Donald Trump’s war against Iran is going so well that the U.S. is now yanking the USS George Washington from the western Pacific to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln, which is stationed off the Iranian coast in the Northern Arabian Sea. 

The move is significant on both fronts. While the switch will be a godsend to the weary sailors aboard the Lincoln, who have faced deteriorating living conditions and reported suicide attempts during their historic deployment of over 260 days and counting, the Washington was the Navy’s last aircraft carrier stationed in Asia. Its exit represents a remarkable abdication of American military power in the region.

At the same time, the president has ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea. Seoul seemed blindsided by the announcement, but judging from Trump’s social media post, which underscored his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea,” it appears that one reason for America’s diminishing military presence on the Korean Peninsula also has to do with Iran. The move reportedly came after the South Korean government refused to assist the U.S. in military actions in Iran. “I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “and they said, ‘No thanks!’” 

This is all great news for China, which has already dispatched its top envoy to South Korea, seemingly to fill the void Trump is creating. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Korean President Lee Jae Myung to discuss North Korea and global issues, creating an “unusually favorable moment for Beijing,” according to Han Lin, China country director at the Asia Group, who spoke to Bloomberg. “Washington is signaling flexibility toward Pyongyang while simultaneously creating uncertainty in Seoul,” he said, adding that “China can use that gap to bolster diplomatic influence.”

Once again, China embodies the pseudo-Taoist “Does nothing. Wins.” meme, but that hasn’t entirely mollified fears that Beijing will invade Taiwan. Those worries have caught the attention of The National Interest, a magazine founded in 1985 by neoconservative Irving Kristol and attached to a think tank established by former President Richard Nixon, who saw the potential for Chinese dominance in world affairs. The magazine, which has more recently become a mouthpiece for Russian concerns, has published hand-wringing features on how munitions depletions are putting Taiwan at risk. Such depletions are a consequence of the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran, of course, but it’s not clear that China wants or even needs to take advantage of this gap, at least not by dropping bombs.

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Beijing has watched closely as the U.S. and Russia, in its invasion of Ukraine, have damaged their economies, weakened their militaries and destroyed their global reputations while still losing the wars they started. No one wants to say that risk of a Taiwan invasion is completely gone, but China’s motivation to do so is likely pretty low. Why invade some place if you basically already control it? Just keep doing nothing and keep winning.

But more tangibly, it’s becoming clearer by the day that the bloated military machine the U.S. has run for decades is running out of steam. An exclusive report published Tuesday by the Washington Post details how the Pentagon is considering reducing its military footprint in the Middle East, notably because American military bases in the region have repeatedly gotten pummeled throughout the Iran war. If this happens, it would mark a substantial pivot from how American forces have operated in the region post-9/11.

All of this may be welcome news to anyone who opposes the world police stance of the U.S., but Trump kicking out the crutches of our ailing empire could also swing in a disastrous direction. As former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Joseph Yun detailed to CNN, the void the U.S. leaves is prompting more countries, including North Korea, to look more toward nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future aggressors. 

As anyone who has studied nuclear proliferation will tell you, this is a dangerous game: The more countries that rely on nukes for peace, the greater chance there is of a nuclear holocaust, whether it’s triggered accidentally or intentionally. The slow decay of American hegemony may be good news for many people in the world, but it could also create new existential risks as China reemerges as a global superpower.

In the meantime, it probably won’t hurt to start learning Mandarin on Duolingo.

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The tale of Donald Trump sneaking off Air Force One in a catering truck captured public attention for many reasons. It was a reminder that, for all his tough talk, the president harbors a sense of fear. Hiding away in a glorified ice chest would also have been a blow to the 80-year-old’s dignity. But the charade, which was first revealed by the Washington Post, also gave us insight, as political scientist Scott Lemieux wrote, “into who he considers his actual inner circle.”

Left behind on the decoy plane were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and other administration officials and aides. The only people deemed worthy of saving from Iran’s reported threat were people whose full-time jobs are tending the president’s body and, more importantly, his ego: Natalie Harp, who writes Trump love letters, and whose main job is showing him flattering social media posts. Body man Walt Nauta. Dan Scavino, Trump’s former golf caddie. Oh yeah, and Pete Hegseth. 

The defense secretary’s inclusion on this list does not suggest he is an especially well-regarded or important person, especially when other prominent Cabinet members — not to mention White House reporters — were left vulnerable to the rumored assassination threat. On the contrary, his inclusion in Trump’s flock of flatterers is another sign that Hegseth’s main skill is fluffing up the narcissist-in-chief. It helps explain how Hegseth — unlike former Cabinet members such as former Attorney General Pam Bondi or former Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, who recently lots their jobs — seems in no danger of losing his job, even as his manifest incompetence is a big part of the reason Trump is losing the war with Iran. He may be bad at running the military, but Hegseth is good at lying to (and attacking) the press and stroking his boss’s ego, which are the only skills that count in Trump’s White House. 

Recent news about the ongoing disaster aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is another reminder of why Hegseth may indeed lead the highly competitive race to be the most hated man in Washington. Both Stars and Stripes and the Military Times reported that multiple service members had attempted to jump off the aircraft carrier, which has been deployed for over eight months without any real breaks. Sailors are reportedly “struggling with exhaustion and declining morale, including reports of suicidal thoughts,” explained Alison Bath of Stars and Stripes.

The details coming from family members offer a chilling illustration of how little regard Hegseth has for the actual well-being of service members, even as he releases videos implying they have low testosterone levels or berates them for being “fat” or “beardos.” Sailors have reported being fed “rotten” food or barely being fed at all, and desperate family members have been begging the Navy for relief. The wife of one sailor told MS NOW’s Priya Sidhar that the company is working 12-14 hour days and that her husband “said that he was exhausted working on the flight deck.” He also raised safety concerns with his superiors. “His prescription contact lenses had expired,” Sidhar reported, “and he told his chain of command that he couldn’t even see what he was doing, and he was worried about causing accidents.”

Hegseth, though, is shrugging off the concerns, telling reporters the issue is “completely misrepresented” and that the service members have “everything we can provide them at every single moment.”

Trump was even more callous and dishonest about the suffering of the sailors, saying that the deployment was “not nearly long enough,” even though, at over 260 days, it has set a record for the longest deployment. (On Friday, the acting Navy secretary announced the ship would be returning to the U.S. and replaced by the USS George Washington.)

Trump and Hegseth clearly share a disregard for the lives of the very service members they are asking to wage war on Iran. But the debacle also reveals how Hegseth’s twisted priorities appear to have endeared him to his boss, seemingly above every other sycophant surrounding the president. Beyond operating in the Northern Arabian Sea to aid in logistics and serve as a deterrent to Iran, it seems like the reason the USS Lincoln is being held in this Kafkaesque hell is to shore up the illusion — or perhaps even Trump’s delusion — that the war with the Islamic Republic will be over soon.  

The president, desperate to keep stock markets afloat and MAGA voters on the hook, has been playing a game for months where he announces a “deal” with Iran to end the war, usually timed to the market’s opening bell, buoying stock prices. But the news invariably turns out to not be true. The danger for Trump is that investors might finally wise up and stop falling for false promises. Swapping out a major aircraft carrier deployed in the Middle East, as the Pentagon is now planning to do, could blow the whole game up, as it is a tacit admission that the war is not ending in the next few days, as we’ve been told is happening for months. Sunday’s news, reported by the Wall Street Journal, that Iran is secretly planning to “escalate the war” will also not help matters.

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This pattern suggests Hegseth is far more concerned about his boss’s fixation on stock prices and media coverage than he is about listening to the advice of admirals, who have been bearing the brunt of complaints from families of service members over the USS Lincoln. Even by the low standards of Trump appointees, Hegseth has shown an eagerness to back up the president’s every lie and delusion, not matter the cost. This dubious distinction is no doubt why, even as he is shepherding what may turn out to be Trump’s most notable entry in a long list of failures, Hegseth was included in the small club of people Trump opted to save from a possible attack on Air Force One. 

The secretary may be in Trump’s good graces, but in the real world, his reputation — which was never good to begin with, since he was comically unqualified for this job — is in the toilet. The American public loathes Hegseth. As CNN’s Harry Enten recently explained, at 22 points under water, Hegseth’s approval ratings are “the lowest of the low.” 

