President Donald Trump on Wednesday started off the 12th cabinet meeting of his second term with some locker room-style banter as he praised the physical appearance of the ex-television host he put in charge of the Pentagon.
Trump was working his way through lengthy prepared remarks at the top of the meeting when he rattled off a list of cabinet members who he wanted to hear from, including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“We have great people, and the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Central Casting,” said Trump, who referred to Hegseth by the outdated title his administration has attempted to use for the Pentagon.
“He loves war,” Trump added.
For his part, Hegseth returned the over-the-top, effusive praise with a monologue in which he compared Trump to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln after the president closed his remarks with a ten-minute rant about his effort to renovate the reflecting pool on the National Mall.
“I think actually your efforts on the reflecting pool are actually a great segue. If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people, and when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged war against us and our people, there’s only one man over the course of both presidency who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said.
“When you authorized Operation Epic Fury, just like you talked about with the reflecting pool, we didn’t do the same old thing the way we’d done it in the past, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the way we waged wars. Instead, you said we’re going to do this smart, we’re going to do it overwhelming, we’re going to use maximum lethality, and we’re going to bring them to their knees.”
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