Pete Hegseth turns children’s icon into cold-blooded killer
LEAVE FRANKLIN OUT OF THIS!
You’re here because you’re watching politics get body slammed by digital culture and content creators. I’m here because I’m the only one who can guide you through it.
If any children’s cartoon character was going to dabble in war crimes it would obviously be the Rugrats’ resident power tripper Angelica. Not sweet, Canadian Franklin, of all people turtles!
Our Secretary of Defense — I refuse to call him “CEO of War,” sorry — is walking a tightrope over the Caribbean Sea right now, as thousands of American forces close in on Venezuela. We’ve killed more than 80 people over there recently, but special scrutiny is being given to a particular strike in September — looking at something I’ve seen called a no quarter, a double tap, or a second strike, guaranteeing the death of every identified “terrorist” aboard.
President Trump played dumb about the technicalities aboard AF1, saying both “I don’t know anything about it” and “Pete said” he didn’t do the thing I just claimed I didn’t know about. Unfortunately for our dear Sec. Hegseth, dumb is something you are, not something you briefly choose. And this is where his newly acquired human shield, Franklin, comes in.
What do I always say: Follow the fucking memes. This is exactly why “rage bait” is Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year.1 Hegseth’s post has 25M views. It instantly derailed the conversation away from potential violations of the law and put us straight on the track of trolling instead. All it takes is one measly turtle to call in a massive noisy bale (apparently the word for a whole swarm of turtles).
Next thing you know, Franklin — who is canonically seven — is being forced into all kinds of side quests: committing war crimes, being tried at the Hague, arresting Democrats, joining ICE, questioning 9/11. His creators (also Canadian) are so pissed they released a statement to “condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image” in contradiction to the “kindness, empathy, and inclusivity” he stands for. Lawsuit tonite queen 👀 ?
Now that we’ve addressed the distraction, let’s cover the focus and our factions — they’re far from what you might expect.
CHEERLEADERS
This group is motivated by the belief that these strikes are both legal and necessary. Mostly made up of MAGA faithfuls, they believe the targets to be narco-terrorists sailing tons of fentanyl toward the States, despite a super-minority of fentanyl coming from Venezuela.
Key voice: Megyn Kelly — “[I don’t] really care that we’re killing the drug boat guys trying to kill my kids and yours … So, I really do, kind of, not only want to see them killed in the water … but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.”
Other reasoning for support includes: outrage to it is fake, there are no innocents, Democrats want to defend drug-traffickers, this is more defensible than anything we’ve done in the Middle East, Obama got away with worse drone strikes, we’re giving Venezuelans a chance, Venezuela is funding antifa, etc.
CRITICS
This is a much more mixed ideological bag than I would’ve expected here. This group is mostly dominated by left-leaning commentators but with strong skepticism coming from multiple angles on the right — especially from Trump’s “no more forever wars” voters.
All of these people think there’s dubious legality here, but there’s disagreement on what bucket it falls into: war crime or murder. Whether or not Hegseth is meeting the legal standard seems secondary for a lot of this content.
Channels contending with Hegseth being a war criminal: Don Lemon, MeidasTouch, Majority Report, Glenn Kirschner, Kyle Kulinski — even Ben Shapiro ran with this title: Did Pete Hegseth Commit A War Crime?
Redacted News: This is a very right-wing show that was utterly apoplectic over these strikes, marking an official betrayal by Trump who promised to keep the U.S. out of foreign conflict. Host Clayton Morris and guest Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis go off:
“Do we want to administer Venezuela? Do we have an exit strategy for this?” … “We barely have an entrance strategy. For that to even exist you have to know what you want to accomplish and what the ultimate objective is … other than Maduro gone … I don’t think there is one.”
COOLER HEADS
This is less of a group and more of genre. If you didn’t know, there are tons of military vets making content. Watching their videos can help us make sense of the deliberate gaps both critics and cheerleaders are creating in their stories. They’re great at walking us through the steps of what will happen in an investigation of the incident and what’s on the list of reasonable outcomes.
Key voice: Preston Stewart — if you’re looking for level-headed, unsensationalized, responsible information about what’s going on here, look no further than this former Army artillery officer. Some takeaways I got:
Hard to compare to the Middle East when there are different rules/laws for land and sea
Designating someone a terrorist doesn’t absolve us from operating within U.S. law
Look at every situation here from a “maybe it will work out, but what happens if it doesn’t” perspective
Democrats calling for a war powers vote after the strikes feels performative
Other great follows with varied outlooks: Ryan McBeth, Nate Cornacchia, Cody Harnish, Kristofer Goldsmith, Max Afterburner (if you just want to nerd out about planes)
CONSPIRACISTS
Don’t they say all conspiracies have a little bit of truth to them? And wouldn’t that mean that, in some cases, there’s a whole lot of truth to them? Right next to the ocean the world’s largest aircraft carrier is floating on is “a whole ocean of oil” to keep the “There Will Be Blood” flowing.
At every marker along the ideological spectrum, I saw creators pointing to our nation’s interest in Venezuela’s oil at the core of this fuckery. From Tim Pool to Hasan Piker, Clay Travis to this girl with a hammer and sickle in her Twitter handle:
There’s a ton to unpack here — especially when you factor in Iran, China, and Russia’s interests in the region as well. I’ll officially tag this as “keeping an eye on it.”
CORPS
I’m gonna say something nice about legacy media: We are so much worse off not having career defense reporters covering this current chaos in the Pentagon. Instead, it’s welcome week for the new freshman class, led by standout hard-nosed journalists like Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz. It’s week one, and they’re already drinking on the job.
LOOSE ENDS:
📝 Word I learned today: narco-state
countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade — “And as US officials watched, Hernández transformed Honduras into a de facto narco state.” (via Alexander Rubinstein and Anya Parampil, The Grayzone)
🎧 Something you should listen to today: Caliber’s Ramin Beheshti on why social media influencers are beating news publishers with young audiences — links to listen here.2
🥹 Something to make you smile today: All this talk about JAGs got me thinking about the movie “A Few Good Men.” I had never seen the 1992 military legal drama ‘til this summer. The average person probably wouldn’t call it a barn burner, but thankfully I’m a far cry from the average person, so I thought it was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Young Tom Cruise is a YESSS for me (sorry). Demi Moore unshackling herself from gender constraints, yes. Jack Nicholson villainry, forever the biggest yes on the block. If you can handle the truth … it’s time to press play.
Here’s their reasoning for “rage bait” being the word of the year.
Disclaimer: Ramin does keep me gainfully employed and has been my OG supporter in writing this Substack (which is my favorite thing I’ve ever gotten to do), but NO, I am not featuring his interview for brownie points. In fact, I didn’t even realize he was the guest of this episode, I was just headed to my regular listening of Brian Morrissey / The Rebooting.
A Few Good Men fuckin rips