Bulwark Takes - Hegseth Acts Like A Child In Front of Congress

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Saletan give their takes on Pete Hegseth’s heated appearance on Capitol Hill, where questions about the $25 billion war with Iran quickly turned into personal attacks and repeated deflections. Hegseth spent much of his time avoiding accountability, focusing instead on blaming Democrats, raising questions about how he is approaching one of the most consequential national security roles in the world.For a limited time, listeners can get an exclusive $25 off AuraFrame's best-selling Carver Matframe at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES with code BULWARKTAKES.Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and Los Angeles in May: https://thebulwark.com/events

You ever notice how debt has the worst timing? Like, it waits until 2 a.m. to remind you it exists. But getting help doesn't have to wait at the Credit Counseling Society. Find out for yourself. Speak to someone who listens, respects your choices, and helps you create a plan to get debt under control. Don't wait. The sooner you call, the more options you have,

and the faster you'll get back to a good night's sleep. The Credit Counseling Society. When debt's got you, you've got us. Hey, everyone. It's V Sam Stein. I'm managing here to Bullwark. I'm joined by Will Salatin. And we're here to talk about Pete Hagseth and his hearing on the Hill today, a few moments where he kind of crashed out. A few moments where he did classic, you know, patriotism attacks. Some questionable math. You know, honestly, Will, I thought it was a little bit.

I thought it lacked fireworks. I came and thought it was going to be a lot hotter. I don't know about you. Well, I guess if you wanted a Pam Bondi experience, I did. I did, yes. I mean, the standards have been raised in this administration. Actually, that does raise a question. Is the Dow at 50,000 right now? You talk. I'm going to go look at it. It was. It was before we started it. The Dow is not 50,000 right now. So he could not get up there and admonish everyone for criticizing Donald Trump. Yeah, the Dow is down. But the Bonding standard is like, did you shout at the lawmakers with every answer? Did you try to talk over them? And Hegs had didn't. do that. So, like, he's a notch down from Pam Bondi. I thought I was still pretty explosive myself. All right. What was your main takeaway then? My main takeaway is, okay, this guy is supposed to be the

Secretary of Defense. He calls himself the Secretary of War. But the point is, like, you're supposed to, like, we're all in this together, Democrats, Republicans, we have an enemy here, Iran. You want to get everybody behind the war. He spent so much time in this hearing, Sam, going after the Democrats, Democrats on the committee, Democrats generally. Joe Biden. I swear to God. Sam, I counted just my own count 10 times that he like talked about Joe Biden, dumb, bad, you know, ignorant asleep at the, yeah,

Autopan. He brought up the auto pen. He did bring up the auto pen. How do you do that at a hearing about the Defense Department about a war? How do you do that? And you just got to be crafty. You can basically bring in the auto pen for anything if you really try hard enough. And he, and, you know, he tried hard.

Top line takeaways were he said, this was, first of all, it's for a request for $1.5 trillion for $1.5 trillion defense budget. He did say that up to date they believe they spent $25 billion on the war in Iran. There are some skepticism on the bulwark Slack channels about this one, to say the least. At one point in time, we were spending $1 to $2 billion a day in Iran. Now, that might not be the case in America because we're not firing as much. ammunition, but we've been in the war for almost 60 days now. Okay, Sam, here's like a test, parent test, right? Sure.

Your kids says to you, dad, I need, uh, I spent 25 bucks. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't like that you spent that much, but like, dad, I need 200 bucks to make up what I spent. Something's wrong there, right? Give me an appropriation. Give me an appropriation to cover.

That's like eight times the amount of money I'm telling you I spent. So, yeah, I would, I just normally hand over the money to my kid. And he's only nine. You want $200? Sure. Where he's spending it? I trust your kid more than I trust Pete Exeter. Fair enough.

Now, okay, so let's go through a couple of things. On the patriotism attacks, because this was sort of the real kind of, I don't know, the messaging that he, it seemed like he very much was going to rely on. And it came even like from the opening statement. So can we play the opening statement where he talks a little bit about

President Trump and President Trump's courage. President Trump, unlike other president, has had the courage to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and he's ironclad in that. We have the best negotiator in the world driving that deal. The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. I would have gone with opening the Strait of Hormuz as one of the greatest challenges they have. But maybe that's like number two on his list.

