Fox News host Pete Hegseth is having a busy few days saying really dumb things, but this latest is a real head-scratcher.
Hegseth was already in backlash hot water for saying “meh” in response to Chris Wallace stating that there were women and children who died in the Gaza violence last week. So the pump was primed for more when he made this outlandish and odd claim on “Fox and Friends” on Thursday.
https://twitter.com/JamesHasson20/status/999311232640438272
As Allahpundit points out, Hasson’s tweet, like our headline, is a paraphrase. But not far off the mark. Watch:
Fox host and Trump adviser Pet Hegseth on Kim Jong Un: "The guy who wants to meet with Dennis Rodman and loves NBA basketball and loves western pop culture, probably doesn't love being the guy that has to murder his people all day long. Probably wants normalization." pic.twitter.com/YQAcY1BXh7
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) May 23, 2018
I think there’s probably a point at which the guy who wants to meet with [former NBA player] Dennis Rodman, and loves NBA basketball, and loves Western pop culture, probably doesn’t love being the guy that has to murder his people all day long. Probably wants some normalization. Let’s give it to him if we can make the world safer.
This is, on several levels, lunatic. Don’t get me wrong, Kim is obsessed with celebrity culture. But it’s pure nonsense to extrapolate from that a potential distaste for dictatorial excess and murder. In point of fact, his obsession is based on the same impulses that drive his maniacal iron fist in the first place. It’s the megalomania. It’s his need to be admired and feared by everyone. Those in his thrall on his peninsula are simply not enough to sate his appetite for being the ultimate most of all things.
He shares those traits with some other world leaders.
But in his case, it leads to his love of being “the guy that has to murder his people all day long.” Hegseth has it backward.
Besides that, the idea of softening the evil edge of a brutal dictator is supposed to be anathema to Republicans, conservatives, and Fox folks, right? Forget the eight years of justified criticism of Obama’s “without preconditions” rhetoric. How about Hegseth’s own recent moral outrage at the rest of the media for their gross fawning over Kim’s sister.
I'm old enough to remember when Pete Hegseth was flipping out over some media outlets comparing Kim Jong Un's sister to Ivanka Trump during the Olympics. https://t.co/L81O2aErOI
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 23, 2018
How much worse is it to be waxing magnanimous about good old Kim Jong-un’s deep desire to just fit in?
This was, in every way, a repugnant reply by the Fox host. It was thoughtless and ill-informed and the worst kind of apologism. All the things that this side of the aisle hates.
Or at least, hated at one time. Guess something has changed.
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