The clear winner for Trump's dumbest cabinet member

At a press briefing on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

“Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding — even as the strait’s blockage was proving to be Iran’s most powerful leverage in the war — we “don’t need to worry about it.” He also denied that the U.S. bombed the school where some 175 children were killed. Hegseth added that, as to CNN, “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

These remarks are remarkably stupid, on several levels.

First, CNN got it absolutely right in reporting that Trump’s national security team had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic. CNN cited “multiple sources familiar with the matter.”

The New York Times published a similar story, reporting that in the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, “Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets.”

Even The Wall Street Journal, hardly a New York Times or CNN clone, substantiated the story on Friday, reporting that Trump rejected warnings that Iran would likely retaliate by closing the strait because he believed Iran would capitulate before doing so, and he assumed that even if Iran tried to close it, the U.S. military could handle it.

Second, Hegseth’s comment that we “don’t need to worry about” the blockage of the strait is not only false but flippantly insulting to an American public that deserves to know what the Trump regime is planning to do about soaring prices at the gas pump, directly due to that blockage.

Third, even if Hegseth believes that David Ellison’s ownership of CNN will silence CNN’s critical coverage of Trump, it’s remarkably stupid of Hegseth to say it out loud. “The sooner David Ellison takes over CNN, the better” is an open admission that Trump backed Ellison’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent, to silence criticism.

That deal is still pending, so Hegseth’s admission is likely to fuel even more opposition to it. California’s attorney general has already suggested he’ll go to court to block it. Now other attorneys general, the ACLU, and Democrats in Congress may join the case as co-plaintiffs.

Hegseth’s admission also confirms CNN’s worst fears that Ellison will throttle criticism of Trump — a fear that’s already caused several leading lights to exit. As Variety put it, “Anderson, cooped. Jake, tapped. Erin, burnt. Kasie, hunted. Wolf, blitzed.”

Ellison has already proven himself an unreliable steward of journalistic independence at CBS News. One departing producer there explained in a farewell memo to colleagues that she could no longer work where stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”

Finally, Hegseth’s denial that the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 schoolchildren in Iran is belied by mounting evidence that the U.S. did bomb the school. Hegseth’s further insistence that the U.S. “never targets civilians” is refuted by the U.S. military’s killing of at least 157 people on 40 small boats in the Caribbean without evidence they were “narcoterrorists” rather than civilians.

And, friends, this was just one news conference.

Pete Hegseth’s job is so far over his head that he can’t even see it. He evidently believes it’s to cheerlead and defend Trump with bonkers claims like “We didn't start this war, but under President Trump we’re finishing it” and “America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy” and “we will show no quarter for our enemies.” (“No quarter” means kill everyone and take no prisoners, which is a war crime.)

In the days leading up to the U.S. attack on Iran, Hegseth spent his time criticizing “wokeness” at American universities, feuding with Anthropic over safeguards for AI, and, in the day before the war began, forcing Scouting America to abandon programs aimed at promoting diversity.

He dismisses war crimes, pooh-poohs the rules of engagement, and projects unequivocal belligerence at a time when the United States is rapidly losing whatever moral standing it had in the world.

Granted, it’s difficult to select one of Trump’s Cabinet members as the stupidest. But Pete Hegseth stands out for sheer boneheaded ignorance.

Pray for America and the world.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com

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