Pete Hegseth’s Holy War

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Pete Hegseth’s Holy War
Date: March 13, 2026
Host: Jane Mayer, with Susan B. Glasser, Evan Osnos, David Remnick
Guest: Katherine Stewart (author/journalist, Christian nationalism expert)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the ascent of Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of Defense and self-described Christian nationalist, as a pivotal figure leading the U.S. military during its war with Iran. The discussion centers on how Hegseth’s religious worldview—once relegated to the political fringes—now shapes American defense policy and raises deep constitutional, strategic, and ethical concerns.

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Main Themes & Purposes

• Rise of Christian Nationalism: How Pete Hegseth has infused the Department of Defense with a theocratic ideology.
• War Framed as Holy War: The contrast between past U.S. leadership’s avoidance of religious rhetoric in war and the current administration’s embrace of it.
• Personal History and Grievance: Hegseth's personal story—marked by tumult and radicalization—informing his leadership style.
• Strategic and Legal Implications: The undermining of rule of law and established military norms under a religiously motivated agenda.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Viral Symbolism and Authoritarian Ritual ([00:01-01:16])

• Discussion of Trump’s “shoe diplomacy” as emblematic of authoritarian groupthink in the cabinet.
• Quote: “What kind of a man... wears the wrong size shoes?” – David Remnick (00:44)
• Laughable on its face, but indicative of deeper issues of conformity and fear surrounding Trump and his inner circle.

2. Hegseth’s Worldview at the National Prayer Breakfast ([01:54-03:35])

• Highlights from Hegseth’s speech: Framing America’s rights as God-given—a core Christian nationalist belief.
• “America was founded as a Christian nation. It remains a Christian nation in our DNA if we can keep it.” – David Remnick (02:23)
• Concerns raised: Is Hegseth casting the Iran conflict as a holy war?

3. Shift in U.S. War Rhetoric ([03:35-06:56])

• Contrast with post-9/11 Bush era: Former leaders stressed the U.S. was not at war with Islam itself.
• Now, leaders like Hegseth openly invoke religious language and Christian supremacy, a stark change with vast consequences.

4. Hegseth’s Background & Radicalization ([07:34-13:16])

• Early life: Minnesota upbringing, Ivy League education, military service after 9/11.
• Two key radicalizing events:
  • Combat experience in Iraq/Afghanistan.
  • Personal turmoil (2017-2018): Allegations of sexual assault, family instability, religious conversion.
• Extreme religious affiliation: Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), opposes women’s suffrage and LGBTQ rights.
  • “He is part of what’s called the communion of Reformed Evangelical churches... opposes women’s right to vote. It believes homosexuality should be a crime.” – Evan Osnos (08:20)
• Significant moment: Hegseth’s “grievance fusion”—anger over being labeled an extremist after Jan. 6, marked by crusader tattoos (“Deus Vult”).

5. Grievance Politics and the Military ([13:16-16:04])

• Trump’s strategy: “Finding broken people... there’s always something there.” – David Remnick (13:29)
• Hegseth’s advocacy for convicted war criminals as an assertion against “woke” military norms.
  • “He has been a champion for war criminals. That had been his cause when after the war, when he was at Fox News...” – Jane Mayer (14:22)
• Past incidents: Notable history of “Kill all Muslims” rhetoric as early as 2015.

6. Operation Epic Fury: Militarism & Media Control ([16:50-20:02])

• Media crackdown at the Pentagon: Hegseth replaces press corps with right-wing influencers and notorious figures.
• War briefings: Celebratory tone about violence, lack of transparency, and religious justifications.
  • “It’s the most UN-American thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a grotesque celebration of the violence and power and killing capacity of the American military.” – Jane Mayer (18:56)
• Direct quotes from briefings:
  • “We’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of... military force. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.” – David Remnick/Evan Osnos (19:25-19:36)
• Ongoing investigation into civilian casualties, notably the bombing of an Iranian school.

7. Deep Dive: Christian Nationalism (with Katherine Stewart) ([22:22-34:59])

What is Christian Nationalism? ([23:39-24:33])

• Definition: “A mindset and also a machine... [with] a deeply networked organizational infrastructure.” – Katherine Stewart (24:00)
• Political role: Acts as a voter turnout apparatus, tightly allied with right-wing politics over religious variety or compassion.

Hegseth’s Religious Network and Practices ([25:33-27:45])

• Follows Doug Wilson and the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship—extreme, patriarchal, theocratic beliefs.
• Influence in the Pentagon: Monthly worship services; imagery mixing scripture and military force.
• “He’s got these crusader tattoos on his body, like the Jerusalem cross... He has actually cast some of his actions... as helping to save America as a Christian nation.” – Katherine Stewart (27:10)

Alarm Inside the U.S. Military ([27:45-29:03])

• Surge in complaints (200+) from service members: Commanders invoking biblical end-time prophecies to motivate troops.
• Anecdote: Commander described Trump as “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon.” (27:57)
• Stewart: U.S. military tradition is pluralistic; this religious turn is deeply concerning, though not all commanders approve.