And it's the Democrats who are upset at him as number one. Just to be clear, this is his opening statement. This is not in response to some provocation from the other party. He's not like reacting to something. He decided that he was going to say before this hearing started that the biggest adversary was not Iran, our nominal enemy here. right the people with the member of sam the big nukes that were afraid of which is why he had to start a war the nuclear threat no no no no the big the biggest adversary is congressional democrats which kind of tells you where this whole administration is at and remember hegsith is there performing for

the audience of one trump so this is what trump wants to see is attacks on the democrats not the actual enemy yeah definitely the case where trump is watching hegseth is trying to perform for him it did feel a little hollow, honestly. But it was persistent. I mean, he kept going after Democrats. As you noted, the Biden stuff was constant, going after Democrats, accusing them of lying, of hoping for defeat, so on and so forth. It was the persistent subplot of the whole series. Can I just flag with that line, that line about reckless, feckless, defeatist, Pete Hagezeth, you know, what he really loves his words, right? Okay, I know he was like a soldier and everything, but like he, he loves his words. He loved that phrase so much Sam, he repeated it later, gratuitously.

He just brought it up again. Like, you're wrecked. That's why I said at the beginning of the hearing, reckless, feckless, and defeatist. He's so proud. He's like a speechwriter masquerading as a Secretary of Defense. Sorry, go ahead. Well, you could take the guy out of Fox News, but you can't take Fox News out of the guy. Bingo.

Bingo. There you go. All right, let's get to some other ones. Seth Moulton, I thought had some interesting, I mean, I don't want, this is not a, like, a gotcha question, but it has that kind of value of, like, can you? you just say straight up, like, are, you know, are we winning? And so Moltenin basically does this kind of boom, boom question to Hegg Seth, just say, hey, are we winning? How is this war going? Do you think we're winning?

Militarily on the battlefield, it's been an astounding military success. But are we winning the war? Absolutely. Okay, so do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning? Well, I would say the blockade that we hold that doesn't allow anything to come in or out of Iranian ports. Okay, so we've blockaded their blockade. They blockaded us, and then we blockaded their blockade. That's like saying tag, you're it. Or, you know, if President Madison had said, well, the British just burned down Washington,

but don't worry, we're going to burn it down as well. Yeah, the whole burning down Washington was kind of funny because of King Charles being here yesterday. So I wonder if that was improvised. But anyway, I actually thought that was kind of effective from Moulton, basically just sort of saying, explain this. Yeah, I mean, look, Pete Hegseth is a former military officer who is now put in charge of defense. It's a different job.

You're a soldier, you're a sailor or a Marine. You're fighting a war. You're as Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense, really, your job is to think big picture, right? And that's what Moulton's asking about. He's noticed that Hegseth keeps saying militarily on the battlefield we're winning. Moulton's asking, no, no, no, strategically. Like, what are we actually?

accomplishing besides blowing stuff up. Right. And the answer is, we haven't. We haven't gotten rid of the nukes. We, the straight of Hormuz is closed. Our response is you can't hold, you Iran can't hold the world hostage. The regime is the same, if not even more hardlined. I mean, yeah, that, that's the issue, right? Totally. Totally. Literally, Khamenei Jr. is the new guy. And, and, you know, and Hicketts' position with the blockade is, no, you Iran can't hold the world hostage. We will hold the world hostage. We'll choke off the straight. So just as a strategic thing, It's a failure. And that's what Dan Kane and others were trying to raise from the beginning, that it wouldn't lead where we wanted it to go.

So I've always thought about, like, as these hearings happen with Trump cabinet members, you know, what would a non-Trump cabinet member have answered? What would there have answered have been to something like that? Let's just assume that we're in the same situation like that. Like, what would Lloyd Austin have said? Or another defense secretary have said, you know, Chuck Hagel, right? Like, I would like to think they would have said something akin to, you know, we've been making progress. There's more to be done. We are exploring various avenues for opening the straight-of-form moves. We continue to persist on getting the nuclear weapons program under control, if not eliminated.

Like, they would have been a little bit more open to the idea that progress is needed, not that they've been. unequivocally successful, right? Like that's, that would have been the normal answer, right? Right. I mean, that's, so that's what a lot of the Democrats were trying to ask in their questions. What, what, what, they were trying to say, going forward for the future. Like, where are we going with this? What's going to, and HECSeth keeps giving the Trumpian answer, which is, you know,

we're beating the hell out of those guys. Look at all the stuff we blew up. Their Air Force. So then why do we need more money? Yeah. Right. And they don't have an answer. And Sam, when he was asked any questions about where this is going, like what's the

timetable? he would always, he kept saying, well, why would I tell you that? Then the enemy will know. Then the American people, basically the administration's position, Hakesets' position is we're not going to tell our own people anything about what we're doing or where this is going, because that would give things away to the enemy. No, it's worse than that because it's saying, we've accomplished everything we've sought out to accomplish. It's been a smashing success, but I can't tell you how much longer it's going to be. And also, I need a basically blank check. Yes, exactly. It is, it's unaccountability. They're defying accountability in the name of hiding stuff from the enemy.

