This article, authored by Nicole Silveriois republished under the Creative Commons “CC BY-NC-ND” license with permission fromThe Daily Caller News Foundation.
A reporter for TMZ asked Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Friday if he got an “adrenaline rush” when ordering military strikes.
TMZ DC reporter Jacob Wasserman asked Hegseth during a Pentagon briefing how he feels when he orders military strikes on Iran. Hegseth, who joked that his question was “very TMZ,” said that his priority was ensuring that service members have all the resources they need to be successful in their mission and safely come home.
NEW: Secretary of War Hegseth shuts down reporter's provocative question:REPORTER: "When you give these orders to carry out this extreme level of violence, what's going through your mind and your body? Do you have, like, an adrenaline rush? Are you scared? Do you feel like…pic.twitter.com/JdQmyKXfuF
“I’ve heard you talk a lot about bombing people and places,” Wasserman said. “And when you give these orders to carry out this extreme level of violence, what’s going through your mind and your body? Do you have like an adrenaline rush? Are you scared? Do you feel like you’re on a power trip? Just walk us through and paint us a picture of what it feels like mentally and physically.”
“It’s a very TMZ question,” Hegseth said. “My only thought process is to ensure that our war fighters have everything they need to be successful, defeat and destroy the enemy, and they come home. I want them to feel empowered, to have every authority they need within our rules and within our law to bring maximum violence to the enemy. Because war is violent. War requires doing difficult things. But I want our people to feel empowered so it’s our guys that come home and their guys that do not.”
Hegseth also called on another TMZ reporter, Charlie Cotton, who asked if he would consider changing his department’s name to the “Department of Peace” because “that’s what we’re all after.”
“Well, that’s the pursuit,” Hegseth replied. “It’s a great question, actually. You go from Defense to War because you want to be proactive about peace through strength. And, really –– I gave a speech in front of generals about what the ethos of the War Department is all about because I wanted to go through every echelon of this department.”
TMZ has ramped up its political coverage as of late, including byphotographingpoliticians such as Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham at Disney World around the same time he was calling for further military intervention against Iran. The outlet alsocaughtDemocratic California Rep. Robert Garcia at a luxury bar in Las Vegas during the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown in March.
Newsmax’s Carla Babbstatedon X that the majority of the reporters at the briefing do not regularly cover the Pentagon.
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