Part Two: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'

Summary

Podcast Summary: Behind the Bastards – Part Two: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'

Released on August 7, 2025 by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Behind the Bastards, hosts Robert Evans and Jamie Loftus delve into Pete Hegseth's controversial book, 'American Crusade'. The discussion unpacks Hegseth's political trajectory, personal controversies, and the ideological underpinnings of his manifesto.

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Pete Hegseth's Political Journey

Hegseth's 'American Crusade' is dissected as a fascist manifesto that outlines his vision for America. Originally a mainstream Republican, Hegseth's political stance shifted dramatically towards the far-right, heavily influenced by his alignment with Donald Trump.

Robert Evans [10:06]: "Hegseth was a more mainstream Republican in this period, although he is still very far right. He just didn't think Trump could win."

Hegseth admits to regressing politically after initially doubting Trump's viability, leading to his fervent support and eventual nomination for Secretary of Defense.

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Analysis of 'American Crusade'

The book is structured into various chapters that outline a dystopian future should the left prevail in American politics. Key themes include:

• Political Extremism: Hegseth warns of a "national divorce" or total collapse if leftist ideologies dominate.

  Robert Evans [09:51]: "We can either die, we can have a national divorce, or we can have a new dawn."

• Islamophobia: He portrays Islam as inherently violent, misrepresenting Islamic texts and traditions.

  Robert Evans [50:30]: "The Hadith is not a holy book... Islam's tolerance during its expanding empire was significantly better than Christendom."

• Anti-Establishment Rhetoric: Emphasizes distrust in mainstream media and educational institutions.

Hegseth's narrative is criticized for its historical inaccuracies and propagandistic tone, offering little substantive policy insight.

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Personal Controversies and Allegations

Hegseth's personal life is riddled with controversies that undermine his public persona:

• Marital Issues: Multiple marriages and allegations of infidelity.

  Robert Evans [85:14]: "In 2010, he married Samantha Dearing and later fathered a daughter with another woman while still married."

• Sexual Assault Allegations: A notable incident from 2017 involves a lawsuit where Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman during a Republican women's conference. The case was settled out of court with a confidentiality agreement.

  Robert Evans [80:53]: "Doe filed a sexual assault claim against him... He settles out of court with her in a civil suit."

• Substance Abuse: Repeated mentions of excessive drinking and partying, impacting his professional endeavors.

These personal failings are juxtaposed against his ideological stance, revealing a pattern of behavior inconsistent with his purported values.

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Religious and Ideological Beliefs

Hegseth's conversion to fervent Christianity is portrayed as a strategic alignment rather than a genuine transformation:

• Christian Nationalism: Advocates for a theocratic governance structure, aligning closely with extremist religious ideologies.

  Robert Evans [73:12]: "American Crusade is a book that advocates for Christian theocracy."

• Misinterpretation of Islamic Texts: Critiques on Islam are based on distorted understandings of Islamic scriptures.

  Robert Evans [53:18]: "He misunderstands the Hadiths... Islam does acknowledge the Torah and the New Testament in its holy texts."

Hegseth's religious rhetoric often overlaps with his political agenda, promoting a vision of America deeply intertwined with his interpretation of Christian doctrine.

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Hosts' Perspectives and Critique

Evans and Loftus provide a scathing analysis of Hegseth's work and character:

• Lack of Substance: The hosts argue that 'American Crusade' lacks concrete policy proposals, instead relying on fearmongering and divisive rhetoric.

  Jamie Loftus [07:02]: "This is anybody's game. Impossible to predict your policy on Iran based on this hot dog book."

• Inconsistencies and Hypocrisy: Highlight inconsistencies in Hegseth's narrative about his personal growth and ideological shifts.

  Robert Evans [24:52]: "He claims faith became real in 2018, aligning with his sudden embrace of Trumpism."

• Validation of Far-Right Conservatism: While critical, the hosts acknowledge that Hegseth's book reflects the broader conservative media landscape and its influence on political extremism.

  Robert Evans [49:23]: "It points out why the attempt to reach out to Republicans is so fundamentally doomed."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the dangers posed by figures like Pete Hegseth, whose blend of personal failings and extremist ideologies contribute to the erosion of democratic values. Evans and Loftus emphasize the importance of understanding and countering such narratives to prevent the further descent into authoritarianism.

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Notable Quotes

• Robert Evans [10:06]: "Hegseth was a more mainstream Republican... he didn't think Trump could win."

• Jamie Loftus [07:02]: "This is anybody's game. Impossible to predict your policy on Iran based on this hot dog book."

• Robert Evans [49:23]: "It points out why the attempt to reach out to Republicans is so fundamentally doomed."

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Please note that this summary is based on a transcript provided and aims to encapsulate the key discussions and viewpoints expressed during the episode.

Transcript

[Jamie Loftus]

Cool Zone Media. All right, listeners, update. I went over to Elizabeth, the not so dying squirrel, and she scurried away.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome to behind the Bastards, by the way.

[Jamie Loftus]

Into the cypress. Yeah. What? Fuck off. You're gonna do a good. You're gonna do a normal intro.

[Robert Evans]

Some of us have to be professionals here, Sophie. Someone has to be professional.

[Jamie Loftus]

So just to say maybe I was right not to smash her with a rock and to feel sadness on the inside, and maybe she get to evaluate.

[Robert Evans]

Her with myself, so I just said, if she's suffering, you should smash her with a rock. That's the humane thing to do, you know?

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, in that case, I mean, smash. We're all suffering in a way.

[Robert Evans]

And are we not all praying for an asteroid to hit?

[Jamie Loftus]

Begging to be smashed for the rock.

[Robert Evans]

At the end of the day, begging for the asteroid.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm just saying I hope Elizabeth, the not so dying squirrel, scurried away and now is like, you know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I hope she's fine now.

[Jamie Loftus]

Enjoying an acorn.

[Robert Evans]

If you're not. If something's not fine. You always have rocks. A big enough rock can stop anyone's pain. You know, that's the truth about rocks.

[Jamie Loftus]

I always have my phone that can call you. Who has rocks?

[Robert Evans]

I've got lots. I got so many rocks because I'm.

[Jamie Loftus]

Not throwing a rock at Elizabeth.

[Robert Evans]

You don't throw the rock. That's not nearly like, that's the odds of you missing and just injuring the animal, you know, that's just inhumane.

[Jamie Loftus]

I've been carrying around the Same Rock for 20 years, and I'm shocked. I'm shocked how easy it is to get a rock onto. I mean, I used to.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, Jamie, you're very experienced killing. Like, we've established that on the show.

[Jamie Loftus]

Don't start this shit again, okay? Listen, I can't afford this anymore. This has followed me. I just got back from my book tour, and these accusations have followed me around the country.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. That's right.

[Jamie Loftus]

I've been heckle.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. For those deaths in. Fuck. What was the town I made up. You killing people in.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, my God. I can't. I can't. Grand Rapids yelled at me all the time. Unbelievable. There's so many people who, like, I've signed a book, and then they've leaned in conspiratorially and said, I'm okay with what you did in Grand Rapids.

[Robert Evans]

Good.

[Jamie Loftus]

You know, they're sickos.

[Robert Evans]

We're manufacturing consent. So that when you do have to kill somebody, everyone's like, it's fine for Jamie to do this.

[Jamie Loftus]

This is a psychological experiment.

[Robert Evans]

I'm giving you a get out of jail free card here.

[Jamie Loftus]

Look. Now I feel like I shouldn't even say, but how easy is it?

[Robert Evans]

We're taking the jewelry pool. It's going to be like a fucking Luigi situation. She must have had a reason.

[Jamie Loftus]

Look, in his defense, I mean, the Luigi defense is. Your honor, Will we put this hottie behind bars? I think not.

[Robert Evans]

Come on.

[Jamie Loftus]

He's just simply too.

[Robert Evans]

Come on.

[Jamie Loftus]

Are you not foaming? Are you not foaming?

[Robert Evans]

Come on.

[Jamie Loftus]

I just. I've been bringing. I've gotten a rock. Like, a rock that could probably do some damage through, like, airport security all the time. It's really shocking. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Cause rocks don't set off the metal detectors. I don't think there's specifically a rule against taking a rock on a plane. Cause, like, there's gym girls, you know?

[Jamie Loftus]

It's true.

[Robert Evans]

I think it's probably fine to take a big rock on a plane.

[Jamie Loftus]

You know, I can confirm you will not have a problem with the rock.

[Robert Evans]

You know what? I'm gonna use the company money to book like, 20 different flights in the course of, like, two weeks and just repeatedly take flights with large. Start with a small rock and just go up by like a half inch diameter each time and see at what point they're like. You can't take that on a plane.

[Jamie Loftus]

I bet. My guess is there'll be a point where they'll be. They'll ask, and then there's going to be a point where they say, we cut off. And then you should. And then you should just be like, where's the rule?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, where's the rule?

[Jamie Loftus]

It's like airbud. What's the rule that says a dog can't play basketball? What's the rule that I can't have a rock on a plane? It's a souvenir. You can't prove it. It's not.

[Robert Evans]

It's a souvenir rock from wherever I found it.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's.

[Robert Evans]

So, Jamie, this has all been fun. You know what's not gonna be fun?

[Jamie Loftus]

The rest of the episode is returning.

[Robert Evans]

To Pete Hegseth's fascist manifesto.

[Jamie Loftus]

I cannot believe. I thought for sure you were finishing the book, but it was just starting.

[Robert Evans]

No, no. There's so many. There's almost a normal book's number of words in this book. Or roughly, a normal book's number of words in this book.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's shocking. I feel like they're like, really, you.

[Robert Evans]

Know, Pamphlety, I Mean, actually, I happen to agree. Some of the quotes on the back of the book, one of them stated this. Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog. Which since it came out a couple of years before your book, was a weird statement to make. But you know, it is true that publishers who commune regularly with the sacred spirits of the Oracle of Delphi have been awaiting your book for generations.

[Jamie Loftus]

You know, look, I realize that it was fulfilling a prophecy of sorts.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. There are references to Raw Dog in. Oh fuck. It was going to be a great joke. I forgot the name of the oldest story ever. Fuck with the. With the fucking. The monster and the guy with the sword. God damn it.

[Jamie Loftus]

What's the oldest book in the world?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, like the oldest, like proper?

