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Invoking the Pharisees [1]

['View Profile', 'Greg Dworkin']

Date: 2026-04-16  

A news conference with Secretary of “War” Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is underway, and despite knowing better I was still stunned by how closely tied Hegseth’s position is to Christian evangelism. He spent about half of his speech berating the Fake News for not reporting on the “good” being done by Trump and the military, and he related a church service he recently attended in which he thought of the accounts of the Pharisees and how they picked apart the actions of Jesus to look for anything negative to report on. He equated the press (“not all,” he admitted) with being like the Pharisees, who had six major beefs with Jesus: sabbath breaking, blasphemy, association with sinners, “demonic” power, violating traditions, and seeking power. The rest of Hegseth’s talk was used to wrap the failures in Iran in the glory of our warfighters, and lauding the strength of the US in comparison to Iran. One particularly distasteful moment was when he dismissed Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. Without a Navy, he claimed, Iran has no control – the US is only using ten percent of its naval resources, and has the true control over the strait. Utter hogwash.

We are in very dangerous waters here. The church-state boundary is nearly completely dissolved, especially when you consider the recent posts by Hegseth’s boss equating himself to Jesus and dissing the pope. We’re witnessing the creation of a Christian nation.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/16/800020937/community/invoking-the-pharasees/

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