What A Day - Hegseth Hits The Hill

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Secretary of War/little boy Pete Hegseth will be testifying before Congress this week — starting with a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee today. And if you ask him, everything in Iran and everything else is going just fine! Great, even! But Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow serves on the committee – and he has a lot of questions for Hegseth. We asked him to give me a preview ahead of today’s hearing.And in headlines, gas prices are still on the rise, King Charles speaks to Congress, and a beach day turns into a federal indictment for former FBI Director James ComeyShow Notes: Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, April 29th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day. The show that is not buying this pitch from House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking on Newsmax Monday. I hope voters remember this in the fall. You've got to keep the grownups in charge, and that's the Republicans. Mike Johnson is the last year and a half what? Grownups do? Because I hate it. On today's show, it's time to invest in a good bike because gas prices are still on the rise. And later, how what be? each day turned into a federal indictment for former FBI director James Comey.

But let's start with Secretary of War slash little boy Pete Higgs-Zeth. Haguezeth will be testifying before Congress this week. According to the Hill, he'll be pitching the Senate Armed Services Committee on a $1.5 trillion budget next year. He'll also probably be answering a lot of questions about the Iran War. But he's starting his tour of Congress today by appearing before the House Armed Services Committee for the first time since the war began. If you ask him, everything in Iran and everything else is going just fine.

Great even. Here he is at a Pentagon press briefing Friday. America's military is unmatched. Projecting power, denying passage to adversaries, and protecting our interest at the time and place of our choosing. No one sails from the Strait of Hormuz to anywhere in the world without the permission of the United States Navy. To the regime in Tehran, the blockade is tightening by the hour. we are in control, nothing in, nothing out. TLDR, everything is awesome,

even though to pretty much everyone else, it looks like it's that. Here's what we know. The war in Iran is in a stalemate, and Hegzeth has been making some unpopular decisions at the Defense Department, firing the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Navy in just the last few weeks. North Carolina Republican Senator Tom Tillis told the Hill, quote, I think he's missing the mark on personnel. He has separated some of the most extraordinary generals that we've had in play.

I don't quite know what's going on there. He later said Hegss's lack of experience is reminiscent of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem, which is not, you know, ideal. But Heg Seth is staying busy and putting his energy towards the important things. For example, the former Fox and Friends weekend host took Kid Rock on a joyride in an Apache helicopter Monday. A sentence said is real. He even posted pictures. Colorado Democratic Representative Jason Crow serves on the House Armed Services Committee, and he has a lot of questions for Pete Hegsef.

I asked him to give me a preview ahead of today's hearing. Representative Crow, welcome back to Water Day. Thanks for having me back. Hegzeth is expected to testify before the House Armed Services Committee today for the first time since the start of the Iran War. What questions do you need him to answer? Well, I mean, there's so much to go on here. Number one, how much exactly is this costing the American people? We know it's somewhere between one and a half the two billion dollars a day just for the cost of the munitions. Number two, why isn't he protecting U.S. troops adequately? Right? There was a strike that killed multiple U.S. soldiers, and it looks like there weren't air defenses in place. Number three, why does he keep on painting such a rosy picture to President Trump about how this war is going to play out. What seems to be pretty clear at this point is that Donald Trump had a bunch

of advisors around him, and you know I'm no fan of Donald Trump. They had people like Lindsey Graham and Pete Hegseth and others that told him that this was going to be a cakewalk. A couple of weeks, a bunch of bombs, and it would be over, which is obviously far from the truth. So what exactly did he tell the president? And why does he keep on lying to President Trump about how wars like this are going play out. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about that stockpile concern. There have been reports that the U.S. is exhausting our stockpile of very expensive and important weapons in the war. And the Atlantic reported that Vice President J.D. Vance is worried about it. That piece also said that people close to the vice president suspect Hegsef is presenting a more positive view of the situation than is accurate.