[Jamie Loftus]

I have no idea.

[Robert Evans]

Not novel.

[Jamie Loftus]

You're talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh.

[Robert Evans]

The Epic of Gilgamesh. God damn it.

[Jamie Loftus]

What a pull.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus Christ. I turned that off so bad.

[Jamie Loftus]

No, what were you gonna say, Robert, about the Epic of Gilgamesh?

[Robert Evans]

I was going to say there were references to Raudog in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I forgot the name of the epic Gilgamesh and I just ruined the whole bit. It's fucked.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's okay. I fact checked it for you.

[Robert Evans]

Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. Jesus Christ. Oh God.

[Jamie Loftus]

Technically it was a poem, but you know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's a poem. Whatever.

[Jamie Loftus]

It counts. It counts.

[Robert Evans]

It counts. It counts.

[Jamie Loftus]

Just like Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog.

[Robert Evans]

Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog. Yeah. American Crusade.

[Jamie Loftus]

I love a good name competition. It would be great if there was a right wing book that couldn't use the title Raw Dog.

[Robert Evans]

I was just thinking how funny it would be if like you get made Secretary of Defense next and like journalists at like New York magazine are like quoting from Raw Dog to try to determine how you'll run the military.

[Jamie Loftus]

Bunch of woke bullshit.

[Robert Evans]

We really don't know where she's gonna go. Actually, this is. This is anybody's game. Impossible to predict your policy on Iran based on this Hot dog book.

[Jamie Loftus]

Look, there's a. I think some of my policies are in there. My international policy remains absolutely inscrutable.

[Robert Evans]

I know. And there is that weird chunk in the middle of Raw Dog where you spend 40 pages arguing in favor of the littoral defense ships that the US Navy was building for a while.

[Jamie Loftus]

Which I think that when you read it it sounds out of context, but when you read it, it actually makes quite a lot of sense why it's there.

[Robert Evans]

They are the hot dogs of the sea. A lot of sailors say so.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's exactly it. This is an I Heart podcast.

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[Robert Evans]

So we're now seven minutes in. Pete's next chapter is called 2020 Death, Divorce, or Dawn, which I do love. Like for a man who's been divorced this many times. Death, Divorce or Dawn.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's him talking about the different path the country could go down. We can either die, we can have a national divorce, or we can have a new dawn.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So it opens with him talking about how much he regrets that he was a Never Trumper at one point, or he was almost a Never Trumper.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And this is a necessary mea culpa from a guy who was on record as when Trump first started running, he was backing Marco Rubio.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And Hegseth was a more mainstream Republican in this period, although he is still very. He's always been very far right. He just didn't think Trump could win. And also, Trump was like a weird New York real estate guy. Right. He didn't seem like a real conservative because he's not.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right. He's a politician. He has to hedge his bets.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He's just a dick and a fascist. Anyway. His journey is one we've seen a lot of Trump's inner circle go on.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The reason why they've been able to go from this guy should never be, could absolutely never be president, be a disaster to. You know what, maybe he's the savior of the people.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The reason that they went through that is because the only thing any of these people, Pete included, believe is that I should be close to power. Right, Right. Yeah. So you just kind of have to, if you're in Pete's position, where you have some documentation as being on the other side of things, you have to explain how you turned around to licking the boot.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So here's what he gives as his first conversion moment. My first conversion moment was watching a televised Trump rally in April 2016 in Southern California. The protests on the street were so fierce that Trump and his staff had to leave their cars, walk along a highway to be escorted into a back entrance of the venue. Helicopters followed as every move and leftists were delighted. What was he talking about that was so controversial? America. Make America great again. Build the wall, America first. Outside the arena, the left wing protestors seethed with rage. Many of them waved Mexican flags and confronted police. Now, there's no reason to believe that this actually had an impact on Pete. The reason he brings this up is it fits an established right wing narrative.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

I like Pete.

[Robert Evans]

Pete, Pete. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

I like that better.

[Robert Evans]

It fits the narrative that, like, we're only fascist because of the radical left.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's what made us be fascist.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And obviously Pete's documented history shows this. This is a guy who always wanted politics and always had really regressive right wing views that he largely used to attack people he thought were less than him.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, I, like, I just, just. I mean, where do you. In Southern California do you think he was when you saw, when he saw this? Do you think he's in, like, Disneyland? Yeah, he's at Knott's Berry Farm.

[Robert Evans]

He's getting hammered at Knott's Berry Farm, probably. Yeah. He's got a puke on a roller coaster.

[Jamie Loftus]

He's in the FastPass line for great Thunder Mountain. He's like, you know what I mean? I'm gonna give Donald Trump a chance.

[Robert Evans]

So one thing I do believe is when Pete asserts that Trump taught him how to wage political combat, which is accurate from what we can see.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because this is a. Who failed to get a start in politics because he didn't really understand what Trump did.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And Trump proved, you don't have to pretend to be respectable. You don't have to pretend to be nice. You can lie and cry havoc. And people who are just as shitty as you will hate whoever you're yelling at because their lives are only filled if they have hate.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like that's what Trump understood and that's what Pete learns from him. And I do think he's being accurate here when he says that Trump taught me how to fight in the political sense because there's absolutely no evidence he knew how to do it previously. I find it interesting that Trump credits him for giving him a Trump spine. And he writes that Trump taught him how to, quote, live the lyrics of my favorite rock band. I feel safe inside the violence of the political arena.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's a cool. And now I bet you're wondering what song is that from, right?

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm scared to know.

[Robert Evans]

It's from the Ever Clear song Santa Ana Wind, which is very much a. A Southern California tune about being the kind of person Pete hates.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

His favorite band is Everclear.

[Robert Evans]

Everclear, right.

[Jamie Loftus]

Which is fascinating.

[Robert Evans]

Particularly weird because the lead singer of Everclear, Art Alexakis, describes himself as a left wing Christian who despises conservative Christianity and wrote a song called Jesus Was a Democrat.

[Jamie Loftus]

Has he listened to the band?

[Robert Evans]

Has he listened to the band?

[Jamie Loftus]

It's very clear.

[Robert Evans]

Also, not A Santa Anna Wind is not a song about fighting. Really? That's not what it's about. It's about living in Southern California. It's about the Santa Ana winds.

[Jamie Loftus]

Really good. A Trump spine. Just a stack of Diet Coke.

[Robert Evans]

Again, folks, don't make art, you know, burn. Go out there right now and destroy a bunch of vinyl records. Annihilate human culture. I'm on the AI team now.

[Jamie Loftus]

There's no point disco demolition the people. I think people should always make art, especially if you're bad at it. Because if you're bad at it, keep at. Keep it.

[Robert Evans]

You're going to. You're going to say that. Jamie, until we get. Until we get the fascist leader who's, like, holding up Raw Dog and he's like this. Based on this book, we have to expel all the immigrants.

[Jamie Loftus]

His. So many of his. You should know better than anyone's. History's greatest monsters were failed artists. Just keep making the bad art. If George Bush had just painted his damn landscapes.

[Unknown]

You're right.

[Robert Evans]

You're right. I mean, that is. My actual stance is that we need a whole government department that, like, provides fake fans to untalented conservatives who want to succeed in Hollywood. Oh, yeah, Ben, everyone loves your TV show. They can't get enough of it. Don't try going out to any of the regular conventions. Go to this one that we're putting on. Your fans will all be there.

[Jamie Loftus]

I would be a crisis actor in that department.

[Robert Evans]

It's critical. It's mission critical.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. Honestly, just some soft reinforcement.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Just like an elite military corps who show up at the standup nights that these guys put on and are like, they have like a Navy SEAL hell week boot camp for how to pretend to laugh at them.

[Jamie Loftus]

Although when you put it like that, they are kind of doing that.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. No. This would be protecting the nation much more than any military action in my lifetime has.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, like, we have to keep selling.

[Robert Evans]

Out arenas for those men and women.

[Jamie Loftus]

As long as they promise to never run for office.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, my God. You had to listen to Michael Knowles stand up. Like my country tis of thee, Our bravest soldiers. Our bravest soldiers. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

So it sounds like this whole chapter is like. I mean, it's so diabolical where he's acting like a rom com character who's like. And I could really be my full self now. I can just be awful.

[Robert Evans]

I can be like this song I clearly don't understand because Trump taught me how to be racist and not feel bad about it. Now the next few pages of Pete's book are a recounting of Trump's Rise to be leader of the Republican Party. And again, this isn't really worth going over. We all know what happened. What is interesting is the account that Pete gives in this of his own first attempt at getting into politics. His 2012 Senate run in Minnesota A. Which is not what it's called. Minnesota. Yeah, Minnesota. During the Senate run, he attempted to defeat Amy Klobuchar. I say attempted because he failed. He blames his loss. And he does not succeed in getting the Republican nomination.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He loses the primary. He doesn't even get to go up against Amy. He doesn't even get to get Kloba charted. I don't know. Jesus Christ. Look, they can't all be winners. They can't all be winners. Klobuchocked. Yeah, that's better.

[Jamie Loftus]

We got that.

[Robert Evans]

We got that. That's better. So he blames his loss on the Star Tribune, which he calls Minnesota's communist paper of weirdly. And here's what's weird, is like, so I look into him, like, oh, so they must have, like, said, don't vote for Pete Hegseth.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

It's the opposite. They described Pete as a picture perfect outsider who seemed like he had a really good chance at winning the GOP candidacy because, like, oh, he's a veteran.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe he could probably win. You know, that's gold. Electorally.

[Jamie Loftus]

So miserable when anytime a fascist calls a centrist paper radical, you're like, wouldn't.

[Robert Evans]

It be they liked you?

[Jamie Loftus]

Wouldn't it? Yeah, it was like, ultimately serving your project.

[Robert Evans]

No, you're not phrasing the Star Trek. Cause their analysis was just shitty. Like, well, he's a veteran, so he'll probably win.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Discounting the fact that Pete Hegseth can't do anything right. That, like, he sucked at the last time he ran. At this point, he's had two different, like, NGOs that he's been a part of, and he spent all the money on drugs and partying, you know, booze and partying.

[Jamie Loftus]

Veterans.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah. Veterans could be some of the most fucked up people in the country. You know, often in a. You know, that's who I started doing drugs with was a traumatized veteran. Actually, he would have been a really good Minnesota Senate member, But, you know, he's too good a person to get involved in the Minnesota Senate. Yeah. Oh, man. Can you imagine our buddy Greasy Will in the Senate?

[Jamie Loftus]

I know.

[Robert Evans]

I would vote for him in a heartbeat. Oh, man, I love that guy.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

What a hoot. So he loses, and again, he's angry at The Star Tribune, because they describe him as a really good candidate. And he's like, well, this is why I lost, because no one likes the mainstream media. And when they said that I was good, that doomed me.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That doomed me to my voter base.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's their fault. They destroyed me by being nice to me.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, my God. Nice to save.

[Robert Evans]

Pete's campaign was doomed from the start because he's bad at this.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Again, he can't. Pete, he can't run a charitable organization funneling money into right wing politics because he's too fucking corrupt.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He never had what it took to build any kind of independent support or power. He's not very disciplined. Again, he's hammered half the time here.

[Jamie Loftus]

It sounds like that he's wasted money. That was supposed to go to veterans before, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Well, it was supposed to be used by a veterans organization to support right wing politics. This. They were not helping vets.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay? So many was like, ultimately they were.

[Robert Evans]

Trying to push more support for the surge in Iraq.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And then attack Obama. You know, Like, I'm not saying it was. I'm not saying, like, oh, it's a shame he wasted that money.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Money.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, wasted.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

But it's like, theoretically.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So I want to quote from an article, another article I found in the Star Tribune in the wake of Pete's defeat, and this is them talking about. This kind of summarizes what an incoherent mess his candidacy was. So this is right after he loses the primary. Although Hegseth had previously said he would not run in a primary if he did not win his party's endorsement, he sent out a cryptic email to supporters Wednesday that raised serious doubts about that pledge. The email was titled the Fight Continues and did not say he planned to support State Representative Bills, who decisively won the GOP nod at the state convention on Friday. Now, this all led to days of speculation that he was going to run against the GOP candidate who had been endorsed by the Ron Paul organization. And it was the kind of thing where, like, they just wouldn't clarify what that message had meant for days until eventually, like, they were basically cornered and forced to say, like, no, I'm not really gonna run. Like, it was just a narcissist who could only respond to losing with sad bluster, even though he had been out organized and out fundraised and very obviously beaten.

[Unknown]

Right, Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

I love a good refuse to give up while obviously needing to give up.

[Robert Evans]

Email obviously failing.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's beautiful stuff. So in his book, years Later, Pete would insist that he was glad. Now he's glad that he didn't win. And he says specifically, I'm glad that patriots didn't vote for me then.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Cause they were right. I was still a rhino, a Republican in name only at that point.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

I didn't really know the way, you know, I hadn't accepted Trump as my lord and savior.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's really sweet that he thought people were thinking about him that hard.

[Robert Evans]

It's good that they won because I wasn't enough of a fascist yet. Yeah, cope, cope, cope. So we conclude this chapter with another rant that the American left is an existential threat to freedom. Then we have the obligatory call to violence that he swears isn't a call to violence. If leftists succeed in turning it the United States into something else, then as strident as it may seem, divorce is imminent. If they turn into King George iii, find me a town square in Lexington or a bridge in Concord to stand on. I believe millions of Americans, properly prepared and organized, would do the same. Our great flag means nothing without freedom. Better to go our separate ways, a new freedom loving country and all, than be complicit in the destruction of America. This is not a call to violence, not at all. And it's not what anybody wants. It's simply a recognition that freedom loving Americans will not stand idly by and watch our blessed freedoms be trampled. Now, among other things, what were people pissed about King George III about? Was it that he was like deporting people without like any kind of trial? Was that like a big part of the Declaration of Independence? That like his troops were just like arresting and sending people away without any kind of due process?

[Jamie Loftus]

They were doing a crusade with gun. They were doing a gun crusade. And so actually gun crusade make a lot of sense that it is. It's just so fucking embarrassing. Good for him. Good for him.

[Robert Evans]

Now the chapter ends with one final little rant about how 2020 is our last possible chance to prevent the collapse of the United States. You know, no more shots after this. The leftists will have taken too much control anyway.

[Jamie Loftus]

That would be nice.

[Robert Evans]

The Pete Hegseth who wrote American crusade in 2020 was no less committed to forcing a far right Christian theocracy on the rest of the country than the of today. But he was quieter about it. Not a lot quieter, but there's still even a little bit in 2020 more kind of creep you gotta put onto it so that it doesn't sound too bad. Like the far right still kind of Felt like they had to respect some kinds of properly patriotic diversity, at least in public. So when it comes to the actual timeline of, like, when was Pete radicalized, When did he arrive at his current beliefs and what does he actually believe beyond I should be important, that's harder for me to say. Some of the evidence.

[Jamie Loftus]

There might not be much more.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, some of his evidence. The evidence from his time in the service paints an image of a man less convinced than his present iteration of, like, a lot of the fascist stuff. He's gone on record about his upbringing in a Christian home. But in keeping with the traditional reborn in the spirit evangelical narrative, it's clear he doesn't consider. He will now claim that, like, young Pete wasn't really a believer. Not the way I am.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

As a kid, I wasn't really. I wasn't really committed to Christ, you know.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right. Well, it sounds like, yeah, there's a difference between growing up in a religious household and like enacting the. And being religious.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I think it's more because, as we'll talk about, the evidence suggests he was very religious and always has been. It's more. If you are talking to an evangelical audience, there is an expectation that you will give your narrative of, like, your own personal journey to faith has to be a hero's journey. So it can't just be. I've always been religious and always been great. It has to be like, no, I rejected God. I was living this amoral life of the flesh. I used to be a pill popper, LSD tripper, high rising and low sliding popping heads and busting reds, kicking indoors and banging whores. But then I got a man who was hung up from my hang ups. You know, it's gotta be that kind of thing, right? I stole that from Marjo. Is that.

[Jamie Loftus]

It was a dome, Robert.

[Robert Evans]

No, I stole that from the movie Marjo, which I talk about a lot on this show.

[Jamie Loftus]

You could have lied. I would've. Oh, I bet that's terrific.

[Robert Evans]

No, it's beautiful stuff. It's beautiful stuff.

[Jamie Loftus]

Really, really good.

[Robert Evans]

Pete Hegseth has claimed in a recent interview with the Nashville Christian Family that his parents were Baptist. But quote, my home life was not political, but it was very faith and family based. Now, again, this is nonsense. This is a common sentiment from people who are raised in very right wing environments that my upbringing wasn't political because conservatism is just common sense. You know, it's not politics, just common sense. Just like Christianity is not a religion, it's just the truth.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

Which I still think is more commonly accepted across the board than it should be.

[Robert Evans]

No, and one thing I'll give cause I have a lot of issues with my parents and the conservatism I was raised with. But they never said we were apolitical.

[Jamie Loftus]

They were like issues with your parents.

[Robert Evans]

We are very political right wingers.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That was always my parents attitude. So at least there's that.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

I just have no respect for this. Oh, I wasn't political. Yeah. My parents donated exclusively to Republicans and I edited a Republican newspaper in college and we went to church three times times a week. But I wasn't really religious, you know. So Pete first gave his life to Christ as a teenager but would complain after the fact that his public school was secular.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And kind of blamed it like, oh, you know, I give my life to Christ, but I still wasn't really Christian because of my public school quote. It's fair to say I had a Christian veneer but a secular core and thought I was ready to go out into the world and profess Christ. I wasn't. And the reality is he didn't have any interest in doing that.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Neither does he now. But he was interested in getting rich and being successful.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because he's a rich kid and he wanted to content. He wanted to do the thing that rich kids do, which is get into finance and get richer.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

Bear Stearns, what a pick. It's so funny because like the, the narrative you're describing that he wants to apply to himself, like it is kind of available to him where he, you know, like lived a. Whether he wants to admit it or not. A very.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, all the drunkenness and stealing, but.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, right, but you'd have to be willing to stop doing that in order to have the narrative. So he's got to make one up.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, he's got to make one up. And you know what else we have to make up?

[Jamie Loftus]

What?

[Robert Evans]

For all of the people listening to this podcast for free by going to ads right now. You sickos, you freaks, you monsters, you. I don't know. Heroes. I love you.

[Jamie Loftus]

Bye Steph.

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[Jamie Loftus]

This is.

[Unknown]

Danielle Fischl from Pod Meets World Parents, let's talk snacks. If your mornings look anything like mine, one kid's trying to pile drive a pillow and the other is trying to zip themselves into a backpack. Meanwhile, I'm trying to sign a permission slip with an eyeliner pencil because that's all I could find. That's why Mott's no Sugar Added applesauce pouches are perfect to have nearby. These things are clutch and are perfect for moments of stress. Made with real apples, no sugar added. And the pouch? Genius. It's mess free and perfect for the car, the lunchbox, or after school activities. This is a snack you can feel good about and a good source of vitamin C too. Just tasty applesauce your kids will actually want to eat. The other day I handed one to my son mid meltdown. He took a deep breath, squeezed the pouch and suddenly he was calm. He had a tiny Apple powered moment of Zen. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Motts Real apples make real Good applesauce. Learn [e-mail].

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. You know, every time I say I love you to the listeners, I'm thinking about one specific listener, and it might be you. You don't know, you know, but everyone else, I don't love. In fact, I hate and I'm actively working to sabotage. But one of you, one of you I love. You're always in my thoughts. You're the only thing that I care about.

[Jamie Loftus]

You know everything. Every time I hear you speak to your listeners, I'm reminded that parasocial relationship could also be based in antagonism.

[Robert Evans]

And it's called negging, Jamie, you know.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, I've read the book.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No, that's the bible of how to be a good podcaster is the Gay Gold Leaf.

[Jamie Loftus]

Did you know there's a gold leaf like, version of that book?

[Robert Evans]

Why even the author is disavowed it.

[Jamie Loftus]

I know, I know.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, God. That's one of my. It's like him and the guy who first came up with the alpha wolf concept just like. Oh, man, I really. This thing that made me famous and noteworthy was a real mistake.

[Jamie Loftus]

This thing that made me millions and millions of dollars.

[Robert Evans]

I fucked up. I fucked up.

