Pete Hegseth snarls at reporter’s ‘gotcha question’ when pressed on Iran war endgame
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth jumped in to defend Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine’s explanation on where the war in Iran was headed on Monday morning and then complained about the line of questioning from reporters in the room.
Having earlier complained about “fake news,” the former Fox News personality became incensed about reports the war could drag on longer than two weeks first hinted at, and now four weeks.
“I heard the question about four weeks is the typical NBC sort of gotcha type question.” he shot back at NBC's Courtney Kube. “President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take: four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back.”
“We're going to execute at his command the objectives we've set out to achieve,” he lectured. “And what he has shown is an ability to do that other presidents can't quite seem to have the aperture to do. Well, I mean, Joe Biden didn't even know what he was doing is to look for opportunities and off ramps and escalations for the United States that creates new opportunities to execute what we need on our own timeline.”
“So you can play games about four weeks, five weeks,” he sneered. “He has all the latitude, and I'm glad he does because there's no better communicator than our president expressing those things.”
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Republicans made a ‘tacit admission’ about midterms — and it could blow up in their face
A conservative columnist warned on Monday that her Republican colleagues just made a "tacit admission" about the 2026 midterms that could blow up in their face.
S.E. Cupp, a columnist for CNN, said during a segment on "The Source" with host Kaitlan Collins that Republicans have all but admitted that they don't stand a chance during the midterms with their push for mid-cycle redistricting. While those efforts seem to have paid off so far, Cupp warned that they could energize the Democratic base in a way that thwarts all the time Republicans spent trying to rig the election in their favor.
"Here's the thing that I think is important to point out if you care about democracy," Cupp said. "The republicans have done what they've done because they've been allowed to. But it's also a tacit admission that they know they cannot win without rigging it. They're out of ideas. They're not even attempting to win new voters or win back the voters that they've been losing since gaining them in 2024."
Several Republican states from Texas to Louisiana and Tennessee have adopted new election maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to preserve the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Cupp warned that voters can see through the Republicans' plans, and that may cause them to backfire in November.
"So this is the giddiness and the crowing I'm seeing from republicans about the state of the redistricting math and how it's helping Republicans," she said. "What they're not saying out loud is what I think a lot of voters can see, which is you had to rig it to make yourself competitive. And I don't even know if this will still make them competitive. They might actually be handing Democrats an advantage by really ginning up that base, firing them up to go and vote."
