Imagine if we’d known what the Iraq War would become as we were debating on whether or not to authorize it. Would we have still gone in? Would it have felt worthwhile?
Well. I guess so? Because the war in Iran is metastasizing in a way that almost anyone could have predicted, and yet … here we are. Or, to be more precise, nobody could have predicted exactly how this war would unfold, only that it would unfold catastrophically, chaotically.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was my second choice for Loser this week. He crows on stage with the timbre and tone of a man who’s practice zingers and one-liner takedowns in front of his bedroom mirror before getting shitfaced on Banquet Beer in his mom’s basement with his jackass friends.
His military strategy comes from the Middle School Locker Room Ball-Tap school of strategy. You see a guy and you want to cause him a quick jolt of pain, so you tap his balls and then go about your day while everyone (except your target) laughs and laughs. Sadly, it is an ill-fitting strategy for global conflict, and it is light on diplomacy. And right now, no one is laughing.
It’s clear he doesn’t understand any kind of second-order effects of … well … anything. I don’t believe he has the mental capacity to screw a cap on a bottle of Jack Daniels.
This war and the global chaos it unleashes — the roiling markets, the death and destruction, the realignment of our own allies against us — Trump will one day blame Hegseth for this.
But there will be time bring Hegseth back to the Loser column. So my choice this week is someone with a shorter runway.
Let’s dig in.
Kristi Noem, Loser
Kristi Noem’s memoir is called No Going Back. I’ll say. She lacked qualification to lead the Department of Homeland Security when she was appointed, and proved herself to be utterly irredeemable, even by Trump’s standards, which are fairly straightforward:
Worship Trump
Don’t act like a dumbass
She failed to live up to both of those standards last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee.