#125. Pete Hegseth and You

Never a good feeling when your group chat makes the news.

Mar 31, 2025

Hi everyone,

Last Thursday night after learning a lot about rainforests and climate science at my friend Chris Duffy’s show Wrong Answers Only in Mobile, Alabama, we arrived too late at the bar to order food. Our waitress graciously advised us that we could order something to eat at the venue’s spacious outdoor seating area, but until then, the venue manager had fifty pounds of free crawfish he was trying to give away. We turned to look across the yard, and there he was, waving at us from behind a massive tray of crustaceans. We ambled over to hime and sucked down a bunch of crawdads; I even ate a perfectly spiced plum-sized potato out of my hand like, well, a plum.

A cardboard tray with the husks of some crawfish and a potato in it, photographed from above at night. — Apologies to Maris who I know reads this and hates looking at fish.

The show was so much fun as always, and the guest scientist really impressed upon the audience the ability to make small good choices whose ripple effects benefit lots of people. I thought that was a beautiful ethos to walk around with. My friend Alison Leiby and I had traveled together to Alabama on Wednesday for the Thursday night performance, and we spent Thursday morning poking around the Mobile Botanical Gardens and also the art museum. It was the perfect amount of Doing Something that felt cultural and enriching without being Actual Work. (Friend-of-the-newsletter Negin Farsad was also on the show, but she didn’t get to town in time to join us on our adventures.) Good show. Art museum. Botanical gardens. Mysterious seafood. That’s all it takes for me to call a trip a resounding success.

A beautiful orange/pink flower that may or may not be a snapdragon. — “Is that a snapdragon?” I asked, having heard that word before without knowing what one of those looked like.

On Tuesday night before I left New York, I attended my friend Jamie Hood’s book launch for her new memoir Trauma Plot. Jamie writes with such a vast set of literary and philosophical touchstones, and she plumbs her own brain’s wrinkles so thoroughly and movingly. Her book contains intense subject matter, but Jamie’s conversation with

rayne fisher-quann

was both extraordinarily thoughtful and at times a lot of fun too.

On Saturday I attended my nephew’s (by marriage, which counts but is its own specific relationship…uncle-in-law) bar mitzvah in New Jersey. He did a great job leading a service at his synagogue and then we all went out to a deli for lunch. It was suggested that I get a “sloppy joe” which in New Jersey is a club sandwich with several different meats and some coleslaw. I am unclear what the people of New Jersey call a saucy heap of ground beef on a hamburger bun, or whether they even serve that there, or do they not even know that the rest of America reserves the name “sloppy joe” for a completely different food item. I guess I have to…write a letter to Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen? I’m taking this all the way to the top!

Also, my episode of the So True podcast with the unfairly funny Caleb Hearon came out last week. We covered a lot of ground tonally from very sincere to extremely goofy and riffy. It was so much fun, and Caleb’s zillions of fans have been very nice to me about it, which put me at ease! I honestly was a little antsy before we recorded, because I felt nervous about matching the show’s traditional energy. It turns out I was being a baby! Caleb was so nice, and we had a great talk!

Plus, I talked with

Amy Hoggart

about politics and politics-adjacent ideas for her newsletter! It was a less silly conversation, but still very lovely!

PEP TALK FOR PETE HEGSETH

Pete Hegseth, holding a microphone, looking perturbed. — Visually conveying “Uh oh!” with his eyes. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Pete! Peter! Petey Bedwet (as I imagine your college friends called you)!

You biffed it, dude! You, the Secretary of Defense, outlined plans for bombing Yemen in a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Lots to chew on here, big dog. First of all, you don’t have bomb an already-impoverished nation to seem tough. Even if it is continuous with some really nasty U.S. foreign policy and seems consistent with your alleged personal policy on assault (in favor of). You could just do what other guys your age (Our age??? How am I only 4.5 years younger than the Secretary of Defense??? Another issue for another time!) do when they want to seem strong: Learn way too much about mixed martial arts and drive a wicked big car.

In terms of the OpSec nightmare though, here’s the good news: You can stop hiding. Everyone has seen who you are!

Sure, you have some widely respected achievements to your name. You went to Princeton! You served in the military! You’ve hosted a tv show and written (citation needed) books! You’re a high-ranking official in the executive branch of government at the same age Bob Dylan was when he recorded his MTV Unplugged concert. You’re very accomplished!

You’ve also been accused of sexual assault, and your own mother has written to you begging you to treat women better. You’ve got at least one tattoo with pretty clear white nationalist roots. You’re widely reported to be drunk at work a shocking amount, and that’s coming from me, a standup comedian, who is allowed to be drunk at work and is still agog at these stories. Your resume is, let’s say, diverse. And yes I am using that word despite knowing how much you hate it.

