The “Morning Joe” panel roasted U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for what they say was an excessive attempt to impress Donald Trump while he discussed the status of the Iran war.
“[The] President’s eyebrows,” co-host Joe Scarborough noted during the panel’s segment on Wednesday, referring to the seemingly shocked facial expression Trump made during Hegseth’s remarks to press on Tuesday.
“That was weird,” Mika Brzezinski added. “I was uncomfortable.”
The group’s reactions stem from comments Hegseth made when Trump asked him to update the media about the ongoing war and negotiations between the U.S., Iran and Israel.
Watch the clip below.
“We negotiate with bombs,” Hegseth said, mentioning that he sees the War Department being part of supposed ongoing talks. “You have a choice as we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future. The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees our job is to ensure that and so we’re keeping our hand on that throttle as long as is hard as is necessary to ensure the interest of the United States of America are achieved on that battlefield.”
Immediately after watching a clip of Hegseth’s remarks, Scarborough called the defense secretary “the opposite of Central Casting,” an ongoing joke that stems from Hegseth’s background as an on-air TV personality on Fox News.
“He’s a kid. ‘We negotiate with bombs,’” Scarborough said, mocking Hegseth. “Do you think an Iranian, like a member of the Revolutionary Guard [is going to] go, ‘Oh, this scares me very much’? No, they’re going to want to clown.”
He added: “It’s so childish … This guy isn’t [late army general] Norman Schwarzkopf. This is guy isn’t those guys that were were up in the Gulf War … This guy is not from Central Casting. You want to scare the Iranians? This does not do that. ‘Guys, we negotiate with bombs. Weeee!’”
Jumping in, co-host Willie Geist said Hegseth “thinks he is saying the things that will make dad proud.”
“I think dad was concerned,” Brzezinski chimed in.
“He talks like a podcaster and gets in the briefing rooms and attacks the media and attacks Joe Biden and Barack Obama,” Geist continued. “You’re the head of the Department of Defense. If you want to host a podcast, go host a podcast. You’d probably be good at it and have a lot of listeners … But you’re running a war right now, and that kind of bluster feels unconvincing, to put it mildly. It feels like he’s trying to play a part and say the thing that will get him a pat on the back from the guy standing behind him.”
Scarborough stated that Hegseth is “trying too hard” to appease Trump, with Jonathan Lemiere calling it all “frat boy rhetoric.”
“There is a clip that zeroes in on President Trump’s face as Hegseth is doing the throttle. His eyebrows, he just can’t keep them controlled,” Lemiere said. “But this is the rhetoric we’ve gotten at Pentagon briefings and yesterday from the Oval Office.”
Watch the full clip above.
