldly success in a large family, protecting my nest is tempting, I understand what is required of one hundred percent American. The sacrifice, the struggle, the uncertainty, like the uncertainty of stealing from two different veterans organizations to get drunk, yes, the uncertainty of playing grab ass with all your secretaries, yes, sacrifice.
Yeah, separating your employees by party and not party there. Look, these are the things ultimately that are going to protect Gunner. Heg seth.
Yeah. These are who's finally finally Yes, Okay, we in the introduction the first chapter with a call to arms and follow it chapter that's chapter one, baby, and we follow it with two more quotes. These are both from Donald Trump, and I find them funnier than I should. Quote one, You're a sleez candidate Donald Trump to a reporter from ABC News twenty sixteen. You're a warrior, Pete, A fucking warrior, President Donald Trump, November twenty nineteen. What
are those Why are those together? Why is it like? Why are you contracted? It's just contrasting him shit, talking ABC to him, saying nice things to him.
He's telling a story.
It's just so cool.
It's like, wow, okay, Pete, we're all very impressed.
As warrior is to me a smiley face.
It's so funny. It's so funny. Yeah. Yeah, it's good stuff. So yeah, well we'll we'll talk about the next chapter. But I think it's probably time to end Part one Jamie Coftus. Yeah, yeah, Donna plug anything.
Yeah, my book Rod Dog, The Naked Truth about hot Dogs just came out and Pickerback and I just released a I just did an audio book for the one and only Chuck Tingle.
Oh yeah.
We're donating all of the proceeds to the LA the LA Street Vendors Fund, because in LA, they're kidnapping is is kidnapping people off the streets. So we're raising money to, you know, help street vendors stay in while maintaining their living. The name of the audio book is this lesbian hot Dog gets Me off. Also she is a doctor. Also she's vegan.
Uh wow, that's a title. That's so much better than American Crusade. And it's a.
Story is a tale. So if you want to listen
¶ Pete's 'Squishies' and Call to War
to that, donate five books to the Street Vendors Fund. If if you don't want to listen to that, if you don't want to listen to me, read Chuck Tingle Hot Dogs Mount. You're wrong, but you should don't.
You're wrong and a bad person. Let's just say it, Jamie. Let's just say it. You're a bad person. And God will not recognize you on the day of judgment.
You won't know your faith to not listen to this lesbian hot dog gets me off. Also she's a doctor. Also she's vegan. Is not just homophobic, it's anti women and stems. Really think about that.
Yeah, absolutely, well this is good. Yeah, plug's done. Go to hell everyone, I love you, Love you do.
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