A war briefing is not a pulpit.

The Pentagon is not a church.

And Pete Hegseth is not a minister of anything except the art of humiliation — his own, the military’s, and now, apparently, the Lord’s.

On Thursday, at what was supposed to be an update on the ongoing U.S. military campaign against Iran, the Secretary of Defense turned to the press corps and delivered a sermon. Not a briefing. A sermon. From Mark, Chapter Three, no less. About the Pharisees.

He told reporters that when he sat in church last Sunday with his family, listening to a passage about Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath, the Pharisees watching in judgment reminded him — personally, spiritually — of the American press.

He said this out loud. Into a microphone. At the Pentagon.

Let us pause on what Pete Hegseth is actually claiming here:

If the press are the Pharisees, then the man they are watching, the man being condemned by religious authorities who cannot tolerate a miracle, is Donald Trump.

And Trump, apparently, is Jesus.

This is not subtext. Hegseth made it explicit. The reporters have “hardened hearts.” They are there to “explain away the goodness.” They cannot see the miracle unfolding before them. Just like the Pharisees couldn’t see Christ.

This is the theological architecture Hegseth constructed, in uniform, on behalf of the United States government.

He did this three days after his commander-in-chief posted an AI-generated image of himself (robed, haloed, radiant) laying hands on a sick man while bald eagles circled and fighter jets streaked overhead. Trump later explained he thought it showed him as a doctor. Possibly as a Red Cross worker. Only the fake news, he said, would see Jesus in a depiction of Jesus.

The image was deleted. The delusion was not.

Now ask yourself: what kind of man stands at the podium of the world’s most powerful military and wraps a failing, legally contested, constitutionally dubious war in the language of the Resurrection?

Pete Hegseth is a man who has leaked classified military information in a Signal chat. Who launched airstrikes without congressional authorization. Whose operations have killed thousands of Iranian civilians. Who was just cited by a federal judge for violating the Constitution by restricting press access at the Pentagon. Against whom six articles of impeachment were filed this week by members of Congress accusing him of, among other things, approving illegal double-tap strikes on noncombatant vessels.

A man whose “Ezekiel prayer” at the Pentagon turned out to be lifted word-for-word from Pulp Fiction.

That is correct. Pete Hegseth quoted a fake Bible verse from a Quentin Tarantino film as a devotional at the Department of Defense. And then, days later, cited actual scripture to accuse the press of spiritual corruption.

The man cannot tell the Bible from the movies. But he has decided reporters are the Pharisees.

Here is what the Pharisees actually were, since Hegseth seems to be working from a Sunday school version sanded down to a convenient insult: they were the religious establishment. The enforcers of doctrine. The ones who wielded scripture to protect power and punish those who questioned it.

In Hegseth’s own analogy, that is him.

He is the one invoking holy texts to shield authority from scrutiny. He is the one calling dissent unpatriotic. He is the one demanding that reporters ask themselves which side they’re really on while standing in the briefing room of a war started without a declaration from Congress.

He is the one telling a free press that their “hardened hearts” prevent them from seeing the miracles of this administration.

The press didn’t start a war. The press didn’t leak troop movements. The press didn’t quote Jules Winnfield as the word of God.

Pete Hegseth did all of those things. And then turned to the reporters covering his failures and told them their problem is insufficient faith.

Pope Leo XIV, speaking this week from Cameroon while the administration feuded with him over the Iran war, said that those who manipulate religion and the name of God for military and political gain drag what is sacred into darkness.

The first American pope said that but the Secretary of Defense War was too busy preaching to hear it.

This is not religion. This is a regime adorning itself in the sacred because it cannot survive the secular. Because the facts are bad. Because the war is stalled. Because the ceasefire is fragile. Because the casualties are real. Because a federal judge keeps ruling against them. Because even their own supporters found the Jesus image “outrageous.”

So they reach for God. Not out of faith. Out of desperation.

Pete Hegseth stood before the American press and called them enemies of Christ.

He did it in the building that houses the most lethal military force in human history.

He did it while citing a war his president started without asking Congress.

He did it while a new pope warned the world about exactly this kind of man.

He will probably do it again.

That is the miracle they want you to admire: that power can desecrate the sacred, dress the carnage in scripture, and ask you to bow your head.

How about this for an idea? Don’t.