Former Fox News host-turned-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called on the Air Force to fight back against a “radical” new threat: a nonprofit that asked military officials to stop bombarding service members with religious greetings.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose more than 100,000 members are both active-duty military personnel and veterans, announced in a press release this week that it received dozens of complaints about religious greetings at the front gates of the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The group said 24 of the 34 people who complained were Christians.
“For multiple days over the last couple of weeks, the guards have been greeting me with ‘God bless you’ every single morning as I come through. Not once, not twice… repeatedly, consistently, as if it’s an officially sanctioned script,” the group quoted one complainant as saying.
After MRFF reported that it had intervened to ask officials at the base to stop violating “the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion,” Hegseth threw a public tantrum.
“The MRFF is a radical anti-Christian, pro-atheist group that attacks any/all faith inside the @DeptofWar,” he wrote on X. “We will never cave to them.”
He also tagged the Air Force, saying it “will confront this.”
It’s not clear what the promised confrontation entailed, but Hegseth shared a post on Saturday from the chief of staff of the Air Force saying the branch is “not restricting the use of common greetings while entering our bases.”
The self-proclaimed “secretary of war” has openly sought to embed the conservative evangelical movement into the military, hosting monthly worship services at the Pentagon and frequently spouting off biblical references to frame U.S. military operations as part of a holy war.
His brave defense of Christian values comes a few days after he publicly mocked a Canadian teenager’s physical appearance, and while his top officials at the Pentagon were reportedly busy administering dozens of polygraph tests to smoke out leakers speaking to the press about worrying developments with his handling of operations in Iran.
Meanwhile, dozens more U.S. service members have been quietly added to the Pentagon’s online tally of troops wounded in action during the war with Iran, according to Task and Purpose. As of Friday, the number stood at 794, up from 758 reported two weeks earlier. While the database doesn’t specify where or when exactly the injuries occurred, the updated figure comes after Iran said it launched attacks on U.S. bases and assets in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
