Hegseth channels his inner Tarantino with fake Bible verse from Pulp Fiction
It was perhaps inevitable that a braggadocious Christian nationalist defense secretary elevated from his role as a weekend Fox News television host would pluck a fake Bible verse from a violent Hollywood blockbuster and present it at a Pentagon prayer session to rally the troops for the “holy war” in Iran.
Certainly among a glut of stories swirling around Pete Hegseth this week, including articles of impeachment brought against him by a group of ambitious Democratic lawmakers, the bizarre allegation that the Bible-thumping Hegseth was passing off a fire-and-brimstone script by Quentin Tarantino, an Oscar-winning director, as the word of the Lord was far too compelling to ignore.
On Wednesday, at the latest of his new series of worship services at the Pentagon to bless the Iran war effort, Hegseth stood at a podium and delivered a prayer for search-and-rescue crews he said was based on a Bible passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel.
Yet, as so often happens in the upside-down world that is Donald Trump’s second term of office, all was not as it seemed. The prayer Hegseth used appeared instead to be a bastardized version of a speech by actor Samuel L Jackson in the movie Pulp Fiction.
According to some accounts of the event, Hegseth acknowledged only the Bible verse on which it was loosely based, Ezekiel 25:17, instead of Jackson’s oratory from the film that it more closely resembled.
Adding to the confusion was how a Hollywood movie snippet pledging “great vengeance” and “furious anger” from the heavens morphed into a prayer for the safety of military search-and-rescue crews that Hegseth was citing. [Continue reading…]