Hegseth is also widely loathed by fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill, even as they held their noses and voted for him to pacify Trump. As POLITICO reported, Hegseth has been “regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers,” asking them to pass the largest defense spending bill in history. This request — asking Republicans to spend lavishly on weapons — should be as easy as talking Hegseth into another round of martinis at breakfast. But GOP members are worried about the midterms, and they don’t want to answer for the Iran war or the equally unpopular defense secretary. 

Hegseth is likely to stay, though, even as Trump posts on Truth Social that he’s “extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing,” including “getting rid of DEI.” Sure, the secretary has mismanaged the military to the point that sailors are reportedly attempting suicide. But he has blocked the promotions of talented leaders who annoy MAGA by being women or Black, and that’s what really counts.

One sailor who reportedly jumped overboard is only 19 — practically still a kid. The terror and trauma Hegseth is inflicting him and his fellow service members in this losing war points to a man with no moral character at all. No wonder Trump loves him. 

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The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East visited the USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday as the aircraft carrier’s exhausted crew nears the end of a nearly nine-month deployment marked by reports of deteriorating living conditions and mental health concerns.

Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, spent several hours aboard the Lincoln meeting with sailors and Marines during a 10-day tour of the region. It was the only ship Cooper visited during the trip.

The visit comes as scrutiny grows over conditions aboard the carrier, which left San Diego in November and has now been deployed for more than 260 days. The Lincoln has gone more than 200 days without a port call while supporting U.S. operations in the war with Iran.

Families have reported food shortages, problems with drinking water, broken showers and laundry facilities and growing psychological strain among the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard. Reports of sailors attempting to go overboard have further raised concerns about the crew’s mental health. The Navy has acknowledged mental health cases but disputed reports that the ship is experiencing a broader crisis.

The administration has largely dismissed the criticism.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said reports about conditions aboard the Lincoln have been misrepresented. President Donald Trump went further Friday, telling reporters that the carrier’s record-setting stretch at sea was “not nearly long enough.”

Families of deployed sailors have pushed back, accusing Trump and Hegseth of dismissing what their loved ones have experienced aboard the ship.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a Marine Corps veteran, blamed the administration Sunday for what he called a “true lack of leadership.”

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC’s “This Week” that morale aboard the Lincoln has improved since sailors learned they will finally be coming home.

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Relief, however, comes with a strategic cost.

The USS George Washington, the Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, is being pulled from the western Pacific and sent toward the Middle East to replace the Lincoln. The move will temporarily leave the western Pacific without a U.S. aircraft carrier even as China increases military activity in the region.

The Lincoln’s return date has not yet been announced.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a busy man. When he isn’t working out with fellow Cabinet members and denying promotions to Black and female officers, he’s making videos ordering the troops to take testosterone tests to prove they are manly enough to serve their country. He’s fighting the culture war morning, noon and night. When he can find the extra time, he’s also running the Pentagon as it wages war in Iran, commits murder on the high seas in the Caribbean and prepares to invade Cuba — and possibly Mali and Greenland. Hegseth has a lot on his plate. 

That includes demanding a $454 billion increase in the 2027 Pentagon budget, which brings the total request to nearly $1.5 trillion — a 44% increase from the previous year. Hegseth has called this a “generational investment” that comes out roughly to all of U.S. military spending in World War II. You might think that it’s because of Donald Trump’s war in Iran and all the munitions the military is going through, but you would be wrong because, like most wars, it is paid for separately from the Pentagon budget through emergency supplemental requests.

During a combative appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hegseth asked for another $67 billion in supplemental funding for the rest of the budget year. But the shock of that request paled in comparison to another number. Hegseth estimated that the Iran war has cost $37.5 billion so far, far higher than the $30 billion figure the Pentagon only recently gave to lawmakers. 

That number is astounding on its own, but according to most sources and experts, it significantly lowballs the war’s true cost, which continues to mount. NBC News reported that, according to internal estimates by the Defense Department peg the amount at $80 billion to $100 billion. 

It’s not unusual for administrations of both parties to bulk up the Pentagon budget, although the Republicans have always been the most passionate about it. But this is beyond the wildest dreams of Pentagons past. With all the cuts the Trump administration has made to everything else in the government, you’d think they would be a little less greedy. But that’s not how they roll. In Trump’s first term, military spending was profligate, and this time it’s a free-for-all.

