Pete Hegseth Is Misleading Trump and Us About Iran War

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s relentless claims of an unqualified success in Iran has only put American defenses in jeopardy.

The weekend rescue of a downed F-15 crew member stands as proof that America does not have “complete control of Iranian skies,” despite what Hegseth pledged last month. Nonetheless, Donald Trump has unquestioningly regurgitated Hegseth’s militaristic optimism to the nation, fueling concerns that the White House is knowingly feeding misinformation to the American people, reported The Washington Post Tuesday.

“Pete is not speaking truth to the president,” one administration official told the newspaper. “As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information.”

On Monday, Trump acknowledged that the fighter jet had been struck by a heat-seeking missile. It was a “lucky hit,” according to the president’s assessment.

But the F-15 wasn’t the only U.S. aircraft that got hit last week. Iran also shot down an A-10 attack plane on Friday, though the craft was able to fly back to friendly airspace before its pilots evacuated the vehicle.

Kelly Grieco, a military analyst at the Stimson Center, explained to the Post that the loss of the fighter jet is what happens “when you have air superiority but don’t have air supremacy.”

“Our air superiority is limited geographically to the west and to south but also in terms of altitude,” Grieco said.

Last month, Hegseth claimed that Iran’s missile and drone programs were “overwhelmingly destroyed.” Iranian officials have since disagreed: The country’s new leadership told Pakistan Tuesday that not only did Tehran believe that it was winning, but the country still had tens of thousands more drones and missiles at its disposal.

That could boil down to a money and munitions problem for the U.S., which has so far struggled to combat Iran’s Shahed attack drones (which are very cheap and easy to produce) with anything other than the most expensive interceptor systems, such as Patriot interceptor missiles. (The military has so far requested to purchase 3,200 Patriot missiles for the 2027 fiscal year, costing just under $14 billion. The Navy requested hundreds more on Monday.)

Nonetheless, the Trump administration has lashed out at any attempt to hold Hegseth accountable for his unfounded comments on the war. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell referred to criticism of Hegseth’s messaging as little more than “lies and propaganda.”

“Secretary Hegseth has provided the Commander-in-Chief with decisive military options to achieve our clear, scoped objectives: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, annihilate their Navy, destroy their terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” Parnell told the Post. “The Washington Post is pushing a fake story of failure.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly also insisted that Trump “always had the full picture of the conflict.”

“Nothing has surprised him or our military planners, who were prepared for any possible contingency,” she said.

But the conflict is far from a success. The administration widely advertised that it planned for the war to last four to six weeks at maximum, but recent escalations have sparked concerns that the situation will devolve into yet another endless conflict in the Middle East. The war is currently in its sixth week.

Trump suddenly expressed a renewed interest in ending the war over the weekend, after fears emerged that the oil and gas crisis sparked by the fighting could hurt Republicans at the ballot box come November.

The president has demanded that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz—a vital tradeway for the region’s oil and gas—by Tuesday at 8 p.m., or face total annihilation. In a Truth Social post, Trump promised to commit war crimes, pledging that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” should Iran fail to reopen the waterway for trade. The country has so far rejected potential peace deals.

Donald Trump is asking for millions of taxpayer dollars for his proposed 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, D.C.

The White House is seeking $15 million from the National Endowment for the Arts to build the massive archway across from the Lincoln Memorial, NOTUS reports, citing a spending plan shared in the Office of Management and Budget database Tuesday. The plan contradicts Trump’s earlier promises that the arch, which is intended to commemorate the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, was going to be completely privately funded with leftover donations from his ballroom project.

At the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House Monday, Trump was carrying a picture of the proposed arch with him, and on Sunday, his motorcade drove slowly around the location where he wants the arch, Memorial Circle in Washington. Meanwhile, he skipped the Easter services he was slated to attend.

Even as a war he started rages on and the economy struggles as a result, Trump seems preoccupied with building monuments to himself. The construction of his beloved ballroom will dwarf the existing executive estate, has resulted in the razing of the White House’s East Wing, and will cost at least $400 million. And while he claims that it will be completely funded by donations, it, like the arch, could end up requiring government funds.