Trump, Transactional Religion, and Anti-Democratic Currents ([31:02-33:17])

• Trump as the “imperfect vessel”: Compared to King Cyrus in religious right rhetoric.
• Core anti-democratic sentiment: “This is a movement that at its core, has never believed in democracy. It rejects the principles of equality and pluralism and, frankly, rule of law that represents the best of the American promise.” — Katherine Stewart (32:40)
• Hegseth “abolishing” rules of engagement fits this ethos of being “outside the law.”

Recasting Empathy as Sin ([33:49-34:48])

• Masculinity, violence, and “Jesus and John Wayne” Christianity—empathy is treated as weakness or even heresy by movement leaders.
• Katherine Stewart: “Empathy is somehow recast as a sin. I just need to point out that this is completely antithetical to how most Americans experience... their faith.” (34:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This is illuminating about life and what we sometimes refer to as Pyongyang on the Potomac.”
  – David Remnick (01:08)
• “He has defined himself as a kind of warrior against an existential threat to the west, which he defines not only in terms of Muslim fundamentalism, but also a holy war here at home.”
  – Evan Osnos (06:01)
• “He drips with disdain, almost fury himself... We are not going to be constrained by this anymore. We're not going to have this WOKE military.”
  – David Remnick (11:34)
• “His cause—championing soldiers convicted of war crimes—caught Trump’s eye.”
  – Jane Mayer (14:22)
• “It calls into question the ways in which Hegseth’s religion influences his military decisions and his decisions for all of America.”
  – Katherine Stewart (27:38)
• “It is his responsibility as a citizen and as a believer to pursue a holy war and not be bound by earthly laws, by rules that are imposed on the Pentagon, by lawyers. He talks about lawyers with contempt. That's an astonishing window into the mind of the person now in charge of the American military.”
  – Evan Osnos (36:31)
• “Can you imagine what Thomas Jefferson would think about this? I mean, it’s literally the antithetical approach.”
  – David Remnick (38:47)
• “When you believe you are on a hallowed mission, ordinary things like planning for a war... can seem almost immaterial.”
  – Evan Osnos (39:45)
• “At a certain point you can come to believe that winning is all that matters and... to care about the law, to adhere to the rules... is a sign of weakness. And in fact... may in fact be a sin.”
  – Evan Osnos (40:52)
• “One of the phrases that the evangelical leaders used was to call Trump God's wrecking ball. So, you know, we're now seeing it unleashed in the Middle East.”
  – Jane Mayer (41:27)

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Structural & Thematic Timestamps

• 00:01-01:16 – Satirical intro with Trump’s “shoe” loyalty test
• 01:54-03:35 – Hegseth at National Prayer Breakfast, Christian nationalism spotlighted
• 03:35-06:56 – Comparison: Bush vs. Trump/Hegseth on religious framing of war
• 07:34-13:16 – Hegseth’s biography; radicalization via military/personal crisis
• 13:16-16:04 – Grievance, anger, and rise to power; “crusader” iconography
• 16:50-20:02 – Operation Epic Fury; media bans; celebration of force
• 22:22-34:59 – Katherine Stewart interview: Christian nationalism defined; Hegseth’s religious entanglements
  • 27:45 – Apocalyptic rhetoric in the ranks; dangerous blending of faith and command
  • 31:02 – Trump’s religious utility to the movement
  • 33:49 – Empathy as “sin”; masculinity and violence
• 36:23-end – Wrap-up: historical perspective, Hegseth’s “maximum lethality,” the undermining of American tradition and constitutional principles

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Conclusion

This episode presents a deeply reported, multifaceted discussion of Pete Hegseth’s rise, the dangerous implications of overt Christian nationalism at the highest levels of American military power, and the broader corrosion of democratic, legal, and humanitarian values under the guise of religious—and political—absolutism. The conversation, rich with context and personal insight from each guest, is essential listening for anyone concerned with the current and future direction of civil-military relations and American democracy.

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Further Listening

• For background on Christian nationalism, read Katherine Stewart’s Money, Lies, and God.
• To understand the shift in political religious rhetoric, revisit past Political Scene episodes on the Trump administration’s first term and the war in Afghanistan.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

There's a viral photograph of Marco Rubio that really tells it all. These Florsheim shoes that Donald Trump has apparently become enamored with, that he has taken, according to the Wall Street Journal, to guessing the shoe size of his visitors and then sending them shoes, which now then you have this incredible photograph of all the cabinet members wearing their matching shoes. Cause they're afraid not to wear them to me.

[Jane Mayer]

Also really funny that he doesn't just even ask what size is the proper size. They have to wear the shoe size that he's picked for them, even when it's the wrong size. So you see Marco Rubio with like, an inch behind his heels of Gap there.

[David Remnick]

What kind of a man, you know, wears the wrong size shoes?

[Jane Mayer]

Because the boss.

[Evan Osnos]

I'll tell you what, man, Marco Rubio

[David Remnick]

does that really screw future president's ear, by the way. It's not a leadership moment.

