Because today’s quotes are not meant to inspire, soothe, or amuse; I intend them to infuriate you. They are words spoken in recent days, by living people who should know better but obviously don’t . . . or simply don’t care, because they have long since sunk to the lowest levels of human degradation imaginable.

Forget, for the moment, people like Putin, Xi, Kim, Assad, Maduro, and even the recently deceased Ayatollah Khamenei. Evil to the core, all of them. But even they have (or had) the common sense to display a little sympathy — insincere though it may be — when speaking of the dead.

But not Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. Oh, no. They don’t even attempt an appearance of possessing an iota of human feeling for anyone other than themselves — not even for the people they have ordered killed or, worst of all, for the young American military troops they have sent into harm’s way to fight a war they had no legal or moral right to start in the first place.

You know what I’m talking about: the illegal, unjustifiable invasion of Iran for purposes yet unknown — purposes that seem to keep changing as they think up new excuses to palm off on us. Evidence of a renewed nuclear buildup and an imminent attack against U.S. interests? (Not according to the best intelligence sources.) Regime change out of concern for the freedom of the Iranian people? (You can’t be serious!) Rushing to the “defense” of Trump’s friend Netanyahu? (Maybe, though it’s not at all clear that Israel needed defending at this moment in history.) All that lovely oil? (A distinct possibility . . . or at least an extra perk.)

Surely not a Nobel Peace Prize . . . you get those for preventing or ending wars, not for starting them.

No matter the excuse du jour, what stands out in the five days since the invasion is their callous attitude — not only to the unconstitutionality of their actions, or the cost to the American taxpayers, likely to run in the billions of dollars — but toward the lives of those who will do the fighting, and the dying, while the two perpetrators of the atrocity sit safely in their gold-plated bunkers, watching it play out in real time on their TV screens.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I’m sure you’ll understand why I needed to vent when you read these quotes. Even if you’ve seen some of them before, when you group them together, they really hammer home the baseness of the speakers. So here they are:

TRUMP (on NBC News, Sunday): “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”

TRUMP (on a video, Sunday): “And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”

HEGSETH (at a Pentagon briefing, Wednesday, criticizing the media for focusing too much on the six dead soldiers): “But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.” [Aaron Blake, CNN, March 4, 2026.]

*. *. *

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised. These are not Trump’s first disgusting insults of the servicemen and women of whom he is supposed to be Commander-in-Chief. He has had the temerity to demean former Vietnam POW John McCain by saying he was only considered a war hero because he was captured, adding, “I like people that weren’t captured.” He has referred to dead and injured soldiers as “suckers” and “losers,” and told one grieving Gold Star widow that her late husband “knew what he was signing up for.” [Id.]

But coming from a long line of draft-dodgers, why would we expect any better?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/5/26