Hegseth is basically asking for an unlimited supply of money to finance an extremely unpopular war and such “generational investments” like the “Trump-class battleships,” otherwise known as the Golden Fleet. We needn’t worry that they are being irresponsible, though. They are committed to rooting out “woke” wherever they find it, and that will surely save a few bucks somewhere down the road.

When the senators asked him why the Pentagon needed all this extra money, Hegseth fell back on the Trump administration’s catch-all explanation: “Joe Biden did it.” In this the secretary was correct. Biden requested military funding for Ukraine through emergency supplemental requests. But the Trump administration has created an unprecedented innovation. In partnership with MAGA allies on Capitol Hill, they are trying to get it passed through the reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered but is subject to ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, who can strip the provision if it is determined to be non-budgetary.

The U.S. is running through its supplies of expensive precision-guided munitions and air-defense interceptors at record pace in the Iran war, and there are concerns that reduced inventories are going to affect readiness in case the country is drawn into a war it didn’t choose. Hegseth, though, would not cop to that, insisting instead that all was well — and that the Pentagon just needed more cash to fix up the depleted military Biden left them.

House Republicans have proven more pliant. On Wednesday, by a margin of 216 to 212, they passed a $1.15 trillion defense bill to cover some of what the White House is requesting, adding some juicy extras for artificial intelligence and other tech-bro projects led by the private-equity types who are running much of the Pentagon these days. According to Guardian, one of them, former Uber executive Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering who is an aggressive promoter of AI, made a profit of up to $24 million by selling a private investment he held in xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, earlier this year. (In March 2025, Michael declared the value of his stake at between $500,000 and $1 million.) Since the company isn’t public, no one is quite sure how he came to own the shares or who he sold them to, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the defense department entered into two separate contracts with xAI before Michael sold his shares. 

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He’s not the only one who appears to be milking the military-industrial complex. The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s eldest sons, have a portfolio of tech companies that are raking in billions from the Pentagon. These are not businesses with which the Trumps have any experience, and the partnerships and investments have all been initiated since their father became president the second time. Don Jr. has said publicly that he works with Hegseth to steer more contracts to drone manufacturers, of which he is a beneficiary. Both brothers are heavily involved with firms that have contracts all over the Pentagon. They insist, though, there’s no conflict of interest and no one in the department has even considered favoritism.

As usual, Hegseth behaved like a teenage bully during the Senate hearing. He argued with senators, blamed Biden and insisted that America has won the war in Iran while simultaneously requesting many more billions to win it. Since the GOP is attempting to push this supplemental package through using reconciliation, they won’t need Democrats to pass it, so one can probably expect that he’ll get what he wants. The firehose of money flowing to the Pentagon and all the insiders who are making massive bank from it isn’t going to dry up any time soon. 

Hegseth ended the week with a gratuitous gesture to his commander in chief, who spent a good part of his time explaining that the 18 deaths in the Iran war are nothing compared to all the deaths in previous wars. To make Trump feel better, Hegseth removed from the tally four troops who were killed in renewed fighting, bringing the official death toll back down to 14. Military officials told the New York Times that “one reason behind the change was . . . because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April.”

Nonetheless, Trump attended the dignified transfer of the four fallen soldiers’ remains and concocted a story to burnish his war lust. “All of them said very strongly, ‘We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’”

Sure they did.

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President Donald Trump is ramping up the war in Iran once again, but this escalation comes while the United States has comparatively fewer tools in its military arsenal — and to soften the war’s economic effects.

Since the total breakdown of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran in early July, the conflict has intensified, with the countries exchanging fire for 11 days straight, resulting in four American deaths. The total number of U.S. deaths since the war began in February now stands at 18, alongside nearly a hundred casualties, per reporting from the New York Times.

The escalation comes as the U.S. is in a weaker position than when it started, with historically low levels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, and with comparatively diminished military and diplomatic resources.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that the reserve fell to about 311 million barrels of oil over the previous week, the lowest level since March 1983. This happened as part of an ongoing tapping of the reserve that’s expected to conclude in mid-to-late August or early September. Pending a change in regulation, this will be the end of the line for releases from the reserve, which is required by statute to maintain a minimum inventory of about 250 million barrels of oil.