[Jane Mayer]

Maybe he did it on purpose to show how little little Marco is.

[Evan Osnos]

I'm sure he. This is a gift with a fish hook in it.

[David Remnick]

Props to the Wall Street Journal. Okay, because this is illuminating about life and what we sometimes refer to as Pyongyang on the Potomac.

[Jane Mayer]

Thank God we can still laugh here because, boy, this was not a week full of a lot of laughs. Honestly, it's been really shocking and disturbing to watch the news unfold. So. All right, from Florsheim to the serious Stu. Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hi, Susan.

[David Remnick]

Hey, there. Great to be with you.

[Jane Mayer]

Hey, Evan.

[Evan Osnos]

Good morning, guys.

[David Remnick]

Hi.

[Jane Mayer]

All right. Well, last month in Washington, at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, took to the stage.

[Evan Osnos]

I was given the opportunity to read

[David Remnick]

a passage from scripture today. And today we gather to recognize that

[Evan Osnos]

our rights here in this great country

[Katherine Stewart]

come from a loving and benevolent God, not government.

[David Remnick]

America was founded as a Christian nation.

[Katherine Stewart]

It remains a Christian nation in our

[David Remnick]

DNA if we can keep it.

[Evan Osnos]

And as public officials, we have a

[Jane Mayer]

sacred duty 250 years on to glorify him. For years, Hagseth has argued that America was founded as a Christian nation, a core belief of what's known as Christian nationalism. Not long ago, that worldview mostly lived on the fringes of American politics. But now Pete Hegseth is running the United States Department of Defense, which he calls the Department of War, the most powerful military in the world. And the United States is at War with Iran, a Muslim country. So today we're asking what happens when a worldview like Christian nationalism moves from the political fringe into the center of American military power. Susan? Evan, this administration has offered many explanations for the war, each official selling their own version. Is the secretary of defense trying to cast this as something close to a holy war?

[David Remnick]

You know, Jane, it's really, I think, a moment to be noted here. In the wake of 9, 11, we all remember that sort of feeling of shock and horror. And when the United States went to war in Afghanistan, its mission was very specific, right? It was to sort of topple the Taliban, who had given shelter to Al Qaeda, which had launched These attacks on September 11th against the United States. And it's very interesting, the difference from then to now. George W. Bush, he called it initially a crusade. You know, this was a country that was in shock and horror, fury. He said, we're going to launch a righteous crusade. The enormous blowback from that was, was actually taken in by that administration. And from then on, what you saw was something that's almost the exact opposite of what we're hearing right now in the nearly two weeks since we've been at war with Iran, which was Bush saying, going out of his way to say this is not actually a holy war. We are not at war against an entire religion. And there were great efforts to have him go to a mosque, have him go to point out to people that Islam was not our enemy, even if Trump terrorists who misused the name of Islam were.

[Jane Mayer]

Do you think that was because they saw it as a peril to go up against one of the world's great religions, or do you think it was sort of public relations? I mean, we know underneath the surface there was a lot of sort of contempt for Islam. But why do you think he took such care to back off of that language?

[Evan Osnos]

I think you have to remember we are, after all, a place that has a rigid boundary, in theory, between church and state. I think there was, even for George Bush, who was, after all, by his own description, a boy born again evangelical Christian, a sense that there were boundaries that one doesn't cross. And look, there were strategic realities he was also trying to maintain, supportive countries around the world who were wary of him personally and wary of America's intentions? Frankly, Jane, I think it's one of the things that is most noticeable about the difference between then and now. Now you have people like Lindsey Graham, for instance, who has already called this a religious war. Mike Johnson has called Islam a misguided relig. But There is nobody who personifies this difference more than Pete Hegseth. I mean, it's been easy to overlook this because there's been so much going on in the last few months. But since coming in to run the Pentagon, Hegseth has been convening prayer meetings inside the building. And for Hegseth, this is in its own way, a kind of natural evolution of a life that has been building towards this. You know, Susan mentioned a second ago all of the concern when George W. Bush talked about the war in the Middle east as a crusade. Well, remind yourself. Pete Hegseth wrote a book called American Crusade. He has defined himself as a kind of warrior against an existential threat to the west, which he defines not only in terms of Muslim fundamentalism, but also a holy war here at home. That is his word. He says that he is involved in what he once called a 360° holy, holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.

[Jane Mayer]

So in this episode, Pete Hegseth, who is he? How did he come to embrace Christian nationalism and is an ideology that was once resigned to the margins of American politics infiltrating the US Military? Later in the show, we're going to be joined by Katherine Stewart, who has spent years writing and reporting on the Christian nationalist movement in America and is the author of a wonderful book, Money, Lies, and God. But first, let's start with Hagseth himself. Evan, can you walk us through Pete Hegseth's early background?