But it's not Iran that they're asking for the supplemental appropriation from. It's us. It's our people. Borg takes a sponsor by ORAFraM's. Look, Mother's Day is coming up and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught flatfooted. Trust me, I've been there. It got ugly. Thankfully, O'RFrames, digital picture frames are a complete layup of a gift because you can give

your mom more of her favorite thing. And what is that? it's you and your grandkids in pixel form, whether you're reliving that trip to Disney or you're just reliving moments from your childhood. I love my aura frame. I gave it to my mother-in-law last year. We put up all the pictures of her grandkids and her. She loves it. She displays it right out there in her living room. These digital frames allow you to share your photos and videos effortlessly. Download the free aura app or text photos straight to your frame. And with free unlimited storage, you can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can even pre-reliven.

load photos before it ships, and then you can keep adding them at any time or anywhere. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. Their top-rated app reached number one in the app store on Christmas Day in 2025. Name number one by wirecutter you can save on the gifts mom's love by visitingoraframes.com. For limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver mat frame with code bulwark takes. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. code, bulwark takes. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. And terms and conditions do apply. And then with respect to accountability, there are two major moments in this war that we really don't

have great answers for. One was the attack on the girls' school in Iran that happened like very, very early on. It resulted in, God, I wish I had the number in front of me, almost 200 children killed. Yeah, close to 200. Yeah. At the time, Right afterwards, the DOD said they were going to investigate it. The process of investigating is it's been almost two months. And they have, they're still on that talking point. So this came up when Rokana was asking HECS at the battle. How much did it cost to American taxpayers in terms of the strike to the Iranian school where kids were killed?

Do you have that number in terms of the missiles we used? As I've said, that unfortunate situation remains under investigation. You don't know how much it takes the cost, but I wouldn't tie a cost to that, to anything. All right, so that was one time that this came up. It did come up another time where Representative Takuda was asked about the DOD's elimination of the civilian harm reduction staff. Let's play that as well. And yet, Mr. Secretary, you eliminated the Department's Civilian Harm Reduction staff.

You eliminated it. For a country that takes great efforts, makes great efforts, to make sure human casualties are reduced or eliminated, don't you think that that goes actually counter to what you just said, would these children not still be alive if you had not eliminated all of these staff working with Incentcom? We didn't eliminate them. We made sure that those things that they normally accomplish

are at the field level, which they are, and all of these processes are in place at every level. But you not agree that something clearly has failed, whether it's our implementation of AI, whether it's understanding our human dependence, on AI, would you not agree, something failed because almost 200 children died in Iran as a result of our bombing? You're insinuating something where an investigation is not complete? I get really angry about this because it's bullshit.

The investigation could easily be complete by now. And they're just going to never release the findings. They're just going to say it's continuously under investigation. And that's horrifying to me. I mean, we have to, we should own up to a fuck up if we did something like that. and we're not going to. I was a little bit surprised that didn't come up more often, but I guess there's a lot going on.

That's just an unsatisfactory answer for me. Oh, totally, totally. I mean, Sam, think about this. That happened far away. We don't have video of that. We've, in Minneapolis, we have video of agents shooting Americans, killing American citizens. Those investigations we're not getting results of, right?

I mean, so this one, they're totally going to bury. They're not going to, and their message, Heggsett's messages, all that concern about civilian harm, that's woke garbage from, you know, Obama and Biden. We don't do that. And Sam, there's another point in the hearing where one of the congressmen asks him about the no quarter order. You know, we, Higgs said, oh, right, right, right, right, right. And no quarter means basically we don't, if the enemy surrenders, it screw you, we'll kill you or whatever.

And that's another war crime. And Hegs' answer is basically my job is to make sure our guys come home. I'm not worried about their guys. So this whole thing is a bet by Pete Hexeth and Trump and this administration that Americans do not care about murdering people in other countries. And the other, so I mentioned there's two main flashpoints in the war that have really like stood out. One was the attack on the Iranian girl school. The other one was the Iranian attack on Camp Bering in Kuwait, which resulted in six service members killed. And this became a point in contention when represented to Luzzi.

Uziah was questioning Pete Higgsith because there was a lot of back and forth over whether the Pentagon essentially was trying to kind of wash over what actually transpired and whether or not those members, those service members were put in harm's way or could have been better protected, I should say. We all just heard pretty powerful reporting courtesy of Mr. Ryan from many of our wounded troops who were injured in the attack in Kuwait. Mr. Secretary, you heard direct quotes from some of them of the... via CBS's reporting they were willing to talk to the press things like they were unprepared providing

defense for themselves in the unit things like we were moved closer to Iran to a deeply unsafe area that was a known target your spokesperson Sean Parnell in response to that reporting said it was not true do you agree with that he's calling these guys liars I'm not calling our troops liars, and I don't know if what you're representing is correct or not. I'll take you at your word on that. But all I know is that we took every effort possible at the commencement of this campaign to ensure the defense of our troops, to include moving them off of known bases to places that were not known, and we had until the intel were not known, and then those were fortified with bunkers and other fortifications with theater air defenses.

