Transcript: Trump Erupts as Pope’s Harsh Rebuke of Hegseth Hits Hard

And second, we just learned that American forces may have bombed a second school in Iran, killing nearly two dozen people. Interestingly, all this arises as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is coming under fire for delivering a prayer suggesting that God sanctions overwhelming violence against the enemy. Also interestingly, this Hegseth moment was dramatically undercut by the Pope, who declared that God does not heed such prayers.Sarah Posner, a scholar and host of the excellent Reign of Error podcast, has been making the point that Hegseth’s extreme theology explains much of what we’re seeing here. So we’re talking about all this today with her. Sarah, nice to have you on.Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me, Greg.Sargent: So let’s start here. Pete Hegseth has been doing monthly prayer services at the Pentagon, which itself would be a violation of church-and-state separation. He recently said a prayer that was expressly directed to American troops in Iran. I just want to highlight two parts. First, here’s Hegseth quoting King David:Pete Hegseth (voiceover): You made my enemies turn their backs to me and those who hated me I destroyed. They cried for help, but there was none to save. They cried to the Lord, but He did not answer them.And here’s Hegseth calling for God’s assistance against the enemy:Pete Hegseth (voiceover): Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.Sargent: Sarah, two things here. First, note how Hegseth says God didn’t answer the enemy, whereas he apparently does answer Hegseth. Second, note the express claim that God sanctions overwhelming violence. Your thoughts on all that?Posner: Hegseth is expressing an extreme version of Christian supremacy, where America—a Christian nation, in his view—is entitled, and in fact probably in his mind required by God, to smite America’s enemies, or to smite the enemies of Christianity even. I mean, when we talk about Christian nationalism, this is exactly what we’re talking about. But I think the important thing to remember with Hegseth, in contrast to other versions of Christian nationalism that we see more commonly in the Republican Party, is that his is a very extreme version of Christian supremacy where we Christians are entitled to go out and take dominion over the world, to vanquish enemies, and to do so violently—and even when they do so violently, with the express mandate from God.Sargent: Right. And he is an adherent of a theology called Christian Reconstructionism. He seems to see biblical law as supreme over the authority of the state. Can you explain what that belief system really is?Posner: Christian Reconstructionism holds that biblical law is superior to civil law and that the Bible—that biblical law—should govern every aspect of life: your personal life for sure, but also political life, military life. So to Hegseth, this biblical law—which of course, the interpretation of which would be contested by different scholars or adherents to the Bible—but his version of biblical law is superior to the Pentagon’s own internal military law, American civil law, and also, importantly, when we’re talking about Hegseth and the prosecution of this unjust, illegal war, that is superior to international law and the rules of engagement in war and military conflicts.Sargent: Well, I want to try to connect Hegseth’s conduct of the war to all this right now. Hegseth has been positively oozing with bloodlust and sadism in his public discussions of the war. He openly enthuses about raining, quote-unquote, “death and destruction” from the sky, about liberating the military from stupid rules of engagement, about unleashing maximum lethality, and even about killing, quote-unquote, “without hesitation”—which I translate as with no moral qualms whatsoever. So Sarah, linking all these things up, it seems like Hegseth sees his war as being in accordance with biblical law. So even U.S. law might not be binding on him. And of course international human rights law, which would be way at the very bottom of the totem pole for him, would certainly not be binding on him. Is that more or less the situation?Posner: That is more or less the situation. He sees in the biblical mandates that he reads in his Bible that violence against one’s enemies is not just necessary in the field of battle, but actually desired. Before he became defense secretary, he wrote in a book that he thought the Geneva Conventions were woke bullshit—that was not the exact phrase he used, but that was the intent. So to him, biblical law—where he and the other adherents to this theology see themselves as superior to other religions, to other forms of Christianity—God is commanding them to take dominion not just over America, but over the world. This very much drives his imperialist ideology.Sargent: And I just want to really bear down on this idea that the enemy does not hear back from God. This is something that Hegseth quoted from King David in his prayer at the Pentagon. And I just find that really striking because he really does think God is answering him and thinks God does not answer the enemy. And that functionally not just justifies, but requires overwhelming force against that enemy—more or less, right?Posner: Well, this is what I’m talking about when I say this is a Christian supremacist ideology—and it’s not just Christianity writ large, it’s their version of Christianity. And so if there’s a Christian who doesn’t agree with this theology, they don’t even really consider them to be a real Christian. And so the idea that God’s mercy and grace does not extend to your enemies is an idea that—I mean, I know that he took that from the Hebrew Bible—but I think it’s an idea that is completely unfamiliar to most Jews and most Christians. The idea that God would not extend grace to your perceived enemy. And so this warrior ethos that he emphasizes—he has used that kind of terminology—he’s taking the Bible to justify basically war crimes against infrastructure, but also against civilians.He has said nothing about the 165 schoolgirls who were killed in that bombing in southern Iran. And to him, it seems almost like it’s not even collateral damage—because if it was collateral damage, he would be sort of sorry about it. But it seems almost worse than that. He feels like the enemy deserves no mercy from God or from us.Sargent: Right. He has said the enemy will get no quarter, which is an explicit threat of a war crime—meaning that the