[Evan Osnos]

Yeah. There's basically sort of two big turning points in this guy's life, just to remind you. I mean, he grew up in a small town in Minnesota. He was a kind of high school star, basketball, football, valedictorian of his high school class, goes on to Princeton. He doesn't talk as much about his time in the Ivy League now, but while he was there, he became a conservative figure on campus. He was the publisher of the big conservative paper. And then two things happened. One was the 911 attacks. He ended up joining the National Guard. He went to Iraq. He went to Afghanistan. After he came back to the United States, he took on the cause of service members who had been accused or convicted of violating the laws of war. And that became his cause celeb. It's what brought him together with Trump. Initially, he had mocked Trump like a lot of people in 2016, but eventually he and Trump found common cause in this. And Hegseth described the military as a kind of encumbered by bureaucracy and wokeness. And then the last piece happened. This is crucial. He has moved further and further into a form of Christianity that is farther and farther outside of the mainstream in the United States. He is part of what's called the communion of Reformed Evangelical churches. That's a term most people have probably not heard. But the crec, as it's known, opposes women's right to vote. It believes homosexuality should be a crime. This has become, by Pete Hegsett's own description, an enormous part of his life. He moved his family to Tennessee, where he is now. His children are in a school, and he's in a church that really revolves around this community.

[Jane Mayer]

And correct me if I'm wrong, but it believes that Christianity should dominate all forms of civic and government life. It is actually a sort of a form of theocracy that he has embraced. Can I just say one other thing? As someone who sort of delved early on into Hagseth's background, I'm always interested in people convert to extreme religions. And I was looking at his timeline. He converted, I believe, in 2018. And if you go back and you look at his life in 2017, that was the year that he was accused of raping a woman. His personal life was in a shambles. He was, at the time he'd been married, I think, two times. He was about to get married. The third time, he had children out of wedlock with two of these women, and another woman accused him of raping her.

[Evan Osnos]

Right. And that's an accusation that he's denied. Right. But continue, continue.

[Jane Mayer]

The charges were hard to bring. The police in Monterey, California, did not formally charge him, but he settled out of court with the woman. Her name has never come out, but it was a definition of a life in turmoil, I think, at that point. And that's when he joined this church in Colts Neck, New Jersey.

[David Remnick]

Well, I also, it strikes me that it's his life being a hot mess, but then he also acquires the grievance to go along with it. And it's that fusion, I would say, of very almost palpable anger combined with embrace of extremist ideology that has sort of brought us this public figure that now I think we're kind of seeing the full measure of in the midst of the war. It's, you know, war is the kind of crisis that clarifies in Washington, and I think many people are seeing that. Pete Hegseth, for the first time, the grievance is interesting, too, because he actually has a very specific grievance with the US Military. And it goes back to right after this period that you're talking about. After the attack on the U.S. capitol of January 6, 2021, there's this concern, right, about Donald Trump wanting to use military power on his own behalf. He didn't do that, but there was a lot of concern about that. And it's at that moment that a fellow member of the Army National Guard flagged tattoos that Pete Hegseth had as evidence that he was a possible, what they call insider threat. And this is very interesting because it's that fusion again of religion and state power that I think has made people so alarmed. Pete Hegseth had two tattoos. One was a Jerusalem cross, a symbol that was the coat of arms of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and long associated in modern times with the idea of somehow Christian warriors reclaiming the Holy Land. The other tattoo reads Deus Vult, God wills it, which is also a motto from the Crusades. It has been adopted in modern times by white supremacists here in the US and again, when you listen to Pete Hegseth speak, he drips with disdain, almost fury himself. He calls the operation the war in Iran, Operation Epic Fury. But just listen to the tone of voice of this man, the leader of the Pentagon, when he speaks about the military and the rules of the past. And we are not going to be constrained by this anymore. We're not going to have this WOKE military.

[Katherine Stewart]

You name it, the department did it.

[Evan Osnos]

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the

[David Remnick]

wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the WOKE department, but not anymore. This is exactly what he's talking about, is this personal grievance that has become sort of the splinter inside of him, that has opened up an entire view of what needs to be purged from the culture of the military that he's now in charge of leading.

[Jane Mayer]

He said, I joined the army to fight extremists in 2001. Twenty years later, that same army labeled me one that is the heart or the kernel of that grievance.

[David Remnick]

That's right. And I think that for Donald Trump, Evan, you mentioned when he came together with Trump after initially looking down on him in 2016. Donald Trump has this power of finding broken people, of attracting, figuring out somebody who's got seething anger, even if on the surface they look like a polished television host who went to Princeton, has an Ivy League pedigree. There's always something there. And that's what I found in covering both the first term and the second term, that these are people who have a chip on their shoulder, an ax to grind. And I think it's again, and handing ultimate Power to those folks is why we're talking about this in the context of the war. And maybe that case that did specifically really get Pete Hegsett the job is worth mentioning as well, Jim.