[Jamie Loftus]

And then the humiliating pivot you get. Whereas the guy who wrote the game, I think Neil Strauss. Wait a second. I frigging love my wife.

[Robert Evans]

And then called him happy. Yeah. It turns out this made me miserable, and loving and respecting a woman made me happy.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm glad he knows he's wrong. But I'm also like, stop publishing books.

[Robert Evans]

A little faster, man. Maybe don't write any more books. Maybe you. Fuck. I feel differently about the wolf guy.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He really was just trying to do good wolf research and just a. Just to fuck up, you know? It's not his fault. Like, he didn't try to be like, I'm gonna make alpha wolf a thing. He was just describing wolf behavior, and weirdos ran with it.

[Jamie Loftus]

I guess I'm not as familiar with his trajectory. He was literally just talking about wolves.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he was. The concept of the alpha wolf developed from this wolf scientist who was studying wolves in captivity and describing their hierarchy.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, my God, that's smut. I've read.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And then it turns out that, like, actually in the wild, there's, like, alpha wolf behavior. We don't. Because, like, it's not really evolutionarily beneficial. It's a thing that happens when wolves are put in an unnatural situation. Basically. It's a thing that happens in wolf prison. Not in the wild.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And he has spent the rest of his career being like, no, the alpha wolf thing, like, it's wrong. It's not a concept in anything. It's certainly not a concept for humans. Like, stop talking about alphas, you dicks. It's a bummer.

[Jamie Loftus]

Nasty.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, nasty. Speaking of alphas, Pete Hegseth, real alpha male.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm looking for the name of this book. I saw a friend from college a year ago, and I was like, what have you been up to? She's like, I'm getting really into wolf smut. Which was not the answer I was expecting.

[Robert Evans]

No, that's probably just straight up pornography.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

But otherwise, she was doing really well. I mean, this was a part of it, but she recommended a book, and I listened to it for a while, and, you know, if this is your thing, go with God. But I was like, oh, my God. There's. First of all, there's so much. There's so many of them. It was one of those, like, the bodyguard's wife's accountant type titles. I'm gonna find it. Keep. Keep hegsething. I'm gonna find this.

[Robert Evans]

So, you know, Pete claims obviously, that, like, yeah, he was secular at his core. He just had a Christian veneer. I think the reality is that, you know, he's always been pretty religiously far right and politically far right, but he was, as a young man, just wanted money, right? Like, that's. That's all he really gave a shit about. He claims that the first thing that starts to radicalize him towards Christian nationalism is a class he takes at Princeton on Christianity, quote, taught by an atheist famous for studying the Gnostic Gospels. The Prof. Believed Jesus died, was buried in a shallow grave, and was eaten by dogs. I realized I was not prepared to combat such thinking and went to the library to read dusty books that pointed to and explained the veracity of the Gospel. Defending my faith became an academic endeavor because I sensed faith and the Bible were good.

[Jamie Loftus]

But he was eaten by dogs.

[Robert Evans]

Eaten by dogs. Like, seriously, I get like, obviously, there's a very strong argument to be made that, like, well, Jesus of the Bible was probably conflating a couple of different actual guys who were, like, messianic guys who claimed they were the Messiah wandering around the Holy Land in that period.

[Unknown]

Right, sure.

[Robert Evans]

Like, eaten by dogs. How would you even prove that? Why would that be an argument that a professor would make? And he was definitely eaten by dogs.

[Jamie Loftus]

And why would this be the first we're hearing of it? That is. Speaking of dogs, though, I got the name of the wolf porn. I was.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, thank God. The audience has been on the edge of their fucking seats for this.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I. And if this is your thing I like, I don't want to hear more about it, but I respect it. Here is the name of the book that I read. Part of the Tyrant Alpha's Rejected Mate, which is one word too many, but it's got 3.8.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's a long title.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's got, it's got like we have similar scores on Goodreads. Okay. The heir, followed by the heir apparent's rejected mate, followed by the lone wolf's rejected mate.

[Robert Evans]

So a real rejected mate fetish going on here is what I'm reading.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, it's all about. Well, what is it about is like falling in love with a fuck ass wolf who kind of is negging you. There's a lot. That's how I would refer to, okay, the Tyrant Alpha. But you could also easily call the Tyrant Alpha a fuck ass wolf.

[Robert Evans]

Sure. Yeah, that scans. So there's no real evidence for any of what he's claiming about his fucking professor here or the fact that he starts doing serious Bible research that proves the historical. I don't think he does any research.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Again, he's raised to believe this shit and it fuels his narcissistic sense of superiority. He's always fit in here.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This is just the explanation he has to give in the book because as I stated, evangelicals expect a certain kind of narrative.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, it's also like, yeah, for lack of a better, like terms, he needs to be not like other girls in order for this narrative to work. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Again, his initial goal is to get rich and then the global war on terror gets in the way and Pete winds up gravitating more towards the military. He claims, though, that during this time he spends more than a decade studying Christianity, which kind of conflates with other things he says, because he's argued in this same interview that his faith didn't become real until 2018. This is when he claims that he was properly saved and born again. Just in time for him to jettison the last of his rhino credentials and hop onto the Trump train. The fact that those things happened around the same time that he's like, oh, I was saved. At the same time I realized Trump was God's pick to save America.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This is not really trustworthy.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Although, again, I think the thing he's lying about is he's always been this guy, Right. He covered his body with Christian Fascist tattoos, you know, and other fucking we the people shit, you know? Like, I don't think he's lying about being a Christian nationalist or being a fascist. I think he's lying about the fact that this was a journey, you know?

[Jamie Loftus]

Right. I mean, it seems like he has no issue with any of this at any point in his life, but he needs the narrative.

[Robert Evans]

He needs the narrative.

[Jamie Loftus]

And I would be so curious. I feel like this happens in all sectors of public life of how many times you're going to keep telling the same story about yourself, to keep yourself, like, relevant and to keep yourself kind of in undertone.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

You always have to be an underdog even once you've, like, succeeded, you know?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, that's a big part of my ego.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Nobody believed that we could have the largest history podcast on the Internet, you know? No. Aside from all the people who believed in me and fought for me and advocated for me and guested on the show and whatnot. Like, nobody. Nobody believed in me. Nobody believes in you.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Aside from those people.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

You were.

[Danielle Fishel]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

You were podcasting from, you know, just like, like prostate on the floor. Nothing. You had nothing.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly, exactly. I was at the lowest a man can be living in an apartment on the edge of Santa Monica.

[Jamie Loftus]

So in a way, you also found God in 2018. I did, I did, yeah. You and Pete have that in common.

[Robert Evans]

My God was the pod. Jesus Christ.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Brutal.

[Robert Evans]

Sophie, if we register as a church, do we get to stop paying taxes?

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, yeah. Also trick in the book.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, shit. I should look into that. We'll talk about this some more offline. We'll talk some more about this offline. So in, like the kind of early chunk of the Trump years, he and his family first moved to New Jersey to attend a community church called Colt's Neck, led by Pastor Chris Durkin. I found a year old YouTube video published by the church in which Pastor Durkin reads out five ways Christian families are under attack, which proves that Christian media is always about a decade behind because they've only just discovered Listicles.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This is like 2020 fucking four. Now, the video does not have a lot of views, but Durkin is a guy that Hegseth is later gonna claim was like a big influence on him. And so it's kind of worth listening to some of what he says. In a summary for the video, Durkin writes, more than any time in our lives, it feels like Christian families are under attack. Are these contemporary attacks random? Or is there a deeper battle going on beneath the Surface, he spells their wrong. But I'm just being petty here.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, no, no, hand his ass to him also. I mean, you do have to hand it to him that he did not change his name from Durkin. He didn't?

[Robert Evans]

No, no. And he really should have.

[Jamie Loftus]

He really should have.

[Robert Evans]

That's why he hasn't blown up in the way the next preacher we're gonna talk about has, but should have been Gunner. I will say the way he talks, his speech is so. The speech is written so similarly to how Hegseth talks. It's either just evidence of how much this guy influenced Hegseth, or maybe they shared a rider.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know. Not impossible. It's also probably the case that this is more the result of Christian grievance, conservative grievance culture just being very predictable.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The overarching message is always that you, the good, normal people, are under siege from the evil outsiders, the leftist, or the enemy within.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And since the chief enemy of Christianity is the devil, anyone advocating for a lifestyle different than yours is literally the devil.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And that's made very clear in this segment of the Five Ways Christian Families Are Under Attack speech by Pastor Chris Durkin, which Sophie's gonna play for you now. Designed by God as a gift from God, that through marriage, not only is it good, because it's not good for man to be alone, that through marriage, not only are we commanded to be fruitful and to multiply, but also, in the New Testament, marriage is a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. Whether you're talking about God's character and plan and creation, or even talking about Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection, his love for his people, his bride, the church. This is going to fill hell with all kinds of fury, and it's going to be aimed at your family and.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The argument there he's making is that, like, yeah, gay marriage, all of these different cultures, it's literally the death of. Right. Like, anything, anytime you urge anything outside of, like, what Christians believe about this, like, no, God decreed what marriage is. So you are literally on the side of Satan.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Which is you can't have a secular society with these people. You can't be free with these people in your country.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And this is, like, reality.

[Jamie Loftus]

This is his baseline. This is his baseline. The listicle nature really does crack me up.

[Robert Evans]

I do love that. It's a listicle.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

My college. What do they call it? The guy who talked at my college. Commencement speaker. My commencement speaker, Mr. Jay Leno, delivered. Wow. Bragg? No, no, he delivered his speech in the form of a list and that was 10 years ago and it was old then.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so, yeah, let's get back to this lovely stuff, this lovely, lovely espode. So, yeah, the underlying truth that is revealed by reading American Crusade is that people like Pete Hegse and his fellow evangelical Dominionists have no desire to coexist with anyone else. That's why they have to portray this as an existential battle, because only by pretending their enemies are the same as them can they morally justify the kind of violence that they are going to try to do.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

What little fun there is in reading American Crusade comes from looking at Hegseth's predictions for what will happen if the left wins in 2020 and comparing that to what actually happened. My favorite example of this comes right at the end of chapter two. If Trump loses in 2020, I fear America is doomed. The Democrats on track to nominate a radical leftist would complete the political domination they already maintain in our culture, media and schoolhouses. The ivory towers of the Ivy League would become the policies of Washington speech codes instead of free speech. Bye bye second amendment, anti Israel and pro Islamist foreign policy. Naked socialism, government run, everything. Yeah, that's all what happened when radical leftist Joe Biden got elected. They should have been certainly embraced anti Israel policies.

