Secretary of War Pete Hegseth emphasized that the rescue of the stranded American who was shot down in Iran was not only a miracle, but one peculiarly mirroring the timeline of the Triduum and Easter.
The Triduum is Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the three days leading up to Easter (Tri- is the root for “three” in Latin). On Good Friday 2026, the terrorist Iran regime shot down an American F-15E. While we successfully rescued one member of the crew almost immediately, the second crewman was stranded in the hostile country with a price on his head from the Iranian regime until Sunday.
Fortunately, a daring and highly dangerous American rescue mission succeeded on Sunday morning, and the rescue went off in almost miraculous style. Despite the Iranian regime knowing the general area where the crewman was and despite a leak to CBS News from someone in the federal government putting everyone involved in the rescue mission at additional risk, the rescue mission did not fail.
Hegseth described the situation of the stranded American. “Scaling rugged ridges while hunted by the enemy. When he was finally able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was simple, and it was powerful. He sent a message, ‘God is good,’” the secretary stated with emotion. “In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shone through.”
“God is good.”
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 6, 2026
Sec. Hegseth says that was the first message from a downed American pilot in Iran after he finally activated his emergency transponder.
"Shot down on Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was… pic.twitter.com/vqQonUmq8Q
Related: Trump Slams Leaker Who Endangered Stranded F-15E Crew’s Rescue in Iran
Then Hegseth made the comparison between the timeline of the crash and rescue and the timeline of the holy days with which they overlapped. “You see,” Hegseth pointed out, “shot down on a Friday, Good Friday. Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good!”
What a gargantuan contrast such a rescue mission is to the Afghanistan withdrawal, when the Biden administration left billions of dollars’ worth in military equipment and God knows how many Americans and Afghani allies behind to be stolen and killed by the Taliban. During the Afghanistan withdrawal, the Biden administration refused to take out the terrorist who ended up killing 13 of our men and dozens of Afghanis when they could have. In contrast, the Trump administration put all resources possible and hundreds of men on the job of rescuing a single stranded American.
As triumphant as Hegseth, President Donald Trump boasted on Monday that in Iran, American troops now have “a record that is unparalleled in the history of military air operations. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. It's such an honor to be involved with it."
Trump recalled, "We were up late at night, and then we were waiting for those contingent planes to come in…they're waiting out on this farm, without a runway, with wet, crummy soil, sand, mostly sand, wet sand, and it eats planes alive, and we're waiting, and we're saying, 'I hope that one can land and take off.' And they came in like magic. Boom, boom, boom. One after another, it was like genius."
This is why the midterms are so incredibly important. The choice between Republicans and Democrats now is really a choice between saving life and ending lives.
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