President Trump told reporters Thursday he has “every intention” of keeping Pete Hegseth as Secretary of War and that Hegseth is doing a “very good job.” The statement landed after Democrats swept the midterms and some Republicans, including retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, began floating Hegseth as the convenient scapegoat for the Iran war and the election results.
The Left and their media partners have treated Hegseth as a target since the moment Trump named him. A military that answers to Trump, focused on lethality rather than DEI experiments, is an existential problem for them. Hegseth has spent his time cleaning house, restoring standards, and running operations against Iran without the usual apologies. That combination scares the people who spent years turning the Pentagon into a jobs program for the resistance.
Newsbusters has catalogued the campaign.
NBC’s Saturday Night Live put Colin Jost in a Hegseth costume and spent a cold open claiming the Department of War eagle logo has “a Nazi vibe.” The eagle has been the official military emblem since 1949. The same design appears on officer uniforms. Jost’s character still delivered the line: “It’s an American eagle with a Nazi vibe.” The sketch aired in October 2026 while U.S. forces remained engaged against Iran.
Earlier SNL bits asserted that Caribbean drug-boat strikes were actually hitting fishermen under an operation named “Kill Everybody.” No evidence supported the claim. The same cast mocked the opening of the Iran campaign by having its Trump character say he would blame Hegseth “when it doesn’t work,” less than 24 hours after the first strikes.
CNN spent months amplifying a leaked preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that suggested the 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear sites had only set the program back months. The assessment was low-confidence and based on one day’s reporting. CNN’s initial report omitted those qualifiers. When Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine briefed the press and called the coverage fake news, CNN hosts claimed he had confirmed their story. Newsbusters checked the original CNN piece via the Wayback Machine and found it never used the words “low confidence” or “preliminary.”
They lost control of the military when Hegseth took the helm. They must wrest back control to take the country completely. This is a real insurrection, where people conspired & plot & subvert. And they have a plan for taking over & holding onto power & never letting it go. This is part of a plan with some Republicans & Democrats working together to crush the MAGA movement so the people never have the opportunity again to claim the rights afforded to them by the constitution of the United States of America. As I have said: they took the Republic & now they will dismantle it.
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) November 5, 2026
CNN also edited a clip of Rep. Seth Moulton so that Hegseth’s response to a war-crime accusation was cut out, then let Moulton float the idea of the death penalty. Hosts sat still while Democratic members called the Iran operation a “quagmire” two months in. Hegseth answered on the record: “Shame on you, calling this a quagmire two months in… handing propaganda to our enemies.”
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell twice claimed Hegseth wanted to ban women pilots and women from combat roles. Hegseth’s stated position: “Gimme a female pilot all day long. I have no issues with that.” Mitchell repeated the falsehood after it had already been corrected.
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump is REFUSING to fire SecWar Pete Hegseth, saying he has EVERY intention to keep Hegseth around and wants him to fight back against Democrats’ pressure campaign
Good!
HE’S LOVED BY OUR TROOPS 🇺🇸
SecWar is a top Democrat target for investigations and impeachment, per CNN — 47 says BE DEFIANT
You can end the Iran war and keep Pete. Morale is absolutely incredible right now and that is not even CLOSE to disputed
Multiple White House officials told CNN that Trump “personally likes Hegseth very much,” and that hasn’t changed
Just know they tried to get Hegseth removed LAST YEAR, MULTIPLE times. Iran is NOT their “principled” reason
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 5, 2026
During the confirmation fight the same outlets ran the alcoholism and sexual-assault stories on a loop. Hegseth was investigated, cleared, and paid a settlement in a case prosecutors declined to pursue. The media treated the allegations as established fact while soft-pedaling Democratic nominees four years earlier. Newsbusters tracked the imbalance on the night of the hearing: ten Democratic soundbites to five Republican ones on the evening news.
Rachel Maddow, the night Democrats took the House, immediately began talking about impeaching Hegseth. “If they want to bring impeachment charges against, say, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth… they can now try to do that.” The same host had already declared it “impossible to imagine” Hegseth surviving the drug-boat controversy and called for his resignation.
LAWFARE: The Democrats are going after Trump’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. The investigations and hearings will be relentless.
— @amuse (@amuse) November 4, 2026
Hegseth has answered the coverage in the language the press uses against him. At a March 2026 briefing he told reporters their headlines should read “Iran Increasingly Desperate” instead of “Mideast War Intensifies,” and he called a CNN piece on the Strait of Hormuz “patently ridiculous” and “fundamentally unserious.” He has said the press cheers against Trump “in your DNA and in your blood.”
The pattern holds. When the military under Hegseth hits targets, the story is that the strikes failed or that American forces committed war crimes. When Iran hits something, the story is American overreach. When Hegseth quotes the Bible or restores fitness standards, the story is extremism. When he survives another round of leaks, the story is that Trump is about to fire him.
STUPID AND ARROGANT: Stephen A. Smith predicts Democrats will mistake a vote against Trump for a mandate, try to impeach Pete Hegseth and investigate Marco Rubio.
“And that same kind of chaos is going to cost them the presidency in 2028.” https://t.co/5JqKUQXFI1
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 4, 2026
Trump’s public defense this week rejects that script. He is not treating Hegseth as disposable. The media and the Democrats who just regained the House will keep testing the decision. They understand that a Pentagon run by someone who prioritizes killing the enemy over satisfying the press is a direct threat to the political order they spent a decade building.
Whatfinger News is tracking the war and the political fight around it. See the military coverage at https://militarywar.whatfinger.com/ and the election pages at https://dedicatedissues.com/election/.
The Whatfinger News Team: Sgt R, Sgt K with Grok on edits
Text from New York Post – – – President Trump insisted Thursday that he has “every intention” of retaining Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as pressure grows to make the Pentagon chief the scapegoat for Tuesday’s sweeping Democratic victories in the midterm elections. Trump boasted that Hegseth was doing a ‘very good job,’ despite facing an avalanche of criticism over his handling of the war in Iran, for which he has been a strong advocate for. Several Republicans, such as retiring Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have nudged Trump to sack Hegseth and replace him while Republicans still have a Senate majority.
#donaldtrump #petehegseth #iran