A federal judge ruled last month that construction on Trump’s ballroom “has to stop,” as the president acted beyond his authority to raze the East Wing. A group of veterans has also filed a lawsuit against construction of the arch, arguing that it not only requires congressional approval and an environmental review but would increase traffic and obstruct views of Arlington National Cemetery. But if Trump gets his way, by the time 2028 is here, he will have left permanent tributes to himself across Washington.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche proudly admitted his deference to Donald Trump regarding using the Department of Justice to attack the president’s political enemies.

“President Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to see his perceived political enemies prosecuted,” a reporter asked Blanche at a Tuesday press conference. “So now that you’re in this position, how are you going to balance that relentless pressure with this administration’s promise to end the weaponization of this department?”

“First of all we have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now. And it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president in the past has had issues with, and believes should be investigated,” Blanche replied, offering zero pushback to the notion that Trump is controlling the DOJ. “That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that, meaning to lead this country.”

Under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Trump administration has used the DOJ to go after former FBI Director James Comey, Democratic Senators Adam Schiff and Mark Kelly, former national security adviser John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James, every Democratic leader in Minnesota, and more. Each one of those people criticized Trump in some way, and nearly all of the DOJ’s attacks against them failed. And while DOJ criminal investigations are supposed to be free of White House influence, it seems clear that Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s lawyer in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, will continue to dutifully carry out Trump’s revenge.

“At his first press conference, Trump’s Acting AG says it out loud: The DOJ is there to target Trump’s political enemies,” the press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote. “A disgusting abuse of power!”

It looks as if Donald Trump’s new attorney general is ready to pick up right where Pam Bondi left off: declining to investigate fraud committed by Republicans.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick for acting head of the Department of Justice, was asked by a reporter Tuesday whether he would investigate the Strategy Group, a firm associated with Kristi Noem that received over $200 million in taxpayer money for an anti-immigrant ad campaign featuring the former homeland security secretary.

First reported by ProPublica, the Strategy Group is run by the husband of Tricia McLaughlin, a former spokesperson for DHS and underling of Noem. Instead of listing the name of the firm on the contracts, officials within the Trump administration covered their tracks by employing a subcontractor called Safe America Media, which had been founded eight days before it was granted the nine-figure contract.

The reporter noted that there have “been a lot of questions” around the firm.

“When you say a lot of questions, you mean you all have decided to write about it hoping that it generates something,” Blanche replied. He went on to call the proposed investigation a “speculative idea.”

It seems Noem, like other Trump-affiliated fraudsters, will escape scot-free.

Deflecting away from serious issues to attack the media is hardly a new strategy among Trump and his disciples, but Blanche doing it is particularly ironic given his boss’s insistence that his administration will deliver the biggest crackdown on fraud in American history.

In reality, Trump has no problem with fraud as long as it’s committed by the right people. Whether it’s Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel using government-owned jets as personal Ubers, Donald Trump Jr.’s work from within the suspiciously unregulated Kalshi and Polymarket, Eric Trump’s crypto company secretly receiving $500 million from the UAE in exchange for political capital, or Trump himself ripping off the American people for literally billions of dollars, the amount of fraud in America right now is indeed enormous. But its main perpetrators sit in the White House.

The United Nations is warning Donald Trump against further escalation in the Iran war after he threatened Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

“Even wars have rules,” the U.N.’s official X account posted along with a link to its human rights office. “The Geneva Conventions protect civilians in conflict and help ensure assistance reaches those in need, without discrimination.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued a statement against “incendiary rhetoric” and warned that anyone who commits war crimes should face legal justice, strongly hinting at Trump without mentioning him by name.

“I deplore the tirade of incendiary rhetoric being used in the Middle East war over the last couple of weeks by all parties, including the latest threats to annihilate a whole civilisation and to target civilian infrastructure. This is sickening. Carrying through on such threats amounts to the most serious international crimes,” Türk said. “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Anyone responsible for international crimes must be held to account by a competent court.”

Will any of this get through to Trump or his inner circle? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already made clear his disdain for any restraint and his love for violence, calling for “no quarter” and “no mercy for our enemies.” Trump doesn’t have a problem with this, as evidenced by his outrageous threat and the fact that he seems to get his war news from a staff-prepared daily highlight reel of bombings in Iran.

If Trump sticks to his 8 p.m. E.T. deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and decides to follow through on his threat to bomb the country’s power plants, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure, the results could be catastrophic. That would no doubt be a war crime resulting in a humanitarian nightmare, in the eyes of not just the U.N. but many in the U.S. and around the world. The question is whether the White House or Republicans in Washington actually care.