[Jane Mayer]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he has been a champion for war criminals. That had been his cause when after the war, when he was at Fox News, he championed the cause of three servicemembers who had been charged with war crimes and said that they were not criminals, they were warriors, as he put it. And Trump took up this cause and commuted their sentences or gave them clemency. And the thing that's worth remembering, though, as Pete Hegseth was making this his cause, the US Military was on the other side of this, because the brass at the military and the people who served with Pete Hegseth actually opposed what he was doing because they knew that the laws of war are the laws of decency and also what sort of separates us from barbarians. And they also know that it's what keeps our own service members safe. And so this was his own personal cause, and it was something that caught Trump's eye. I just wanted to say that as, you know, as we try to describe the evolution of Pete Hegseth, that his contempt, I guess you have to call it, for Islam, preceded him being called an extremist. And this goes back 10 years. You know, there was this incident that a whistleblower at one of the organizations he was at, a tiny nonprofit, and one of the organizations that he was running was beset by all kinds of management problems because he was a terrible manager and drunk much of the time. But in one drunken bout, he was in the bar described as chanting, kill all Muslims. Kill all Muslims. So this was way back. This was like 2015. This has been an ongoing thing with him.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, I think what we've come to is there's a procession of, in a sense, these kinds of signal moments in his life. You know, first he goes off to the Middle East. He sort of becomes self defining as a warrior against Islam. He then has this rupture with the military, where ultimately he ends up seeing himself as somebody who is trying to bring back what the US Military should be. And then finally he finds a religious context in which, for him, he is now essentially a warrior, not only on behalf of Trump's ideas and the American idea, but a Christian idea. And now he finds himself in the catbird seat at a moment when the United States for the very first time, is engaged with Israel in an attack on a Muslim nation.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, let's talk about Operation Epic fury.

[Jane Mayer]

Okay, let's talk a little about it.

[David Remnick]

For many Americans, they're just seeing, in a way, this figure for the first time, really. And, you know, it's a widely mockable, easily mockable figure. I feel like Colin Joe's portrayal of Pete Hegseth on Saturday Night Live is gonna be one of the sort of enduring moments from the Trump 2.0 presidency. I mean, it's just, you know, at times when I've been watching these Pentagon briefings, it's like as if Pete Hegseth is imitating Colin Jost. Imitating Pete Hegseth. I mean, really, he's become in some ways the inhabitant of his own caricature. And so he, you know, he comes in this sort of Fox TV suits. They're too tight, the pants are kind of too short. I never understood that, by the way. Side note, maybe it's to show the shoes. Well, I don't know, you know, but except. So he comes out, right, and he's like, sort of stoked and he's ready for combat. Except the combat is with the fake news media. And the thing that most people knew about Hegseth before the war started, right, was that he had banned basically all of the traditional media, including, interestingly, his own former network, Fox News, which refused to sign the onerous, and I think now the subject of a lawsuit. But the onerous code that was being demanded of reporters under Hegseth that they would essentially forswear doing any actual reporting. So nobody, no real news organizations, including Fox News, signed up for that. So now he replaced the entire Pentagon press corps basically with kind of right wing influencers, including, amazingly, there's a guy who's now accredited to the redone Pete Hegseth press corps, who actually was one of the rioters on January 6th. I mean, that really just tells you a lot. So we knew that he was sort of at war with the fake news. He was at war with the, quote, woke dod. His crusade seemed to be, frankly, to purge, quote, unquote, DEI from the Pentagon. And now here he is, he gives these briefings on this war. And to me, it's the most UN American thing I've ever seen. It's a grotesque celebration of the violence and power and killing capacity of the American military. It's a laser focused, maximum authority mission

[Evan Osnos]

delivered with overwhelming and unrelenting precision. No hesitation, no half measures.

[David Remnick]

As President Trump declared yesterday, we're crushing

[Evan Osnos]

the enemy in an overwhelming display of

[David Remnick]

technical skill and military force. We will not relent until the enemy

[Evan Osnos]

is totally and decisively defeated.

[David Remnick]

Those are really what Pete Hagseth has been delivering from the podium, without clarity about the mission in Iran, without clarity about the goals, without clarity about the progress, and without an effort to invest the American people in this use of their power. And I just, I think these briefings that he's been doing, you know, will be studied by people for many years.

[Evan Osnos]

That's right.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, it strikes me as on the most basic level as such a violation of the Ten Commandments that he says that he embraces. Thou shalt not kill. He really seems to be reveling in the killing and has yet to apologize or even address other than to say that they investigating the bombing of a school in Iran that killed 175 or so people, most of whom were schoolgirls. It's hard for most people to match that with their idea of Christianity. But not for Hegseth, apparently. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Katherine Stewart, who will walk us through Pete Hegseth's Christian nationalist ideology and how it's shaping the US Military. The political scene will be right back. If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening.

[David Remnick]

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[Jane Mayer]

All right, now we want to turn to the ideas behind Pete Hegseth's worldview. And for that we're joined by the journalist Katherine Stewart. She spent years reporting on the rise of the religious right and the movement known as Christian nationalism. Katherine, welcome to the show.

[Katherine Stewart]

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, you've spent a lot of time studying Christian nationalists closely and now one of them, Pete Hegseth's actually running the Pentagon. So we're in the middle of a war. Does any of this surprise you?

