President Donald Trump was mocked Friday for appearing to believe Pete Hegseth had made a live appearance that morning on Fox News.
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was great on Fox News this morning,” the avid television-watcher said of the former Fox News co-host in a 9:36 a.m. Truth Social post. “Talking about modern weapons and warfare. Thank you also to Brett Velicovich, who really knows his ‘stuff.’ We are really on our way. MAGA!”
Hegseth, whose title is still Secretary of Defense despite Trump considering bringing back the other term, did not appear live on Fox News. His official schedule for Friday notes he is traveling.
Rather, the right-wing network showed a clip that Hegseth had posted on his official X account a day earlier.
In the video, which appears to have been removed and then re-uploaded Friday, Hegseth is on the front lawn of the Pentagon to announce that he had ordered the fast-track production and deployment of drones, several of which hover near him. One delivers him the memo, which he signs.
Fox aired a portion of that clip four times from when live programming began at 5 a.m. Friday until Trump’s post: once on Fox & Friends First, twice on Fox & Friends, and once on America’s Newsroom at 9:15 a.m. In each instance, the network clearly indicated the video was from Thursday.
The apparent mistake quickly made the rounds online.
“Imagine. If. It. Was. Biden,” Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan wrote with emphasis on X, alluding to Fox’s wall-to-wall coverage of the former president’s age-related gaffes.
“Perhaps a confused Trump thought it was live,” journalist Aaron Rupar wrote.
The X account Republicans Against Trump added critically that the 79-year-old president’s “cognitive decline is getting hard to ignore.”
None of this criticism seemed to bother Hegseth, though. On his personal X account, the Defense Secretary reposted a screenshot of the president’s comment that the DOD Rapid Response team shared approvingly, as evident by not one, not two, but three American flags.