According to Max Pyziur, a director for transportation fuel and natural gas project at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, this drawdown is one of the major factors that has helped suppress the price of oil and gasoline in the United States since the start of the war.

Without the ability to rely on the reserve, Pyziur said he expects the government and oil companies to explore more alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, such as sources in Venezuela and Argentina, along with additional transportation options to get oil out of the region. While these alternatives are already being explored, new infrastructure will likely take years to come online, Pyziur said, which means Americans will have to deal with elevated prices.

“The tools are running out,” he said. “We only have so much time as far as strategic reserves. We could be in an extended period of time with a four-dollar handle on gasoline prices, five bucks for diesel. And if that continues, well, then that affects the economy, that affects expectations, and it might affect political outcomes if the Democrats are smart.”

Pyziur also noted that oil prices have been suppressed in part because China slashed its own imports of oil. A resumption to pre-war levels of imports could cause global oil prices to increase significantly, but there’s no guarantee that China would ramp up imports, he said. The country’s previous import levels were part of an effort to fill its own oil reserves, and even if it decides to resume them, there would be a limit to how much oil they could store.

But it’s not just American oil reserves that have diminished since the beginning of the war in February. The U.S. military’s own weapons stockpiles, including crucial drone and missile interceptors, were expended in the first period of the war. Remaining stockpiles of other munitions vary.

Anelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Middle East Program, highlighted that there are some questions as to whether Trump is even fully aware of current levels of munitions stockpiles, due to a reluctance among Pentagon leaders to deliver bad news to the president.

“The situation is significantly worse this time. But I don’t know that we’re sort of grappling with that. The average American again may think, ‘Oh, just another round of this stupid war, here we go again,’ it could really be much worse this time,” Sheline said. 

One potentially significant difference is the entry of the Houthis into the war, with the Iran-aligned group announcing a blockade of Saudi Arabia. While it remains to be seen how exactly the promised blockade could play out, the Houthis’ engagement represents a significant expansion of the war. 

The most consequential difference between now and when the war began, however, may be the degradation of trust in diplomatic efforts between the U.S. and Iran. This makes escalation more likely, Sheline said, which could result in attacks on infrastructure like desalination plants, which serve as a necessary water supply for parts of Iran, as well as the Gulf countries. 

“The Iranians may be less willing to engage diplomatically because they’ve been burned several times in the past,” she said. “The possibility of escalation, therefore, seems much more likely, the result then potentially being a truly devastating humanitarian impact, both for the Iranian population and for the Gulf population.” 

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Pete Hegseth has once again decided to humiliate the American military, this time by claiming the troops need more testosterone. But the defense secretary, armed with his perfectly coiffed hair and alleged makeup studio, is ready to restore their manhood. In a video released Wednesday, Hegseth discovered spoke of how “the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting” and “demands maximum psychological and mental readiness.”

His solution? “High-T,” as he put it. Despite his loathing of “beardos,” Hegseth is excited about “fixing” those he deems falling short in the manhood-measurement department. Since he can’t actually pull out a ruler and demand his “warfighters” drop trou, the former Fox News host is doing the next best thing: making testosterone level testing mandatory for all service members over 30. 

The move is just the latest example of a paradox that plagues MAGA men, from Donald Trump down to the everyday Joe Rogan fan posting workout videos in his Oakley sunglasses. Efforts to prove their masculinity are so over-the-top that they inevitably read more as anxious than tough, revealing the deep well of insecurity fueling the movement.

Hegseth is an especially cringeworthy example, with an attitude toward the troops that is less of a leader and closer to a third-grade boy dressing up his G.I. Joes. He’s fixated entirely on superficial indicators of “manliness,” which gets in the way of the concerns that any normal adult would have in the job, such as how to avoid causing wars and proceeding to losing them.

“There is no magic formula that can tell us what level of testosterone best prepares someone to serve in the United States military,” Dr. Emile Redwood, a urologist with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told me. While “there are broad physiologic parameters of estrogen and testosterone that support our overall endocrine system function,” he said, they don’t correlate to “our mental readiness to be a clear and cogent member of a team.”

“Testosterone levels have no place as a proxy for a myriad of physical and mental readiness tests, where capacity and readiness is directly measured,” Redwood concluded.