[Katherine Stewart]

Well, not really, although I think at a higher level, we can't imagine that Trump himself is pursuing an explicitly religious agenda. Pete Hadseff maybe be a different story here, but I think it's basically meant to serve the political purpose of Trump's administration and MAGA movement more broadly. And this is actually where some of that Christian nationalist and religious messaging plays a role. Right. Trump wants to shore up his base of support. A disproportionate number of his followers are supporters of Christian nationalism. So he needs a way to justify this. Needless and expensive. An unpopular war and religion becomes a way to justify it.

[Evan Osnos]

Can you help us explain what we mean when we talk about Christian nationalism? This has become something that I think listeners of this show and people who follow politics are increasingly aware of. But the language itself, the terminology, may still be a bit mysterious. What is Christian nationalism and how does it differ from some of the things you mentioned a moment ago about charismatic or evangelical Christianity?

[Katherine Stewart]

I think of it as a mindset and also a machine. So, you know, the mindset includes the idea that America was established to be be a Christian nation, but only according to a certain interpretation of Christianity, certainly not progressive or mainline Christianity, because its proponents adhere more to a hardline form of Christianity and the idea that that's what once made us great and we need to take it back. Right. And our law should be based on a kind of reactionary interpretation of the Bible. But I think the machine of Christian nationalism movement is arguably more important because much of it functions as a giant voter turnout machine. Right. Christian nationalist movement is. Its strength is in this deeply networked organizational infrastructure. It's a leadership driven movement, an organization driven movement. I think a very underappreciated feature of the movement are these pastoral networks that draw pastors into groups and conservative and conservative leaning pastors and tell them that it's their biblical duty to turn out their congregants to vote for the issues that matter, which inevitably boil down to things like abortion, same sex marriage, et cetera. And much of that movement really functions as a giant voter turnout machine. The networking organizations are also really important, like the Council for National Policy, which brings together heads of these organizations with very rich funders and keeps the movement sort of on the same page.

[Jane Mayer]

How do you see Hegseth as fitting into this network?

[Katherine Stewart]

Well, I think it bears looking into the religious movement that Hegseth follows because he credits it with guiding his life, including his Life in the military. He attends the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is linked to Doug Wilson, a very powerful pastor whose ministry is based in Moscow, Idaho, but has offshoots around the country. And Wilson has adhered to a very, very theocratic and patriarchal form of religion and vision for society. He has actually said it was a mistake for women to have the right to vote, and it's been terrible for America. And pastors affiliated with this religious denomination say that the 19th Amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, should be repealed and replaced with something they head of household voting, which is where the supposed head of the household was inevitably going to be. A man gets to decide the votes on the entire House. And Doug Wilson has actually appeared at the Pentagon. Hegseth has implemented a number of concerning activities at the Pentagon. He's holding monthly worship services where Wilson and also Pete Hegsett's personal pastor, Brook Pottinger, have delivered sermons. And then we also need to just look at Hegseth himself. He's got these crusader tattoos on his body, like the Jerusalem cross, which is also called the crusader cross. He has actually cast some of his actions, his other actions at the Pentagon as helping to save America as a Christian nation. And he has also put forth, the Department of Defense has put forth these videos of Bible verses overlaid with images of tanks and missiles and soldiers, a kind of conflation of religion with military aggression. And I think this is deeply concerning. It calls into question the kind of ways in which Hegseth's religion influences his military decisions and his decisions for all of America.

[David Remnick]

Yeah. Well, it's interesting you bring that up, of course, now that we're at war. I was really struck, as I'm sure you were, by this report that the Military Religious Freedom foundation has already received more than 200 complaints from service members in the not quite two weeks of this conflict with Iran, reporting that military commanders are invoking biblical end times prophecy to justify the war. Now, this is really amazing to me. In one of these cases, at least one commander allegedly told troops that Donald Trump had been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon. And I've actually been haunted by that image of this burning country and this idea that some kind of a religious apocalyptic vision is animating what Hegseth or some of his commanders are telling our troops, especially because they're also framing the conflict as a war against someone else's religious zealotry.

[Evan Osnos]

Right.

[David Remnick]

You have Marco Rubio and other people calling the Ayatollahs in Iran, zealots or extremists? What should we make of this? Is that a high number of complaints? Are we reacting too much? Not enough to these concerns, to commanders saying this?

[Katherine Stewart]

I can't comment on the specifics of the Military Religious Freedom foundation report because I haven't seen the original source material. The US Military is a very large and diverse organization. And to be fair, I think that a lot of military leaders would be against this, although we do know that Hegseth and Trump purged a lot of generals who they saw as disloyal to them. But what we do know is that a good number of religious right leaders do see Trump in sacralized terms. We know that political leaders like Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee have used some religious language at times in their framing of the war. And we know that religious right leaders have been telling the rank and file of the Christian nationalist movement for years that Trump was raised up by God. That's actually what Paula White Cane said. She's one of these very political pastors who's played a role in bringing Trump together with leaders of the Christian nationalist movement in preparing him for politics.

[Jane Mayer]

And.