[Jamie Loftus]

I was gonna say that one in particular fucking sticks out like a sore thumb.

[Robert Evans]

Well, just how immediately all of these Ivy League institutions, like most of them, just caved to Trump, like, you know.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, it's incredible. Incredible. Well, Pete, unfortunately you didn't call that one. And I mean, he certainly is benefiting from that not having happened.

[Robert Evans]

Once again, we desperately wish for a Democratic Party that functions the way Republicans pretend it functions. Y like, oh, how nice that would be.

[Jamie Loftus]

These radical leftists, these anti Israel radical leftists.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, well, God. Oops. So again, the big takeaway, the actual practical takeaway you should get from reading lines like this is that there was never any hope for the Democratic Party to pull away moderate Republicans or fracture Trump's base.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That was never possible. Not from Biden, not from Harris.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Any Democrat, no matter what they do, no matter how nice they try to be to conservatives, no matter how much they tack to the middle in their politics, will always be attacked as being anti Israel. And a radical leftist right, period. Tacking to the middle and backing Netanyahu just capped off people who might otherwise have voted Democrat. You know, it's just a disastrous strategy. I need to write something about this, but like part of When I knew, when I started to get really worried about Harris's campaign was when she started, like, campaigning around with Cheney. And I could tell, like, okay, she's doing this because she wants to get. She thinks that she can get. Get Republicans like my mom to vote for Harris. And my mom was a lifetime Republican, loved John McCain, loved Dick Cheney, loved George W. Bush, hated guns. Like, was fine with banning guns, was not like. And so. And was very pro abortion.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And so you, you would, I guarantee you, if you would, like, bring up the profile of someone like my mom to Kamala Harris.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Or to Joe Biden. Oh, we can get this vote. We can get this voter.

[Unknown]

Right, Right.

[Robert Evans]

This is someone. As long as we're not too radically left, we can speak their language and convince them and. No, you can't. My mom would have died before voting Democrat.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

She would have chosen death over voting for the Democratic Party, period. There was never any chance of you getting her.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And the instant I realized they're betting on that as opposed to trying to get anyone, you know, any moderates or people further on the left, like, on board with actual, like, policies that will help them, was like, okay, we might be in trouble here.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, yeah, I mean, it's something that just like another example of the right, big, far more like organized, for lack of a better term than the left, is because there are people who didn't vote for Kamala because she would not move left.

[Robert Evans]

Like, I don't know, it's just the, the idea that there are good Republicans buried inside the party and we can shake them out of voting because. No, no, no. Even the people who are, like, good, who have more reasonable stances, who had issues with Trump, what they wanted most is to win. And as soon as you like, because of, and this is the project of 20 something, 30 years of right wing media, this was what Fox News accomplished, what matters most to the majority of Republican, like, dedicated Republican voters. And obviously there's a sizable chunk of people who voted Republican last election who flip flopped between. And those people are reachable, which is why they flip flop so often when we're talking about the core of the party. Their primary motivation is hurting Democrats, is hurting immigrants, is hurting the groups of people they hate and have been taught to hate at this point, a couple of generations of conservative media, you know, it's inflicting pain on their enemy. And so you can't win them over by being like, but look, we adopted one of your policies. Don't you like us now? Aren't we Better than that Trump guy? No. Cause that Trump guy is promising to kick somebody and they wanna see somebody in pain. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, I reflect often on that. The phase of her campaign where there was a series of campaign commercials that were encouraging women, like conservative women to vote for her behind their husband's backs. Do you remember that push?

[Robert Evans]

That was just going to offend people. Like, it's not going to. You don't. It's just. Just bad choices. Just bad choices.

[Jamie Loftus]

I do. I do believe that there were probably voters like that. But it's like, that's not the fucking way to feel. And that's not going to win. Exactly. That's not as. That's not as effective as actually moving left again.

[Robert Evans]

Like, oh, wow. You know, this swing state has a massive number of, like, Muslim voters. I wonder if they'll be angry at us completely failing to rein Israel in on a genocide. Probably not. They'll vote for blue no matter who. We don't need them.

[Jamie Loftus]

Of course, it's them who gets blamed.

[Robert Evans]

Cool.

[Jamie Loftus]

Cool.

[Robert Evans]

And that's not the only reason Harris lost. Right. That explains like, one state. There's a bunch of reasons, but the whole. We're going. We can get these people, you know, we can break off a lot of them. Cause they're basically reasonable people. Doesn't work. Because they're not. They're not. Their brains have been damaged by decades of propaganda and the damage is permanent. Anyway, this is.

[Jamie Loftus]

Good vibes.

[Robert Evans]

Good vibes. Good vibes on the book. Anyway, I will say there's a weird kind of comfort I get from reading Hegseth's book. Not because it's less awful or even less homicidal than I'd feared, but because it's validating. It's the conservatism I know. And it's the conservatism I was raised inside put on full display.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And in a way that I think I really would encourage. I found the free copy of this book online, by the way. I didn't pay for it. If you just Google full text free, you can find it too. I don't know the legal status of this, but it's not hard to find. I want to get Democrats who think they can reach out to Republicans to read this book because it really clearly, it really points out, like, why that attempt is so fundamentally doomed.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway, there's another mask off moment, a useful one later in the book when Pete has a chance to lay out the things he adm. A useful one. A useful one, yes.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Pete winds up in a passage laying out the things he admires about Islam. And this is part of. He's still. He's making the broader case that it's an existential threat to Americans and freedom. But he writes that almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to and learning to read from the Quran. Contrast this with our secular American schools in which the Bible is nowhere to be found, and you'll understand why Muslims worldview is more coherent than ours. First off. Hmm. Not entirely an accurate statement about the Muslim world, I was about to say. It's like, points for me. Or about schools in the Muslim world. Like, yeah, that describes some people, but I don't know. I guess I've just talked to more school teachers in Iraq than Pete has who complained repeatedly that they just didn't have books anymore and hadn't since Saddam left.

[Jamie Loftus]

I don't think that was Pete's focus in Iraq, talking to school teachers. Okay. So, I mean, it's. It's just more Christian fundamentalism that if.

[Robert Evans]

We just taught the Bible in public schools while they're all reading the Bible, they're all perfectly informed about their religion. They're constantly thinking about it, as opposed to like, yeah, most Muslims are like most members of any other religion where they're like, yeah, you know, on the holiday or whatever. But, like, I got shit to do the rest of the time. You know, maybe I get more serious about it if I get sick or something. But like, people. Yeah, they're people, right. They got other shit going on. Pete goes on to argue that the Islamic holy books. And he describes the Islamic holy books as being the Quran and the Hadith, if reordered and read chronologically, show an inexorable passage from peaceful writing towards violence.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That if you reorder all of the different. Like the Islamic holy texts, the holy books, reorder them to read chronologically, you'll see that Islam inherently moves towards violence.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. And if you play the record backwards. Dead.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jamie Loftus]

There couldn't be anything more conspiratorial, like. Well, if you like. Okay, sure.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He's like, this mirrors Muhammad's own journey, Right? Because Muhammad was like a military leader, Right. And basically the point he's making is that Islam inherently leads to violence, if you follow it honestly. Now, this is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, a few chapters earlier when he was talking about his friend Texas, Omar, he had made a big point that Omar is a practicing Muslim and also 100% American, which seems like it's not something that really should be possible based on how Hegseth describes Islam here. But he's also wrong about Islam a whole lot.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

No kidding.

[Robert Evans]

For one thing, again, he states the holy books of Islam are the Quran and the Hadith. The Hadith, like, it's not a. It's not a title of a book, right? It's the name for a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad over a long period of time.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And it's not really. It wouldn't be right to call it a holy book of Islam.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's certainly a text, A holy text in Islam, but it's not really a holy book because there are holy books in the faith, obviously. There's the Quran. There's also the Tawrat, which is the Torah and the Zabr, which is their book of Psalms. And the last of the Islamic holy books is the Injil, which is the New Testament.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

These are all holy books in the Muslim faith.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

But he forsakes three and just adds one.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, well, and he just doesn't really understand what the Hadiths are. That like it's a collection of sayings. It's not really a book in the traditional sense.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Discussing Islamic religious texts in a way that's accurate isn't something he can do because then you have to acknowledge that like, oh, wait, wait, the Torah is like venerated in Islam and so is the New Testament, even though they don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. Well, then that makes the case that Islam's actually much more tolerant towards other faiths than Hegseth wants to pretend. And he goes on to note, quote, non Muslims paid a second class citizen tax, converted to Islam or were killed whichever way they submitted. And like, it is in fact true that there is a tax that non Muslims are supposed to pay like, and paid under the, like the first Islamic empires, right? Like a specific tax for being like a. Not a member of the faith. But also what he's leaving out here is that like, this is a pretty significantly better deal than you would get in Christendom as a non Christian. This is actually kind of a big mark of the relative tolerance of Islam during the period of time where it was like this expanding empire, because if non believers were paying their tax, they enjoyed state protection, right? They're people of the Book. And in fact, there's commandments against abusing people of the Book. And I'm not gonna say it's perfect.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Obviously there's. You are not an equal citizen in like these early Muslim empires. If you're Jewish or Christian, but you do have rights.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And you have a better deal than Muslims are going to get in Christendom.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And often we just talked about how after the Crusades stalled, Crusaders just massacred Jewish communities in Europe.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like you were better off in a lot of cases being a Jew in these Muslim, like these areas dominated by these like Islamic empires than you would have been like in fucking somewhere in Europe.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like, well, yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

You would prefer always better off tat in Europe.

[Robert Evans]

Right. It's better to pay a tax and have some rights than be tortured by the Inquisition, you know? Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Not a fair ask. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Again, I'm not trying to whitewash any of these Islamic empires. They're empires. They did some pretty terrible things like all empires do. I'm just saying if you've got to choose between being massacred by drunk peasant crusaders in a pogrom or like paying attention, most people probably say pay the tax, it's a better deal.