In your view, is Vance right to be concerned. Are you concerned? Yeah, Vance is right to be concerned. And I share it. We don't have unlimited amounts of ammunitions. Tomahawks don't grow on trees. They're extremely expensive. They take a long time to produce. It takes us years to build up these stockpiles. And in the last, now almost 60 days, we have spent thousands of these things, right? Precision bombs, Tomahawk cruise missiles, basically all sorts of munitions. And not only is this expensive, but these stockpiles are used for all sorts of potential contingencies.

In Europe, in Asia, in Central, South America, we have all these plans in the military that are called con-ops. If you can imagine it, there's probably a con-op that you break glass in case of emergency, and the military does what it's supposed to do according to this plan. And all of those require these stockpiles. So a really important question is, what can't we do anymore now? Because of the fact that we spent these stockpiles down, how many of these con ops are ineffective and that we couldn't actually execute tomorrow if there was an emergency that our country had to respond to? Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about a potential defense of Taiwan. I'm thinking about our allies in South Korea.

I think Asia is a major concern, especially with China, watching all of this. But you're a veteran. You've served in the Iraq War. when we're talking about a depletion of our weapons stockpile, what do we actually mean here? What does that mean to troops who may be on the ground in the future or troops who might be in the region? Yeah. Well, it's not just our offensive weapons. You always think about it in terms of like the offensive weapons and munitions and the defensive ones. And right now what I'm most concerned about are the defensive munitions. They're called interceptors. We have these Patriot missiles. We have these things called fads, which are these high altitude long

range interceptors. We have all sorts of munitions that are designed to intercept drones, the Shahid drones that Iran sends. We have depleted vast stockpiles. I'm not going to go into the specifics because I can't over this conversation, but I am increasingly concerned about our ability to protect our service members, not just the Middle East, but around the world as we spin down the stockpiles of all these interceptors and air defense munitions that we rely on to create a shield over the top of our military bases and installations and our service members. We have 55,000, roughly, service members in the Middle East right now. We have close to 100,000 stationed throughout Europe. We have tens of thousands in Asia.

In any given moment, we have hundreds of thousands of service members deployed around the world, all of which rely upon this air defense shield that has been dimensioned. finished over the last 60 days. I think that that leads to another quick question I had for you, which was that part of the messaging, I think, that Trump got was that Iran would run out of weapons very quickly and that their weapons stockpile had been demolished. And that's something you keep hearing from Heggsouth, basically like, we have complete control of the air over Iran. If that were true, how are they still firing drones? How are they still firing missiles? And what does that mean in terms of Iran's capabilities?

Because I think that if we learned anything from Iran and Iraq, it's that you can end a war, but the enemy still gets a say. Yeah. Well, I think that last point that you just made is actually the operative point. But to address the earlier one about just, you know, force on force, as we say in the military sometimes, this idea of a tritting the other side. First of all, like, we're on the economic losing side of this, right? because we're using million-dollar missiles and systems to shoot down $20,000, $30,000 drones, right? So a factor of $20 to 1, 30-to-1, more expensive on our side than their side. So economically, they can continue to produce these things, which they can produce very quickly.

They can rebuild their stockpiles very quickly. They can do it for pennies on the dollar of what it costs us to shoot them down. So from their perspective, it's a pretty good deal, right? They can just continue to do this, and eventually we break the bank. But to your larger point, when are we going to get out of this construct, this framework, that we can just use our fancy systems and win wars by just, you know, attritting the other side? Because if that were true, we would have won in Afghanistan. We would have won in Iraq.

We would have won in a lot of different conflicts that we're fighting around the world. But you can't defeat movements and ideologies in a regime. like the Iranian regime, which is actually built for this moment. It's built for survival. It's built for a long-term conflict to try to wear us down and outlast our political will. You can't win that militarily, right? Which I always say the problem is that we just have a series of tactical decisions that we make with no strategy. That's the same problem in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We never lost a battle in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We won every single battle, right? We are great at tactics. What we're not great at is having a strategy that's going to actually win it and wind it down and provide an off ramp for the American people. There's obviously a lot going on here, even outside of the depletion of the weapons stockpile. Hexeth has been firing military leaders, like now former Army Chief of Staff General, Randy George, Navy Secretary John Phelan during the war.