[Katherine Stewart]

And there was video released last week where we see a number of religious leaders praying over Donald Trump. And she was right there. And Trump plays along. For example, he surrounds himself with and empowers reactionary Christian nationalist leaders. He posts religious messages on social media. But it's really all about appealing to that sector of his base. He needs the voter turnout apparatus of the Christian nationalist machine to mobilize these folks on his behalf. And I think that there's another group we could take note of which overlaps to some degree with the previous group, but not entirely. But they are convinced that America as a Christian nation is in a clash of civilizations with Islam. And so religious rhetoric does help to frame the war as part of that civilizational struggle and sort of keep that group on board.

[David Remnick]

Can I just ask a quick follow up on that? Because I think for us, there's this paradox of Donald Trump is probably the least religious person any of us can imagine. He doesn't really pretend. He doesn't make a show of going to church. It's not like he used to mock Mike Pence, his first vice president, for being sort of holier than that. Now, I'm just curious how you reconcile where people like Pete Hegseth, who wear this religion on their sleeve, how they reconcile with Donald Trump being the signal fire, Donald Trump being their religious icon.

[Katherine Stewart]

Well, a lot of the religious right Leaders in advance in the run up to the 2016 election were hoping for Ted Cruz. To be honest, I'm an investigative reporter. The way I do a lot of my work is I go to right wing strategy gatherings and political conferences and religious gatherings, et cetera. And some of those leaders really preferred Cruz because they thought he was a more reliable partner. But once it was clear that it was going to be Trump, they all rallied behind him and they justified it, often in biblical terms. They compared him with a King Cyrus figure, an imperfect ruler through whom God chose to enact his will. They would say things like, we don't need a savior. We already have a savior in Jesus Christ. We need a president who's going to give us what we want. Part of it is transactional. He did give them everything they wanted. He gave them unprecedented political access, the policies they wanted, positions of political power, et cetera. But there's more to it than that. This is a movement that at its core, has never believed in democracy. It rejects the principles of equality and pluralism and, frankly, rule of law that represents the best of the American promise. And Trump breaks the rules. He breaks the norms. You know, he violates every democratic principle you can imagine. And he promises to crack heads, and that's okay. He's cracking the heads of their enemies. And in this way, he's a sort of perfect representative of a movement that doesn't believe in democracy and wanted to break it.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, you know, that brings it back so perfectly. Kind of closes the circle on why Hegseth may be saying that, that he's going to abolish those stupid rules of engagement. The rule of law doesn't have any kind of. He's not going to allow it to constrain the military strength of the Pentagon, which he calls the Department of Strength instead. Is that right? I mean, basically, being outside the law is part of the religious credo.

[Katherine Stewart]

It's true. I mean, it's also part of a kind of celebration of. Of untrammeled, and I hate to say it, what they would call masculine violence, what the author, Christian Kobes Dumas, would call the Jesus and John Wayne version of Christianity that is associated with this kind of untrammeled violence of might. Right? A kind of religion of might that is unconcerned with rules and unconcerned with empathy. In fact, we've seen within the movement some leaders and thinkers talking about the sin of empathy. Empathy is somehow recast as a sin. I just need to point out that this is completely antithetical to how Most Americans experience. Most American Christians experience their faith. They reject the politics of cruelty and division and conquest that this movement represents. And this is why leaders of this movement have declared war on what they call woke Christianity or woke Jesus, which they see as a heresy.

[Jane Mayer]

Wow. Well, thank you. This is so helpful, Catherine, in helping us understand and decode what's going on on inside the Pentagon. Keep up the fantastic work.

[Katherine Stewart]

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be in conversation with you.

[Jane Mayer]

We're going to take a quick break. The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

[David Remnick]

Hi, I'm David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. At this year's Academy Awards, Timothee Chalamet

[Jane Mayer]

and Teyana Taylor aren't the only major nominees. The New Yorker will be there, too, with two nominated short films, which you can [e-mail] video. Two people exchanging saliva was executive produced

[David Remnick]

by Julianne Moore and Isabelle Huppert, and it's set in a dystopian Paris where kissing is illegal.

[Jane Mayer]

Our animated short film Retirement Plan Fun

[David Remnick]

Paul is a man as he dreams

[Jane Mayer]

about all the things he's going to do when he's done working.

[David Remnick]

You can enjoy both of those films and our full library of acclaimed short [e-mail] video. So Jesus and John Wayne, I really appreciated that, that conversation. What did you learn?

[Evan Osnos]

You know what? One of the things that rises to the surface if you tie together a lot of things we've been talking about that when Pete Hegseth talks about his goal, he talks about what he sometimes says is maximum lethality, not tepid legality. And I think when you just hear that, you're like, what is this guy talking about? And how did he come to believe A, in that idea? And B, that everybody out there wants to hear this. And what we're hearing is that actually it's the combination of his life story and his acquisition of these very extreme beliefs, which are far outside of the mainstream of Christianity, that makes that, to him, sensible. What does he mean? He means that it is his responsibility as a citizen and as a believer to pursue a holy war and not be bound by earthly laws, by rules that are imposed on the Pentagon, by lawyers. He talks about lawyers with contempt. That's an astonishing window into the mind of the person now in charge of

[David Remnick]

the American military, especially since the concept of rule of law is embedded in when you take your oath to serve as Secretary of Defense. It's an oath not to a man, but to the very concept of the Constitution, right to the rule of law. And it strikes me that having this conversation about Christian nationalism, it's a way of decoding what can otherwise sound. Frankly, a lot of what he says sounds to me often like kind of like mindless buzzwords and just sort of like machoism as a tactic that there's nothing strategic behind it. And I think in a way it's because he's masking the ideological and religious framework that does give this more than just a sort of we want to kill for the sake of killing.

