Jon Stewart is deeply disturbed by the way Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talks about war.
“You gotta watch him. You, you gotta watch it more. There’s a reveling in it,” Stewart told his guest, the British journalist and former spokesman for Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, on Wednesday’s Weekly Show podcast. “There is a reveling that’s stunning. He came out the other day, ‘No quarter, no mercy, no…’ Just blatantly saying, ‘You know those things that we came up with after World War II to try and prevent the horrors? Yeah, we’re getting rid of all that. We’re just going in. Might makes right.”
Stewart went on, “It’s almost sexual for him. It almost feels as though it’s erotic.”
Replied Campbell, “That is a horrible thought that I’ve never had before.”
Hegseth’s cringeworthy commentary on his role as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense began as soon as Trump signed an executive order adding the Department’s secondary title, “Department of War.”
Despite his declarations that the title change was meant to signify that “The American people deserve peace,” the Trump administration dove headfirst into war with Iran, which Trump said this week Hegseth was “the first to speak up” and advocate for.
On Tuesday, Trump put the onus for the war on Hesgeth again, saying from the Oval Office that his “Secretary of War” didn’t want it to end.
“You know, the only two people that were quite disappointed, I don’t want to say this, but I have to. I said, ‘Pete and General Raizin Caine, I think this thing is going to be settled very soon,’ and they go, ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’” Trump said, adding, “Pete didn’t want it to be settled.”
Earlier this month, Hegseth railed against “politically correct wars” and said Iran was not bound by “stupid rules of engagement,” the internal military directives that define when, where, and how force is used.
Stewart commented on Hegseth’s remarks, “When did you ever think of somebody that has some authority over the worst weapons in the entire universe?”