But it’s unlikely Hegseth understands or even cares about what the actual medical science says. This is the same man who declared in 2019 that he doesn’t wash his hands because “germs are not a real thing.” He later tried to write his germ denialism off as a joke, but at the Pentagon he has ended flu vaccine mandates for service members, calling them “absurd.” This decision is likely rooted in nothing more than a childish understanding of biology, which equates testosterone with being “manly” and therefore assumes the more “T”, the manlier the man. In reality, artificially boosting testosterone, especially if not medically indicated, can shrink testicles, lower sperm counts and even make it harder to urinate. 

According to the New York Times, women will also be tested, even though women typically have much lower testosterone rates than men, which is not a medical problem. But again, this isn’t about science or health. Hegseth’s hostility to women in the military is well-documented. In his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” Hegseth declared that women aren’t tough enough for “the military, especially in combat units.” As defense secretary, he has a pattern of blocking military promotions for both women and people of color. His new insistence that high testosterone levels are necessary to do the job sends an unmistakable message: that women are categorically unable to serve as “warfighters.”

Women have been serving for decades now, including in front line roles, even if they were only legally recognized as combat soldiers in 2013. But Hegseth can’t seem to accept this reality, which speaks to his immaturity and eagerness to bury himself in reactionary fantasies. He’s not alone, either. This juvenile “no girls allowed” attitude has been growing more toxic in recent years, and has been propelled by Republican leaders, from Donald Trump down to the party’s grassroots, who encourage men to believe it’s somehow more “manly” to play-act being tough guys rather than growing up and living in the real world. The vibes are childish, more like those of 11-year-old boys pretending they’re in an action cartoon than adult men who read books and enjoy the company of women.

Hegseth may believe the military has a “low T” problem, but in fact it’s just the opposite. There have been numerous reports of health problems, and apparently even the 2022 death of a new recruit, due to soldiers taking performance-enhancing drugs, including testosterone and human growth hormone. In response, the Navy SEALS instituted random drug testing in 2023.

Hegseth insists his testosterone push is “not about artificial enhancement,” but the disclaimer is an empty caveat. Young men are bombarded by advertisers and social media influencers selling shady supplements and drugs that promise to give them an edge. Now, the head of the military hyping testosterone like it’s a magical elixir will only enhance the appeal of dangerous performance-enhancing drugs. 

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times noted on Bluesky that Hegseth “cares more about his 1950s aesthetics than a functional and competent armed forces,” right down to micromanaging facial hair and his unscientific assumptions about hormone levels. The disastrous Iran war suggests that Hegseth is not capable of the real work of a defense secretary, which was entirely predictable considering his only previous management experience was in running two non-profits into the ground. The fixation on appearances, especially on facile and exaggerated gender performance, is an obvious attempt at compensating for his own impotence in the job. 

But Hegseth isn’t alone in this. MAGA loves nothing more than a Potemkin village, and Trump has gotten as far as he has because he’s very good at using TV tricks to create the illusion of strength and competence, especially for those who aren’t looking very closely. The belief that reality doesn’t matter if the facade is showy enough reaches into every corner of modern right-wing culture, especially when it comes to gender. The pervasive plague of MAGA men hope to deflect attention from their myriad flaws with ostentatious but empty pantomimes of alleged manliness. From barbed wire tattoos to oversized pickup trucks to yelling “Michelle Obama is a man” at a UFC fight, there are millions of men like Pete Hegseth, hoping their theatrics will hide the anxious little boy inside them.

Not that any of them deserve pity. There is a way to get off this hamster wheel of trying and failing to prove you’re man enough, and it’s not through testosterone injections. It’s through growing the hell up already, and maybe even doing something as “feminine” as getting therapy. By chasing these silly ideas about manhood, MAGA men are ignoring the more realistic and worthwhile goal of being a functional adult, someone who garners love and respect by being decent to other people and handling their own responsibilities.

Granted, that’s also what mature womanhood looks like, but so what? Only insecure boys need women to be inferior to feel good about themselves anyway. Hegseth proves this every day. He wants you to believe he’s a big tough guy, when in fact he can’t even handle the idea that women, people of color, queer people and even “low T” men are just as capable as he ever was at being soldiers.

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