[Jamie Loftus]

You know, Again, it's just, I mean it's so his like binary thinking. It's every chapter so far has been like, well, here's what I agree with, including a guy I am increasingly convinced he made up.

[Robert Evans]

It's also just like this whole obsession that they all have with like European history, Western history, you know, the great works of philosophy, you know, Plato and Aristotle, a lot of great classic European think and Western thinkers. We only have a lot of their writing because it was preserved by Muslim scholars during the period in which Christians were destroying everything that was pre Christian. So anyway, again, not to whitewash any faith, all religions, all organized major religions, especially when they have armies, do nightmarish things. And you can find plenty of horrible crimes committed, like Ottomans, you know, by the Umayyads and the Abbasids.

[Unknown]

But. Right.

[Robert Evans]

You know, it's just the truth of the matter is that for its day, like Islam was a much more tolerant faith than Christianity, you know, at that period of time. So.

[Jamie Loftus]

Which is interestingly demonstrated through the work and actions of one Pete Hegseth.

[Robert Evans]

Of one Pete Peter Hegg. Exeth. Yes. So right after this paragraph, he tries to do a minor mea culpa and he winds up being both historically wrong and committing heresy. There's so much inaccurate in this next paragraph, I don't know how to summarize it. So I'm just going to read it to you first. Prior to the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, many of these same things could have been said of the Bible and Christianity, the God of the Old Testament was violent, vengeful, and very judgmental. But a key distinction makes these two Abrahamic religions very different. The Quran has no New Testament. And he goes on to argue that the lack of a New Testament means Islam is centuries away from becoming a civilized faith.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

That like, well, obviously, first off, again, there's so much wrong here. First off, he says that, like, prior to the life and teachings of Jesus, many of these things could have been set up the Bible and Christianity, but there wasn't Christianity before the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. What do you mean prior? What do you mean Christianity prior to that? Let him cook. Let him cook. What are you talking about? Cause he specifically doesn't write the same things could have been said of like, Jesus Judaism, right? That like, oh, before the New Testament, you know, like, the God of the Old Testament was violent, judgmental. But no, he says specifically before the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, this could have been said of Christianity in the Bible, which is like, first off, I mean, again, man, you can't even get your own fucking religion right. And second, again, he says that the Quran has no New Testament. And as we noted earlier, the New Testament is in fact venerated in Islam.

[Jamie Loftus]

Right? He just ignored it in his list of holy texts because it wasn't convenient.

[Robert Evans]

Again, they don't view Jesus as the Messiah. They don't believe the same things about it. But like, there is stuff in there that is in the faith, right? It's just wrong to say that it's.

[Jamie Loftus]

Completely absent whether he actually knows this or not. It's just like, it's so clear that this book is just predicated on how poorly educated his target audience is.

[Robert Evans]

And it's this very common thing with conservatives that like Islam, whatever is the most radical thing you can find that was ever written by a Muslim. That's what everyone believes and does at all times as opposed to, like, no, I mean, Islam's like Christianity and any other religion where, like, well, you can find some awful things and people who are like. And that awful thing is exactly how you should act at all times. And you can also find some stuff that's not awful and some people who say that, like, no, the awful stuff's bullshit. You know, this is. And is everyone just kind of picking and choosing what to believe because it makes them more comfortable? Yes, that's what everyone does with everything. Like, that's how human beings are with politics, with whatever.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

I mean, personally, my holy texts are titles like the Tyrant, Alpha's Rejected Mate. But it is interesting learning about it.

[Robert Evans]

That is my religious text as well.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. What about installment number four? His Curvy Rejected Matt.

[Robert Evans]

See, I'm actually. I consider that, like, the Gnostic Gospel, like, that's not canon. After the. We had our own Council of Nicaea, which was held in Atlantic City. To be honest, we didn't really get around to deciding what was canon. We were mostly just partying.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm very devout. I've read his curvy rejected mate 40 times.

[Robert Evans]

Once again, yeah. You've memorized it. Like, Muslim students are supposed to memorize the Quran.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yes, exactly.

[Robert Evans]

But, like, yeah, there's lots of bullshit. People, like the common conservative belief that, like, yeah, you just put pigs, you know, pig fat on the bullets, and then they can't go to heaven. That's not part of Islam. Like, that's just you being racist. There's nothing in Islam that says if pink touches you, you don't go to heaven.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

You're allowed to eat pork in Islam if you're starving.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like, none of these. Even within the text of the faith itself, like, all of the. This. Like, during Ramadan, you're supposed to fast, but there's specific exemptions for, like, well, if you're in a desperate situation and dying, or if you're fighting in a war, if there's extenuating circumstances, you don't have to fast. You can eat and drink water. Because like, even, like, during the earliest days of the faith, mom was like, well, I don't want this to be a straight jacket. Right, Right. Yeah. But again, you can't. There's no actual understanding of, like, how the faith is living. It's just a bunch of, like, talking points that you can use to demon these people.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

Which is like, his whole platform depends on.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Now, the wrongest part of that paragraph, and the thing that I really recognized, because my dad used to make the same argument, is the idea that virtue was. Human beings couldn't be good. Before Christianity, there weren't really good people. Before the New Testament, it was impossible to truly be ethical.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like, my dad would talk a lot about, like, well, you know, ancient Greece and Rome were probably, like, the best societies possible prior to Christianity.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because they were, you know, like, it's this idea that, like, decency was invented by Christians and people just couldn't be good before it.

[Jamie Loftus]

You could be all right. That's such a weird, like, you know, scale to be on. Like, you could be okay. You could be all right. You could inch towards goodness. But it wasn't until.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it wasn't until Christianity that we really knew how to be good people. It just wasn't possible. And again, let's go back to those drunken peasant crusaders who just decided to massacre all the Jews in their neighborhood because they didn't have enough money for a of bunch boat to the fucking Middle East.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah. Really Christ like behavior.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Jesus would have loved that. He hated his own people. Yeah. So Hegseth attacks Islam for being, quote, not just a religion, but also a system of governance. And I find this really interesting. And he brings out Sharia law as the usual bugbear here. But statements like this kind of lack the teeth they used to have when you live in 2025. Because in the years since publishing American Crusade, Hegseth become a direct advocate for Christian control of the government and the supremacy of Christian religious law over the lives of Americans, even those who do not practice the faith. And he's done this. He's talking about, like, Islam's a system of government, and that's wrong. Christianity also should be our system of government.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's done all this while complaining about the injustice. This is a big thing he whines about in later writings because he writes another book about fucking warrior ethos shit that we'll talk about at some point. But in 2021 1, he gets like, basically, I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. He has said that he was barred from participating in the military security detail for President Biden's inauguration in 2021 because of a tattoo on his chest depicting a Jerusalem cross, a religious symbol that was also a symbol used by crusaders. Reuters and others reported that his tattoos, including the Deus Volt motto that has been used by white supremacists, prompted a fellow service member to flag Mr. Hegseth as a potential insider threat. And first, first off, good work, fellow service member. He was probably shouldn't have that guy near fucking Joe Biden with a weapon.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

And he doesn't get fired, but he claims that, like, well, this is why I had to stop, leave my military careers. I got sidelined because they called me an extremist for simply being a Christian who has the exact same tattoos as the guys who committed a series of hate crimes in Charlottesville.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, it's the same as weird. You kicked him off of Wikifeet for speaking truth to power. Like, you're like, okay, yeah, now you.

[Robert Evans]

Know who will never get kicked off of Wikifeet?

[Jamie Loftus]

The products and services. Robotina.

[Robert Evans]

No, no. They are the foundation of Wikifeet, you know? So send them pictures of your feet. Be nice to them. They'll love that.

[Jamie Loftus]

And don't check before you do. Should be a nice surprise.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, let it be a surprise.

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[Robert Evans]

Honestly, Honestly, Honestly.

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[Jamie Loftus]

This is.

[Unknown]

Danielle Fishel from Pod Meats World. Parents, let's talk snacks. If your mornings look anything like mine, one kid's trying to pile drive a pillow and the other is trying to zip themselves into into a backpack. Meanwhile, I'm trying to sign a permission slip with an eyeliner pencil because that's all I could find. That's why Mott's no Sugar added applesauce pouches are perfect to have nearby. These things are clutch and are perfect for moments of stress. Made with real apples, no sugar added and the pouch. Genius. It's mess free and perfect for the car, the lunchbox or after school activities. This is a snack you can feel good about about. And a good source of vitamin C too. Just tasty applesauce your kids will actually want to eat. The other day I handed one to my son mid meltdown. He took a deep breath, squeezed the pouch and suddenly he was calm. He had a tiny apple powered moment of Zen. Trust me, your future self will thank you Motts. Real apples make real good applesauce. Learn [e-mail] Come.

[Robert Evans]

We'Re back, we're all sending feet pics to whoever sponsors the podcast. They're going to love that. And also now, thank God, now that we have a Trump the presidency again. Feet picks are legal tender. You know, you can use them for currency, you can use them as water. Yeah, they count as assets if you're trying to get a mortal mortgage. You know, great stuff.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm on wikifeet.com I think they have a dating site. I just had this open. I think they have a dating site. Everyone check out matched souls.com. pretty good.

[Robert Evans]

That's actually not. That's not a bad name. Honestly. That's not a bad name. You know what?

[Jamie Loftus]

It was right there.

[Robert Evans]

You get a couple. You get it. You get some kudos for that.

[Jamie Loftus]

They've updated their interface anyways. Okay. Sorry.

[Robert Evans]

Continued Hexeth yeah, yeah, Heggs, Pete, Seth.

[Unknown]

Right, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So continuing Pete Hegseth's book, right after talking about how awful Sharia law is and how Islam is evil because it's a political system as well as a religion, he writes, voting is a weapon, but it's not enough. We don't wanna fight, but like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago, we must.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh great again. U G L Y you ain't got no alibi.

[Robert Evans]

That's literally what he just did. So after the 2020 election ended with Joe Biden winning and if you believe Feet or Pete Feet, if you believe Pete. His military career ends shortly thereafter due to anti Christian persecution. He moves his family to Tennessee where they attend the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is part of the Communion of Evangelical Churches, which is basically a denomination, right? It's like an organization for a specific denomination of weird evangelicals. And this sub denomination was founded by Idaho based pastor Doug Wilson. And if you know Anything about Idaho, you know that there's no more sinister series of words in the English language than Idaho based pastor. So about a month before I put these episodes together, Politico described Doug Wilson as the New Rite's favorite pastor. He is famous for claiming that the gospels give believers a stark choice, Christ or chaos. And he argues that up to this point, America has chosen chaos. Reality is optional. That's why you have people saying that a girl can be a boy and a boy can be a girl.