There’s an AA maxim that “we’re only as sick as our secrets,” and if that’s true then congratulations, fucker, you’re healthy as hell. Everyone in America knows you are a vile person and not an especially smart one. (For anyone still on your side, that’s the appeal, of course.) You don’t have to crouch behind your credentials anymore. In a fairer world, instead of having your own television program, you would have fallen off the Capitol building on January 6th while trying to free-climb the side of it so you could shove Nancy Pelosi’s letter opener up your butt handle-first. Although, considering we don’t live in a fairer world, you would have been pardoned last month anyway.

I can only imagine the stress you’ve been under, having salisbury steak for brains, and still being elevated to the highest echelons of government. Thank goodness that in your second month on the job you texted sensitive military information to a journalist, ending the charade that you are competent or qualified for your position in any way. It must feel amazing, like the physical sensation of drunkenly shitting your pants in that brief instant before you realize that your pants are now full of shit, something I assume you know about firsthand, but that’s just conjecture. The bar has crashed through the floor and has rolled into the corner of a spooky sub-basement. No one expects anything of you now, and your bosses seem to be in your corner despite the right thing to do being to relieve you of your position and then probably make you live in a well for everyone else’s safety.

Anyway congratulations on living out loud and out cruel and out dumb. You don’t have to run anymore, which is fortunate, because you are extremely at risk for tripping and falling.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did a tiny bit of light editing to this request! Nothing substantial!

I need to work out for my heart health, but because of disability, my body moves differently. At a gym, there's a 50% chance I'll be stared at like unsupervised toddler, with folks going about their business but obviously concerned. And there’s a 50% chance someone will tell me I'm an inspiration for existing in public.
- Up In The Gym Just Dealing With Some Dipshits

Ugh! I hate that people feel so compelled to be weirdos to you! You deserve to only feel self-conscious at the gym for reasons that can apply to everyone: Worries about not knowing how to use the equipment, fear of smelling bad, accidentally forgetting the right clothes and having to work out in jeans. You know, across-the-board stuff.

There’s a giant bestseller called The Let Them Theory, which according to this excellent review by my friend Katie Heaney is like a book you’d write if you heard about therapy from a friend and decided to write an entire book based loosely on something that they told you their therapist once said to them. Basically, it’s about how you can’t control other people (true, unless you’re willing to work really hard at it, which isn’t super ethical anyway) and that you should just let them do the thing they’re going to do and then respond in a way that reflects your values.

First of all: What is even the alternative to that? You tackle the other person before they have a chance to say or do anything? You hide in a very deep hole so they cannot reach you with any offending actions? The fundamental premise of this book feels like one notch above nothing.

Either way, I do think it’s fair to acknowledge that other people are going to do annoying things that you can’t always curtail even with your best effort. But instead of “let them” I’d like to propose an alternative philosophy: “Fuck them.” I of course mean this more like “a pox upon their house” and less like “have sexual relations with them.” But it’s hard to disambiguate the wording via text.

It is true that you can’t stop people, well-meaning or otherwise, from being pains in your butt. But also, fuck ‘em. Their misplaced concern or condescending feeling of “inspiration” is their problem, not yours. You’ve got a goal! These losers and chumps can’t stand in your way! They are nothing to you! As a practical matter: I bet that the more you show up and do your thing at the gym, the fewer annoyances from other regulars will present themself. But either way, when they do…fuck ‘em.

I don’t really have any standing to tell you this. I’m not really a fuck ‘em type of guy. And my exercise regimen consists mostly of running around getting jump shots up at my local park during firmly off-peak hours. I also count rushing through airports a few times a month as cardio, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, but I give myself generous unearned extra credit for it.

I’m not sure if your schedule or exercise needs allow for clandestine workouts. Or if that concept is even appealing to you. But what I can offer is the comfort of “fuck ‘em” and the encouragement to do what you need to do. (This is just a pep talk after all. For actual workout advice, I could not recommend

She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter

more highly!)

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Beach Bunny - “Big Pink Bubble”

I was searching through the new songs on Apple Music to feel in touch with contemporary culture (biffed it), and I learned there’s a new Beach Bunny album coming out soon. “Big Pink Bubble” teeters on the edge of exuberance and dread. I love the specificity of the feelings in Beach Bunny songs, even when they’re made to be shouted along with at a live show. Beach Bunny is a band that sounds like a band! Not a guy with a laptop! Not an arts collective! A BAND! I love a band-sounding band! I’m psyched to hear the rest of the album and to maybe even get a ticket to see them next month!