Was our concern that something... I'm going to pause you there. Absolutely. You're disparaging me that I don't care. I'm asking you whether you think they're liars or not. You and you are disparaging me that I don't care about the passing of our troops. Nope. I ask you thought they're liars.

That's disparaging and smearing in every way. Nobody cares more about the fate of our troops. Nobody cares about the health of our troops. Mr. Secretary. Nobody wants to bring them all hope more than I. I understand, but he controls the time. He controls the time. You could control your answer.

Sam, you said your kids like nine. Pete Hexeth is like 12. Maybe. Maybe. Okay, this is like he's, this is a, this is an adolescent losing his cool. Like, you're disparaging me. You're disparaging me. You heard at the end that the Republican chairman of the committee, Mike Rogers, has to calm him down. Like you would, your kid, right?

You know, this is, okay, now, now it's okay, okay. He controls the time. You control your answer. You control. Just calm down, little boy. He's, he's not, and it's a factual question. He will not address it. He gets so upset.

This is a guy who has no self-control. And it shows. And Sam, can you think of a worse job to have someone with these kinds of emotional management issues than Secretary of Defense? Thank you. Because this is sort of the big takeaway, which is here you have a guy who there's not real stability there. He seems totally easily rattled.

He clearly has a vendetta against Democrats. He avoids accountability. And he's braggadocious in a way that I think is counterproductive. And yet Trump loves it. apparently because he's sticking with him even though and i will say it's hexs never once a lot of the time the democrats were talking to him he was they were like you convinced trump to do this you convinced trump to go to iran you were the one who told him it would be easy and hexs never said no like he never he never was like that you know it was a group thing he's owned this and trump's in a

quagmire here and there trump seems to be totally fine with it and i'm just not sure why i mean i guess have my reasons and my suspicions, but I'm curious what you think. Well, they don't, the motto in the Trump administration has never apologized, never admit a mistake, right? And that's, we, we, okay, we kill 175 girls in a school. We're not going to, you know, oh, it's unfortunate. We're not going to tell you what really happened. I would encourage people, nobody wants to sit through a long hearing like this, but just so people are clear, it's not, it's not a partisan thing, okay. I'll tell you the thing that interested me about the temper thing, though. You have two people testifying. One is heck,

and right next to him is Dan Cain, the chairman of the jury. Who just sits there and doesn't, he's like, ah, I get the coast. And remember, this is a guy whose nickname is Raisin Cain, right? And Trump bills him as like, oh, this cowboy. No, no, no. Dan Cain, who is a military man, a career military man, sits there, doesn't get rattled, doesn't let anybody get his goat, doesn't say anything more than he needs to, doesn't start fights.

He's an adult and he's sitting next to a child. And the contrast could not be more clear. Yeah, I noticed that. Kane was just sort of chilling. And I think Kane's just loving it because he can just hit there. He'll take a question every now and then. But mostly just sort of Biden his time. It's like I got a couple more hours to go.

No one's asked me anything. So that's that. Anyways, yeah. Any of those takeaways? I think we exhausted it. But I don't know. Yeah, no. I just, when I look at those two guys, I think I do not have military experience.

But if you're promoting people within the military, if you understand the military ethos and the seriousness of it, a guy like Dan Cain should under military good order be promoted gradually to a position similar to where he is now, if not quite. Pete Hexeth, if this were a military decision, wouldn't be nowhere near leadership because they would recognize what a loose cannon he is. Yeah, I guess I just, yeah, and I'll just end this, there's something wrong about saying that Democrats are the obstacle to peace in Iran. They're not, they've done nothing. I mean, they have no power. They're criticizing the war, but you're spending the money that you want to spend, you're doing what you want to do. You have very little oversight and they're asking you

fundamentally basic questions. The idea that they're screwing this up and it's not your fault that all this shit's gone wrong is silly, but they need a scapegoat, so they're going to do that. All right, well, thanks for doing this, man. I know you say who wants to sit through these hearings, but like I said, you want to do it. You love doing it. You're a sicko. You have a disease and you need help. And if people want to help you, we should have a subsection for the BORC subscribers to donate to Will's therapist fund. Okay? Can we make sure that we get that up on the website? Other than that, there is one other thing I do need to plug. We got some shows. I've been talking about these ads nonstop. I'll shut up about them when we sell more tickets and when we get closer to date.

San Diego, L.A., coming up in May, May 20th, May 21st, get your tickets. The Bullwork.com slash events. Again, we're going to San Diego. We're going to LA, May 20th, May 21st, get your tickets, and subscribe to the Bullwark and to Bullwark Takes. Will, thanks a bunch, man. Talk to you.