[Jamie Loftus]

Great performance, egot.

[Robert Evans]

Thank you. I know that's how he really sounds. It's easy to see why Hegseth is drawn to this motherfucker. American Crusade is a book that advocates for Christian theocracy. And Wilson's entire career for like half a century has been dedicated to, per that Politico article, creating, quote, a comprehensive blueprint for a spiritual and political reformation that would transform America into a kind of Christian republic. And Wilson is the real deal. He is a serious, lifelong, committed Christian fascist. Pete is not the real deal. You know, you could call him a Johnny come lately. Not that I don't think he's a fascist, but like, he primarily cares about himself and his own personal advancement as opposed to the cause.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's not even a positive thing. But he does care about his own bottom line more than he cares about the project of fascism. It sounds like this Idaho based pastor would really put a lot on the line for fascism. But even the way that he's writing this book is he's writing to meet the moment of the amount of fascism you can get away with and still be viable at the exact time this book comes out.

[Robert Evans]

That is precisely what he's doing. Right. Which is why he's more milquetoast than present Pete in some sections, because he just didn't think some of that stuff was accepted, acceptable, and it's worth noting Again, Wilson's written a bunch of books laying out a blueprint for how Christians should and must take over the country and dominate violently everyone else. Pete, his book is not a blueprint.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's advocating for the same things. He's clearly supportive, even though he says, I'm not saying violence, but we also literally need to go to war.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

A literal crusade voting isn't enough, but also no violence. Violence, right. You know, Pete's book is not really giving a comprehensive blueprint.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because Pete is not that smart and is not a strategic thinker. It is your standard wannabe politician book.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It's meant to stake out a place for its author in the movement by saying the right shibboleths. But the writing is both lazy and shallow, and it provides no real implementation insight. It's just. What?

[Jamie Loftus]

You have no ideas. It's just like Islamophobia for chapter after chapter.

[Robert Evans]

It is scattered and somewhat depth desperate signposting for like, pick me, pick me, like me, like me.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like that's what he's doing, you know? Whereas Doug Wilson has spent his whole adult life building an actual power base in Moscow, Idaho, where, per Politico, quote, Wilson oversees a network of allied institutions that includes Christchurch, a publishing house, a classic Christian grade school, a Christian liberal arts college, and a ministerial training program. Beyond Moscow, the network of churches that Wilson founded in the late 1990s, called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, has grown to include over 150 congregations across four continents. An association of classical Christian schools that Wilson co founded in 1993 now counts over 500 member schools across the country.

[Jamie Loftus]

Hot. Okay, so he's an effective.

[Robert Evans]

He is an effective building. And again, not just in it for himself and his own, like, in it to build a movement.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's very different from Pete. I would be shocked if he really likes or respects the guy. But he's also very smart. He knows how to use a guy like Pete.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And he's, you know, the fact that he, before Pete became the sec def was seeing that this guy had had the potential to go somewhere if Trump won again. Because, like, you know, especially after Trump got out, he really gravitated to the people who were just complete toadies and lick spittles.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I was like, this is a mark.

[Jamie Loftus]

For this exact kind of guy.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. And Wilson was smart enough to be like, this guy might go somewhere, somewhere I should start getting in good with him.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And Wilson, this guy is so committed. Even during the period of time in which evangelical Christian nationalist figures had to pretend they weren't, he would openly preach his support for a theocracy. He has refused for years to refer to the Civil War as anything but the War between the States and has described his personal politics as slightly to the right of Jeb Stuart, a Confederate general.

[Unknown]

Great.

[Robert Evans]

Cool.

[Jamie Loftus]

Awesome yardstick.

[Robert Evans]

Nice stuff. So while Hegseth was by his own admission squishy for most of his adult life, Wilson has been a howling committed fascist for decades. My interpretation of their relationship behind the scenes is that Wilson recognized Hegseth as a useful person who was desperate for a place in the movement. And Wilson was happy to give him that in exchange for Having a future Secretary of Defense on his side, we see the kind of desperation Pete had to be involved with and feel like a part of this movement. Despite his belated entrance in chapter eight of his stupid book, Deporting God From America, which opens with a stunning paragraph. Wow, what a deal. After the election of Donald Trump In 2016, one of the most powerful things to happen to our country and to me, was the Christian conversion of the rapper Kanye West. Wait, the conversion of a rapper was a powerful movement in America and my life. Yes, it was. At first, like many others, I was skeptical of his authenticity. Is this a PR stunt? But when I watched Kanye live and listened to his songs, I was convinced he loves Jesus and wants to share him with the world. Even better. He went all in, not content to live a private life of faith in order to protect his iconic image. What a shot of adrenaline for the home team. If Kanye is with us, who can be against us? Kanye is a changed man, but not a perfect man. As often happens throughout history and in our country, the imperfect people become the best messengers. I should note that this was five years before Kanye would release his new hit song, Heil Hitler.

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow. Called it. Called it. And he's now going by, Yay, Yay, Yay.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Yay, Yay.

[Jamie Loftus]

He changed it again.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I missed that update. Thank you, Sophie.

[Jamie Loftus]

I have stopped keeping up with him. I. That.

[Robert Evans]

That was funny.

[Jamie Loftus]

That was a funny.

[Robert Evans]

On our back. We can't lose. He'll never lose his mind.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, which arguably, like, he already had by.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, no, he very clearly had.

[Jamie Loftus]

He was in active crisis. Well, cool. So we've got Everclear and Kanye West.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Ever Clear and Kanye. God, my two heroes, you know?

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Talk about building a coalition and putting together a team.

[Jamie Loftus]

My favorite part of that quote is what he said when he's talking about how, like, he. He went all. He really committed to it, and you're like, yes. You're not like broken clock. You're right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So we get another example after this of how inconsistent Pete's own account of his own past is. Hegseth tries to draw a comparison between Kanye's upbringing, which he describes as rooted in good Christian values, and his own claiming that faith in Jesus was front and center in his childhood upbringing, which is the opposite of the claim he's made more recently in that Christian magazine. Now we can look at the actual things Pete claimed and say, dude, you were always raised to be the guy you are. At no point did secular society step in to force you to Stop being religious. At no point did you have anything but, like, complete support for being the kind of right wing Christian nationalist weirdo that you are from our society.

[Jamie Loftus]

But it's really like, he's so committed to this conception he has of himself that the more we talk about it, the more I'm like, you know what you're describing. It's like, technically less compelling, but it makes him seem more competent than he is of, like, I was, like, born to occupy this role. I feel like that is an equally compelling role narrative that he's just too insecure to even admit.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

I was born to be a far right fail son that rises to power. That seems to be true.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, yes. That is like, you were crafted in a lab to be this exact shithead. Yes. And nothing about our society did anything but encourage it. So in the next segment of the book, he claims to be self aware of his sinful nature. And he says, says this without knowing, fearing, and recognizing God, I would be like a ship lost at sea, wrecked and sunk. You get wrecked plenty as it is, buddy. And trust me, I have almost been sunk more times than I can admit on these pages. Yeah, you have.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I've only seen 40 short years on this earth, and I've been divorced twice, almost gone bankrupt once, and been deployed with a bunch of toxically max feeling dudes thrice. One tour of. One tour of which included a war crimes controversy.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, my God, he's so.

[Robert Evans]

Controversy.

[Jamie Loftus]

He's so oppressed, you guys.

[Robert Evans]

Controversy.

[Jamie Loftus]

I think, you know, really brave of him to call the American military toxic masculine.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think he's making. He's making fun of the left here. Right? Like, that's the point of it. But it's also very funny to be like, yeah, there was a war crimes controversy. Like, dude, per your own claims to the New Yorker, you complained that you were scared your unit was gonna come commit war crimes.

[Jamie Loftus]

Well, 2009, Pete can't come to the phone right now.

[Robert Evans]

He notes in this that there's too much to write about in terms of his sins and failings. I can't actually go into all that detail. Right, well, legally, he probably can't. Legally, he shouldn't. But we can, Jamie Jimmy Loftus. We absolutely can and we must. So let's talk about the allegations against Pete Hegseth re sexual assault. We've already heard about all of his drinking and crowding and spending the money from his different charities in order to party and pursue women. And repeated claims in that whistleblower report. That he and others sexually harassed women who worked for the orgs that he was at. Now, that all existed prior to Pete's getting nominated to be the Secretary of Defense. But then once it became clear that he was Trump's pick for SecDef, a new set of allegations. Allegations kind of hit the public. And these went back to 2017, when Pete Hegseth was at a hotel for. I think it was some sort of a work conference. It was a Republican women's conference.

[Jamie Loftus]

He would be there, wouldn't he?

[Robert Evans]

Yes, he did. He met a woman known as Jane Doe. For legal, obvious purposes. He met this Jane Doe at the conference, and they talked. Other people who were there recall them having a loud argument at one point. And it's kind of unclear precisely what happened, but they were both drinking. They had a loud argument around 1:30am which prompted an employee to be like, hey, you guys need to quiet down. And Hegseth responded by cursing at the employee and saying, I got freedom of speech. And then the Jane Doe.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, Patriot. Even at his lowest.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And then, per npr, Doe then intervened, telling the employee that they were Republicans and apologized for Hegseth's behavior.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Jamie Loftus]

I love that. That's the shorthand for a drunken argument. No, no, no, no, Officer, you don't understand. We're Republicans. We're supposed to act this way.