U.S. military should or will kill people who have surrendered. And he clearly thinks that’s biblically sanctioned. Now, Pope Leo said on Sunday that God doesn’t accept the prayers of leaders who wage wars. He said: “This is our God, Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.”Pope Leo continued that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.”Sarah, what do you make of that? Does that give Hegseth a moment’s pause?Posner: I don’t think it would. Should it give him pause? Well, Hegseth is not a Catholic. And obviously, many people who aren’t Catholic find things to admire in many of the statements that Pope Leo makes on many topics. But certainly, Hegseth isn’t bound in any way to follow the Pope’s teachings. Undoubtedly, there are many people in the military—and many, probably, civilians who work at the Pentagon—who are Catholic. Not all Catholics admire Pope Leo, but many do, and probably most do. And so for them, to hear the Pope contesting the leader of the Defense Department in this way—but then also feeling like, well, Hegseth has these monthly prayer meetings, which aren’t explicitly mandatory, but it feels a little bit mandatory in a way, even if I don’t show up at the Pentagon auditorium for them.And we really have to start thinking about this as not just a violation of separation of church and state—which it is—but also, would it be recognized by the Supreme Court? This Supreme Court? I don’t know. But also, something that the Supreme Court has upheld repeatedly is religious freedom for Christians—for the wedding photographer who doesn’t want to photograph a same-sex wedding, right? Well, what about the other Christians at the Pentagon who disagree with Hegseth’s interpretation of the Bible? What about the non-Christians in the military—atheists, Muslims, Jews, you name it, other minority religions—even if they’re not attending these prayer sessions, exactly what Pete Hegseth is saying? And the implication is this is the official religion of the Defense Department, of the U.S. military. And that is pretty scary.Sargent: Absolutely. In fact, Hegseth openly, from the Pentagon podium, essentially said straight out: kneel and pray to Jesus Christ for the troops. He said that that’s his God. That’s not everybody’s God. That’s not every religious person’s God who works for the Defense Department.Posner: That’s right. And it’s really the most extreme expression of this kind of Christian supremacy that we’ve seen in either Trump term. I’m trying to think of an example from George W. Bush’s term—I mean, his administration was filled with evangelicals and people who adhered to far-right Christian theologies and ideologies. But I really can’t think of another one who was so explicit, so exclusionary, and so supremacist as Hegseth is here. It’s really off the rails and shocking. And it takes a lot to shock me when it comes to Republican efforts to dismantle church-state separation and deprive people who don’t adhere to their extreme ideology of their religious freedom. But Hegseth is really, really working it.Sargent: He sure is. Well, let’s talk about where we are in the war, because this too is linked to all that. The New York Times reports that a weapon that really looks like a U.S.-made missile demolished a sports hall on an elementary school in Iran, and it appears that this and other strikes may have killed up to 21 people. That’s on top of the bombing of a school that killed well over 100 people, mostly children, in southern Iran, as you mentioned earlier.Now it’s hard to know what went into something like this, but it really looks like the U.S. is being very lax about the war in ways that are killing a lot of Iranian civilians. I think clearly this is the Hegseth ethic at work. Don’t you?Posner: Well, I think it’s Hegseth and Trump. I mean, Trump isn’t coming from the same religious place as Hegseth, but he certainly has expressed that same similar bloodlust and lack of concern for human rights and the rights of civilians in wartime. And so when you layer on that this is an illegal war and they’re killing civilians in an illegal war—I mean, it’s just nauseating. I don’t even have the words for it.And I think the reason why—even though you hear a lot of stories about parts of the MAGA base being upset about the war and wanting Trump to pull back from it—I think very much of the MAGA base has been steeped in a lot of this anti-Iran propaganda for 40-something years, including Christian Zionist propaganda. But I also think that they’re very steeped in this very ugly, rank Islamophobia at home, and that they see these civilians as being less than human and they just don’t care.Sargent: I think very plainly that’s right. And to close out—Trump erupted on Truth Social with some more unhinged threats. He said that talks are going well with an allegedly new regime in Iran—I guess he does want regime change. But then Trump also said this: “If the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island and possibly all desalination plants, which we have purposefully not yet touched.”Sarah, that’s just sociopathic stuff. He sadistically calls it “our lovely stay in Iran,” then threatens what would be serious war crimes. To your earlier point, I don’t think Trump is thinking too hard about biblical doctrine when saying this, but he and Hegseth clearly converge on bloodlust and sadism, each for their own reasons. And having a defense secretary who isn’t speaking truth to the president and is encouraging this sort of unchecked bloodlust seems like a really fucking terrible situation to be in.Posner: It really is, because Hegseth is giving an additional layer of permission to Trump. Although Trump himself does not very frequently use biblical language, he’s very tuned in to the way that his base uses biblical language and to the way his base places importance on providing biblical justifications for things. And so having Hegseth justify the war in these ways is probably very satisfying to Trump, because it’s not just based on his imperialistic instincts or his desire for domination, or his desire potentially to control Iran’s oil, or whatever his entire host of motivations are here. And I think that that’s a super dangerous and frightening combination.Sargent: It really is. We are in such a goddamn fix. My God, it’s really bad. Folks, make sure to check out Sarah Posner’s podcast, Reign of Error—it’s highly illuminating on these types of questions. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us.Posner: Thanks for having me, Greg.