I know John Phelan's job was not about deploying sailors, but still. There's also been reports that he's integrating a very specific type of Christian rhetoric into the Pentagon that's making even other Christians feel pretty concerned. There's so much happening here. What are your biggest concerns about Hegsef and the Pentagon right now, even outside of the war? My biggest concern is that Pete Hegsef is changing the very nature of our military or attempting to, right? We have had, for my entire life, a military that reflects this nation. You know, when I went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think about those paratroopers that I went to war with. And they reflected this nation, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, straight, gay, rich, poor, urban, rural.

Like, when I think about America, I think about the faces of those paratroopers I went to war with, right? Democrat, Republican, independent, just kids trying to make a better life and didn't care about politics. Like, that was our nation. And our nation has had great confidence in its military because it draws upon. the diversity of this nation. It reflects the nation. It's the standard bearer of our values. That's not to say that we haven't had failings

and it hasn't fallen short throughout our history because it has. I'm not trying to whitewash or paint a simple picture here. But when it's at its best, that's what it is. Pete Hatzett does not want that. He wants a military that reflects him, that serves him, and his closest advisors, and he's trying to build a fiefdom that only he controls.

And if he is able to accomplish that, then we will lose something so precious in our nation, and that is a civilian-controlled military that reflects our nation that has the competence and the support of the American people that can serve us and defend us and represent us around the world. Representative Crow, as always, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, Jane. Appreciate it. That was my conversation with Colorado Democratic Representative Jason Crow.

We have a healthy stockpile of episodes to enjoy, so you can go back and watch them all. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to by ORAFrams. I take a lot of photos.

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and they need your support to fund their travel and long-term development. Midterms are here. And for those who refuse to sit out this pivotal moment, you can donate today at commonpower.org slash crooked. Here's what else we're following today. Joining me is Crooked's news editor, Greg Walters, to talk about the big stories. Hey, Greg. Hey, Jane.

Greg, oil prices are not low right now, and they are not likely to go down anytime soon. Here's Richard Quest on CNN Tuesday, sounding enthusiastic about oil prices. Now, the important point to realize is this bit. Once the oil price got up there, over $100 a barrel, it's going to shade it in so you can see. It doesn't matter how long it continues. this bit is baking in slow growth, slowing economy, higher inflation. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see Quest holding up an illustration of a big old rise in the price of oil. And that means gasoline prices have also risen, which you probably know.

They've reached their highest point in four years, with the average cost of a gallon of gas reaching $4.18 across the country. Gas prices are sky high because of Trump's war in Iran, which, Greg, it's still happening. Yeah, and Jane, I've said this before, and I'll say it again. This is literally the opposite of what Trump ran on. He promised to be the No More Wars and I Will Make Gas Cheap guy. And here we are. It's like running for high school class president on the free cookie platform and then handing out broccoli. Yeah, broccoli and a naval blockade of the neighboring high school.

Right. And as long as the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, oil prices are unlikely to come back to Earth anytime soon. In fact, it may get worse. In another major turn of events, the United Arab Emirates just announced it's going to quit OPEC, the oil cartel that has been trying to manage crude markets for decades. This is a big deal. The UAE accounted for 13% of OPEC's total production capacity. And some folks are now wondering if the organization can survive this. Apparently, the UAE had been chafing under production quotas that it thought were too low, but all the conflict in the Middle East seems to have piled pressure on it and, uh, sped this exit along. Speaking of complicated monarchies, King Charles spoke to Congress on Tuesday. It was a packed house and one that seemed pretty receptive to the king. And his jokes.