[Robert Evans]

And because of the lawsuit that comes later, we have this woman's texts from that night. And some of them, she like. One of them, she says, he wears a ring on his pointer finger in it. Creeps me out. Like, these messages, they're pretty. There's one. I'm just gonna read the message chain. Do you know Pete Hegseth? She asks. Name sounds familiar. Who is he? He's a Fox contributor. I guess he does Outnumbered and Fox and Friends. Anyway, our ladies are freaking drooling over him. Oh, okay. He is TDB light mini tdb. Oh, you mean the man who tried to have sex with my wife? Not a good first impression for Pete, Right? They're talking about pet. Yeah, this guy's a creep. He's trying to fuck everybody. Yeah. And she says that he creeps him out. Later in the evening, Doe told investigators that she saw Hegseth rubbing women's legs and giving off a creeper vibe. She recalls. Cause she is drinking too. She recalls that the argument that they had was that she got angry at him for repeatedly touching women at the conference. And so they have this loud argument. And Doe remembers Hegseth saying, saying, I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy. And then quote from npr, Doe said that the next memory she had was when she was in an unknown room. This is from the police report. Doe did not know where she was or how she got to the room. Hegseth was in the room with her. So this is. She blacks out, presumably. I think she had it. I believe she had a tox screen because she goes to the police. But I don't know. It may not have been seen enough that would have shown if there was something else in her dream. But you know, blacking out is. Anyway, she winds up refer to Pete's.

[Jamie Loftus]

Previous writing on the subject and she.

[Robert Evans]

Says, I do recall saying no to him repeatedly.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And you know, she eventually files a sexual like assault claim against him.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That he sexually assaulted her.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He maintains that any physical interaction was consensual. I wouldn't be surprised if he was blacked out to. To given his own. Like, I don't know what memory Pete actually has of this, but ultimately the police do not wind up prosecuting this because they say they don't have enough evidence to go on. And Hegseth settles out of court with her in a civil suit. He pays her $50,000 as part of a. And makes her sign a confidentiality agreement. This is just like per documents obtained by cnn.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, this is just fucking vile. I mean, it's not surprising at all that it didn't move forward, but the fact that it went far enough that she had to submit her text. I mean, were there like kits done or anything like that? Like, I. That's.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I don't think, like, I think by the time. Because she didn't initially want to report it at all. Like it's the. It often takes long enough that like you don't get as early as you need for those kind of screens. Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

I read a really interesting book. I'll just randomly recommend it, but I just finished it last week called the Secret. I think it's called the Secret History of the Rape Kit. And it's really good of just like how. How much technology there is there that is just not used. But in any case that's. I mean, not surprising at all that they didn't move forward with the case. But just the idea of like, well, what does constitute enough evidence, quote unquote? Like. And I know that varies from state to state too.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And it does. And I got to read in terms of. Because again, Pete makes the statement that like, oh yeah, I was a bad guy, but like he's he's basically pretending. And, like, the bad stuff is, I wasn't enough of an outright fascist, right? Like, yeah, that's, like, mostly the kind of claim that he's making is that, like, yeah, I imperfect because, like, I wasn't as big a piece of. As shit as I am today as a result of that. As a result of Pete being like, you know, I've almost been sunk more times than I can admit on these pages. I want to read one more quote about some of the sins that Pete leaves out in his mea culpa.

[Jamie Loftus]

Okay?

[Robert Evans]

And this is from the New Yorker's article, Pete Hegseth's Secret History. Hegseth appeared in October 2017 as a dinner speaker at the California Federation of Republican Women's 40th Biennial Convention in Monterey, California. His personal life was in tumult. In 2010, he had married a second time to Samantha Dearing, a co worker at Vets for Freedom. He admitted in an essay that year that he had fathered a child out of wedlock before marrying her, the Times reported. Then, in August of 2017, while still married to Deering, he fathered a daughter with another woman, a producer at Fox, Jennifer Rauche, who he eventually married in 2019. As he and Deering wrangled their way through a difficult divorce, as the Times first reported, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him an email excoriating him as an abuser of women who belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. She admonished him, get some help and take an honest look at yourself. That says, mom.

[Jamie Loftus]

Oh, my. Well, that's what I call good business consulting. That's. Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, that's his fucking mother. Jesus.

[Jamie Loftus]

Nightmare.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway. Yeah, I just love it when he's like, oh, you know, I'm imperfect, but God uses imperfect people. That sounds a lot better than, like, no, I'm a real fucking piece of shit. Like, I am a gigantic who does not at all live consistently with my stated values. I violate every rule God set for human beings on a weekly basis, on a constant basis.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yes, it is interesting. Like, he's presenting, like, even as, like, a piece of effective propaganda. This book is a failure because it's so inconsistent with, like, who does he want to be perceived as? You know? Like, it just seems like he'll say he'll switch the narrative from moment to moment depending on what is the most effective thing here. What are you going to like the most? What makes me look the coolest, which varies from Chapter to chapter. Like, in this, he's a wounded bird who had like. And then in other ones, he's a born warrior because Donald Trump, like, that slid out of his mouth.

[Robert Evans]

You know, it's just, it's awesome. It's good.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's the, the, yeah, the, the allegations against. It's like, even in. I mean, and that unfortunately is like a pretty standard allegation for a guy like this. And of course, it's just like, means nothing. Not to mention the civilian deaths.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Jamie Loftus]

I like, well, this guy rocks.

[Robert Evans]

So we're going to wrap up here. The second to the last chapter, though, I should Note, is chapter 13 is called the Front Lines Education in Israel. And 90% of it is about how evil the education system is. Pete is like, you can't send your kids to colleges because you're funding the enemy. You should destroy, literally burn your own graduation certificate or whatever. And he will later. He doesn't do it now. He says, I'm going to destroy my diplomas from Princeton and Harvard.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

As a protest.

[Jamie Loftus]

I'm sure he did.

[Robert Evans]

Which he destroys. He claims to have mailed. Sent back his Harvard diploma years later, later, as a result of woke. But, like, he doesn't actually do that immediately.

[Jamie Loftus]

He didn't do that.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know that he actually did that at all. It might just be a lie.

[Jamie Loftus]

That story is as real as Omar from Texas as far as I'm concerned.

[Robert Evans]

After complaining that, like, college is evil because the whole theme of this chapter is that, like, college is evil because of what it makes Americans think about Israel. So after several pages of ranting about colleges, he writes, he, you might ask, what in the world does the state of Israel have to do with any of this? I live in the United States. Why is Israel the front line? And of course, the answer to that is that Israel is central to the story of Western civilization, of which America is the greatest manifestation. Pete advises everyone to watch a bunch of prageru videos about Israel's history and then goes through a summarizes Israeli history in like a page and neatly leaves out the palace Palestinians completely.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Like there's just nobody there. It's like, that's not a factor in the story at all. Celebrates the beautiful army Israel has and talks about their unmatched standard of living, something that might surprise people in Gaza, and says that because Israel is such a great place to live, that's why American crusaders have to fight for it as strongly as they fight for the United States. Pete ends the chapter with these lines with the front lines identified. Let's put a full on American Crusade into action. And the last chapter is just titled make the Crusade Great Again. It's not really. It's just a rehash of shit he said previously in the book. This chapter is not necessary and it's not really worth getting into other than this line near the end. The American Crusade can be won, but not through negotiation. Stale thinking and bipartisan consensus have betrayed us. This moment requires a total commitment to victory, which includes co opting the successful tactics the left has used for years. Years. We must be smart, tough, proactive and bold. Anyway, that's Pete and his stupid book. I hope everyone had a fun week.

[Jamie Loftus]

Going going out on a chapter on Israel. I guess I didn't expect better, but Jesus, fuck. And then he wrote another book called the War on Warriors.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that one day. That's his book about. Yeah. How America, like we don't make people want to be violent enough.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like we, we shame men for killing and stuff. And like. Yeah, it's just, it's just. We'll get into it one of these days, but no rush, not today. No rush, not today.

[Jamie Loftus]

I fucking hated every second of that. Yep.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jamie Loftus]

So an average episode, a normal episode.

[Robert Evans]

Of behind the Bastards. Yes. This was meant to be like an easier week for me, but I still wound up having to do a bunch of research because, God, there's just. You can't just not talk about the reality of Pete when you're looking at like what he claims about it.

[Jamie Loftus]

No, because, I mean, one thing I was, I mean, not necessarily surprised about, but there's so many approaches to this kind of book and he approaches and I wonder how much of it is just legal. But like, he says stunningly little about himself while also presenting no ideas. It's really just racism.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's just racism and you know, like callow self interest.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He wants to be a big man, an important man. That's all that really matters.

[Jamie Loftus]

Look at the COVID Yeah, you could kind of like glean the contents of the book by looking at the COVID It's a book by a deeply insecure man who's about to get an undue amount of power.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Ah, God, we love it when deeply insecure men get great amounts of power that they absolutely are not prepared to wield.

[Jamie Loftus]

It's the American tradition.

[Robert Evans]

It's the American tradition. So go out, take power for yourself and then get correct, corrupt and destroy huge swaths of the human race. That's my challenge. To all of you listeners, go take power somewhere in the world, become corrupted by it, and send us further down the slalom to complete collapse.

[Jamie Loftus]

And all I'll say is, Michigan, don't believe what you've heard. I'm a good person.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, let her into your corner store, hand her an axe. It's same.

[Jamie Loftus]

Hey, Jesus. I'm not saying you could and you would be fine, is what I'm saying.

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely safe, for sure.

[Jamie Loftus]

I hope to be welcomed in your borders in due time. But I understand the healing has only just begun.

[Unknown]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Well, you got anything to plug?

[Jamie Loftus]

Yes, I should plug my Cool zone Media podcast 16th minute. We are currently on hiatus, but it is a weekly podcast in which I talk to and reflect on the the main characters of the Internet, catch up with them years later and talk about how broken the Internet has made us. Check that out. Check out my book, Raw the Naked truth about Hot Dogs. It's in paperback now, so it doesn't cost as much money or just get it from the library or honestly even steal it. It's fine. I don't think I'm gonna get any royalties.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And.

[Jamie Loftus]

Yeah, that's what I got.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I. I think you are royalty, Jamie. You're the queen of podcasts.

[Jamie Loftus]

Wow. That's way better than what you usually call me, which is a murderer. So I'll take it.

[Robert Evans]

Well, look, name McQueen who wasn't a murderer, Jamie.

[Jamie Loftus]

That's so true. It's so true.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, I take it back.

[Jamie Loftus]

I take it back.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

All right, everybody.

[Jamie Loftus]

Go to hell.

[Robert Evans]

I love you.

[Jamie Loftus]

Behind the Basterds is a production of Cool Zone Movies Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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[Jamie Loftus]

Ugh.

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Come on.

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Why is this taking so long?

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[Jamie Loftus]

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