[Jane Mayer]

And in fact, rules of war and how to behave and how not to behave in war is so deeply embedded in American history, starting with General George Washington, who made a huge point of conducting the war in a humane, as humane way as possible. In contrast to the British. It's also obviously embedded in our const, that we separate religion and state. And this movement is in complete contradiction with that.

[David Remnick]

Can you imagine what Thomas Jefferson would think about this? I mean, it's literally the antithetical approach, right? Like this idea of our military, which has now become the most powerful military in the world, being used as the instrument of a small sect of religious extremists, as Catherine just described it to us. Us is really.

[Jane Mayer]

I think what I also take away from this is that what we're looking at, which at the moment looks like a disastrous fiasco in the Middle east, and what we're looking at is kind of preordained by. It's not a surprise that the Pentagon, led by Pete Hegseth, has gotten us into this mess, both because of the ideology and because of his lack of training and qualifications to be in this job. A history of hot headed bad planning, poor management.

[Evan Osnos]

Well, look, I mean, I think when you believe you are on a hallowed mission, the kinds of ordinary things like planning for a war, anticipating reasonable consequences of your actions can seem almost immaterial. I was talking to a military longtime officer who I've known for many years yesterday and he said, to be honest, I'm baffled by this because he said any second lieutenant could have anticipated that there was going to be a closure of the Straits of Hormuz, that Iran was going to retaliate against global oil supply. So how is it that we are flat footed? But what really struck me, guys, about what this officer was telling me is he said, honestly, the part that is most galling about this is that the idea, the moral calculus that might makes right, that that has now become essentially the operating doctrine of this administration. This kind of this mor defective view of winning. And you know, it was amazing. Catherine talked about the idea that there were pastors in the beginning of Donald Trump's era who rejected him for all the obvious reasons that a Christian pastor might reject Donald Trump. But once they saw he was winning, then they got on the team. And I have to tell you, this is a thing that recurs to me constantly these days. You know, it's this idea that at a certain point you can come to believe that winning is all that matters and that. And that in fact to be empathetic, to care about the law, to adhere to the rules imposed upon you is a sign of weakness. And in fact, as she said, may in fact be a sin. That is a profound change in the philosophical orientation of how power is supposed to function.

[Jane Mayer]

I mean, one of the phrases that the evangelical leaders used was to call Trump God's wrecking ball. So, you know, we're now seeing it unleashed in the Middle East. We have to also talk a little bit for a second about the amount of money that is being spent by Pete Hagseth and Donald Trump's Pentagon. We're now over $11 billion at this point.

[David Remnick]

They miscalculated overall in the war plan here in a way that is, I think, truly shocking because I think we're now learning two weeks into this that the assumption that undergirded this war was that it would be over in two or three days and that they would knock out the leadership. And that not that Iranians wouldn't attempt to use this incredible leverage of their geographic position atop the strait where 20% of the world's energy flows, but that there wouldn't be an Iranian regime anymore. And the hubris and folly of A having that as your war plan and B, not having a well executed and thought through backup plan. The fact that we're burning through our munitions at such an extraordinary rate that we may or may not be able to sustain a long term conflict given the economic damage that the still intact Iranian regime. It's the reversion to selling a war that's otherwise unsellable to a swath of the base that remember it was Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump who sold the idea that there would be no new foreign wars again and again and again. That's what their core MAGA base was told. In fact, the first year of the Trump presidency, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense was talking about essentially the enemy within and refocusing the mission of this defense Department on going after the American enemies inside our country. And so to execute this pivot, I think that's where the religious aspect of it for me comes into sharp relief that they have to have something to sell to people who've been actually told, we're not going to go to war. Oh, wait, nevermind. So the holy war seems to be kind of the definition setting for them. And I think that's what I found really helpful about putting this in the center of the frame today.

[Evan Osnos]

Pete Hegseth is the man of the moment, and I have to say I'm very pleased that we have been able to kind of dig into his ideas, his experience and understand what he has and what he lacks. Because like it or not, we are all now living in a world that will be shaped substantially by this person.

[Jane Mayer]

Well, it was great to hear from Kathryn Stewart and great conversation. Kind of bracing, but thanks again. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Jane Mayer. We're taking a break next week, but be sure to check out conversations in the speed from our colleagues David Remnick and Tyler Foggit. Our producer is Nora Richie. This show was mixed by Mike Kutchman. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. We had special assistance today from Rose Kirchner and editing by Rhiannon Corby. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening.

[David Remnick]

From prx.