For all of that time, our destinies as nations have been interlinked. As Oscar Wilde said, we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. We meet two in the aftermath of the incident not far from this. great building that sought to harm the leadership of your nation and to ferment wider fear and discord. Let me say with unshakable resolve, such acts of violence will never succeed. Today, Mr. Speaker, that same unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her

most courageous people. It is needed in order to secure. cure a truly just and lasting peace. From the bitter divisions of 250 years ago, we forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential alliances in human history. But awkwardly, this comes as the new UK ambassador to the US, Christian Turner, was captured on tape in private remarks saying the US-UK special relationship isn't really so special anymore.

And this is a term that goes all the way back. to a quote by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946. And we've all kind of grown up with this, right? The U.S.-UK. Special Relationship. But Turner was caught on tape telling a group of high school students visiting the U.S. in February that he tries not to use the phrase special relationship because it's, quote, nostalgic and backwards looking, according to the Financial Times. And he then said, here's the kicker.

He said, quote, I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel. Yeah, that's not great. That's not great at all. It's also awkward because King Charles is here to strengthen the special relationship that might not be that special. Of the relationship between the UK and the U.S., the king also said, quote, our defense, intelligence, and security ties are hardwired together through relationships measured

measured not in the years, but in decades. Yeah, the special hardwiring doesn't have quite the same ring to it. So we still don't know how this recording was leaked and who's responsible. But I would say, Jane, generally speaking, if you're going to tell a room full of high school students, your diplomatic secrets, don't say anything that you don't want to end up on TikTok because the kids are posting everything these days. So speaking of posts that get people into trouble, Donald Trump's Department of Justice is targeting James Comey. Once again, he was indicted on Tuesday for allegedly making a threat against the president. And the threat, I am not making this up. They're charging him for taking a picture of seashells on the beach arranged into the numbers 8647 and posting it on Instagram with the caption, Cool Shell Formation on my beachwalk.

The actual indictment is arguing that Comey's seashell art shows he obviously held a, quote, intent to do harm to President Trump. Here's acting attorney general Todd Blanche on Tuesday. Today, a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of North Carolina. returned an indictment against James Comey on two counts. The first count is at honor about May 15th of last year. He knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. Count two, same day, May 15th, 2025, that the defendant, James Comey, knowingly and willfully transmitting an interstate commerce of communication that contained a threat to kill the president,

of the United States, both of these counts carry a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years. My favorite part of the press conference announcing this, Greg, was when FBI director Cash Patel said that this case took more than nine months to investigate. Nine months. It was an Instagram post cache of seashells. Yeah, I imagine them like staring at this Instagram post for nine months deciding what to do. It brings a new meaning to the phrase doom scrolling. Anyway, Merriam Webster says 86 is a slang term that goes back decades and typically means to throw out or get rid of.

And Trump is the 47th president. So 86, 47. Now, at the time, Comey deleted the post saying he didn't know it could be meant to construe violence. And here he is speaking shortly after the indictment came down on Tuesday. Well, they're back. This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. and this won't be the end of it. But nothing has changed with me.

I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let's go. But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country. This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be. And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.

Reminder, Trump fired former Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly in part because he was big mad that she didn't prosecute more of Trump's political enemies. And I think it's fair to say that this is going to be seen as political, extremely political, coming soon after a previous indictment against Comey was tossed out. But Greg, I would never toss you out. Thanks for hanging out with me. Good transition, Jane. Thank you. And that's the news. Before we go, if the global news cycle feels like it's spinning out, Pod Save the World is where you go to make sense of it. This week, Tommy and Ben break down what's unfolding in Iran and Lebanon, plus a truly unhinged

story involving a U.S. soldier tied to the Maduro raid, who's now been charged with allegedly betting on the operation. They also get into reports of CIA officers killed in Mexico, and what all of it says about how volatile things are right now. Listen to Pod Save the World wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like this show, Subscribe, leave a review. Gorillas have bank accounts now and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how it's part of a strategy to help safeguard animals and plants by letting them pitch in for their own protection. Like me, What Today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and I look forward to seeing guerrillas at my local financial establishment, getting mortgages and asking about fun check designs.

What a day is a production of Crooked Media. was produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Four, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.