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‘Much Like the 11th Century’: Trump Defense Pick Called for American ‘Crusade’
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, has expressed opposition to the United Nations as a “fully globalist” entity and attacked NATO as “a relic” that should be “scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended.” He has also advocated for the United States to ignore the Geneva Conventions, which govern humanitarian treatment in war. He has suggested that America’s military should tell Al Qaeda if they do not surrender, “we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs,” while calling for a new “American crusade,” according to The Guardian.
“Our present moment is much like the 11th century,” Hegseth, a weekend co-host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” wrote in his book, “American Crusade.”
The Guardian calls it “a striking passage” in which “he presents his support for Israel as a renewal of medieval crusades.”
“We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade,” Hegseth wrote. “We Christians – alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel – need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.”
“For us as American crusaders, Israel embodies the soul of our American crusade – the ‘why’ to our ‘what’.”
RELATED: Hegseth Vetting Questioned Amid Sexual Misconduct Allegation
“Faith, family, freedom, and free enterprise; if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel. And then find an arena in which to fight for her,” he added.
Last week, news broke of Hegseth’s tattoos, one of which includes the words, “Deus vult.”
“Several experts have cited the use of ‘Deus vult’ by extremist groups,” according to The National Catholic Reporter. “The phrase — attributed to Pope Urban II ahead of the First Crusade in 1095, which sought to regain Christian control of the Holy Land from Muslim rule — has become an online hashtag, and has also appeared in anti-Muslim graffiti, with two Arkansas mosques defaced in 2016 with the text.”
Earlier this month The Bulwark noted that Hegseth “has made clear that he sees himself and Donald Trump—whom he has approvingly called a ‘Crusader in Chief’—as leaders in a holy war to reclaim America.”
They cite this passage from Hegseth’s 2020 book:
“Like crusaders and patriots past, Donald Trump’s red hat rebellion demonstrates that unapologetically going on offense is the only tenable strategy for the defense of our republic. Surrounded by the Left, with the odds stacked against us, only a crusade will do.”
The Guardian also reports that in his book Hegseth “asks bluntly: ‘Why do we fund the anti-American UN? Why is Islamist Turkey a member of Nato?'”
Hegseth “has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions,” and “has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel, a country of which he says: ‘If you love America, you should love Israel.'”
“Elsewhere,” The Guardian adds, “Hegseth appears to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions and any international laws governing the conduct of war, and instead ‘unleash them’ to become a ‘ruthless’, ‘uncompromising’ and ‘overwhelmingly lethal’ force geared to ‘winning our wars according to our own rules’.”
READ MORE: ‘Declaration of War on Expertise’: Experts Explain Danger of Trump ‘MAGA Zealot’ Nominees
In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth asks: “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?”
“Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.”
“We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it,” Hegseth complains. “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”
“Who cares what other countries think?” he concludes.
The Guardian also points to Hegseth’s successful efforts to have Donald Trump, during his first term, “pardon US soldiers charged or convicted of war crimes.”
Attorney Adam Cohen, Vice Chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointing to The Guardian’s report writes: “The man Trump picked to be SecDef Said ‘The military and police..will be forced to make a choice’ Because ‘there will be some form of civil war’ So MAGA should start ‘an AMERICAN CRUSADE’ To ‘mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents’ HE MUST NOT BE CONFIRMED”
Cohen was pointing to another article at The Guardian on Hegseth, from Friday, that reads in part:
“In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a ‘national divorce’ in which ‘The military and police … will be forced to make a choice’ and ‘Yes, there will be some form of civil war.'”
“Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake ‘an AMERICAN CRUSADE’, to ‘mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents’, to ‘attack first’ in response to a left he identifies with ‘sedition’, and he writes that the book ‘lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies’.”
Fred Wellman, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, is now a political consultant and the host of “On Democracy.” Responding to Cohen’s post, he writes: “Pete Hegseth must step aside.”
READ MORE: ‘One of the Smallest Margins Since the 19th Century’: NYT Crushes Trump’s ‘Landslide’ Claim
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
