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Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. It’s foreign policy Thursday and I’m your host, Julia Ioffe, busy stockpiling Italian coffee, French wine, and Japanese rice while snarking about it with my Soviet parents. The American dream, it turns out, is being able to hoard bougier basics than your parents had to in the old country.
In tonight’s issue, news and notes on the Pete Hegseth propaganda account, and the troubling rise of campaign-style “rapid response” social media campaigns across the federal government.
A couple things before we get into it…
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- Trump’s Russian carve-out: If you look at the long list of countries subject to the tariffs Trump announced yesterday, you’ll notice that Vanuatu is on there, but Russia isn’t. A White House official told NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright that Russia wasn’t included because sanctions and the Ukraine war have brought trade “down to zero,” rendering any tariffs moot. But that is, you’ll be shocked to learn, untrue. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. total goods trade with Russia was about $3.5 billion in 2024. That’s not a lot, but it’s not zero, either—and it’s a lot more than U.S. trade with others on the list, like Yemen ($143 million), Eswatini ($68. million), and Turkmenistan ($96.8 million). A more charitable explanation might be that the administration wants to preserve tariffs as a threat in its negotiations over Ukraine. A less charitable one would be that this is yet another strange deference to Putin.Meanwhile, the U.S has also quietly lifted sanctions on Karina Rotenberg, the wife of Boris Rotenberg, Putin’s childhood chum. Karina has continued to travel all over Europe, despite the E.U. sanctions placed on her, and holds stakes in her husband’s extensive European real estate holdings.
- Hegseth’s safe space: Ahead of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s April 1 visit to the U.S. Naval Academy, some 400 books were removed from the academy library, part of an effort to cleanse “D.E.I.” from the premises. (The New York Times had earlier reported that the library identified up to 900 books, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s autobiography, and a book on race and racism by Albert Einstein, that “may run afoul” of Hegseth’s anti-D.E.I. order.) Swept up in the purge was a display at the campus’s Jewish chapel. According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, memorabilia honoring “notable Jewish female graduates” was removed, leaving displays honoring only the men. “They surrendered in advance because they were scared of Hegseth,” said retired Air Force officer Mikey Weinstein, who heads the foundation, which first sounded the alarm on this story. “No one knew exactly where Hegseth was going to go [during his visit], and they didn’t want to trigger him.”The Trump administration, Weinstein argued, says it’s fighting antisemitism on college campuses, “but this is actual antisemitism. This cut to the fucking bone.” Weinstein was relieved, he told me, that as a result of the story getting out (and angry feedback from alums), the Naval Academy restored the full display—though he was disappointed that they apologized so quietly.
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Now, here’s Abby with the latest from the Hill…
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Abby Livingston |
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- Liberation Day fatigue: Republicans’ post-2024 honeymoon screeched to a halt this week in spectacular fashion. A trifecta of events over a 48-hour period has completely destabilized the party, setting off what has been described to me as “sheer panic” among Capitol Hill Republicans: the Anna Paulina Luna proxy voting battle, which derailed all voting in the House for the rest of the week; G.O.P. underperformance in two Florida special elections along with a Democratic victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race (Republicans told me they had a hunch they’d lose, but not by 10 points); and then Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, which vaporized trillions of dollars from U.S. equities today. The mood in Washington has changed, and fast. Only a week ago, I reported on the then-current conventional wisdom that more Democrats than Republicans would likely retire from the House this year. But the odds may now have flipped, two Republican Hill operatives tell me. Indeed, we may now see more Republicans retire ahead of 2026, including both members in safe seats and in more contested districts, as the pressure to defend the president’s unpopular economic policies mounts. For weary members in California, New York, and New Jersey, in particular, the SALT deduction cap in the upcoming tax bill could be determinative.The future may become clearer later this month, when both chambers will be recessed for two weeks for the Easter/Passover holiday. A Republican Hill source told me that a number of members are actively seeking out constituent feedback, rage and all, to avoid being blindsided by voters like they were in 2018. “The only thing we have going for us,” one G.O.P. consultant told me, “is the Democrats don’t have a coach.”
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Performing for the cameras as much as for the troops, the former Fox News host has engineered an unprecedented government-funded digital campaign designed to transform the secretary of Defense into a social media star.
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the media team at the Department of Defense would like you to know, is loved by the troops. He’s loved by the Green Berets and the SEALs. He’s loved by the Naval Academy cadets and future Marine Corps officers. He’s loved by the troops at Gitmo—though, of course, CNN’s “anonymous sources” won’t tell you that. And the reason is simple: He shakes every single one of their hands. He throws footballs with them. And, most importantly, he does “P.T.” with them. Lots and lots of P.T. A short statement about the four soldiers who died while training in Lithuania last week, and then back to the important stuff: shaking hands, getting in and out of choppers, doing burpees. “This is why he’s America’s @SecDef,” the DoD’s “Rapid Response” X account tweeted.
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While SecDefs of yore also had comms shops—and were, apparently, unloved by the troops—this administration is constantly on a media war footing. Gone are the traditional, regularly scheduled media briefings. Gone are the press stand-ups in the briefing room: Veteran Pentagon correspondents like NBC’s Courtney Kube are stuck talking to the camera outside the building’s rear entrance, as DoD personnel walk in and out behind her. Gone are the milquetoast statements and boring B-roll. Also gone is the taciturn, press-shy Lloyd Austin, the four-star general who was Hegseth’s predecessor. There’s a new SecDef in town, the media team will have you know, and he’s taking a more muscular approach to SecDeffing.
The action movie–style videos are an innovation being rolled out across Trump’s government. There’s D.H.S. Secretary Kristi Noem posing in front of prisoners in El Salvador and wearing a bulletproof vest on ICE raids. There’s vice president and former Marine J.D. Vance firing a machine gun at Quantico. (“Most based vice president in history,” wrote Breitbart Pentagon correspondent/fan girl Kristina Wong.) Even Alina Habba—the former Trump attorney, recently exiled to a U.S. Attorney post in New Jersey—strapped on some tactical gear for a photo published on the Trump War Room account. It’s all reminiscent of the cringey, Hollywood-style “Texas Reloaded” campaign ad from 2020, where Reps. Dan Crenshaw (former Navy SEAL), Wesley Hunt (West Point grad), August Pfluger (former Air Force officer), Tony Gonzales (Navy vet), and Beth Van Duyne (not a vet) filmed themselves jumping out of airplanes, typing into secret-looking computers, practicing hand-to-hand combat, and walking out of fireballs.
The DoD Rapid Response account that has been promoting Hegseth since February is one of several launched on X in recent months. It’s a term usually associated with campaigns, not government agencies. But Trumpworld is always in campaign mode, because the point has never been to govern. It’s been to own the libs and win culture wars. Jocks don’t do policy, nerds do. And the nerds were soundly trounced in November. “They all think their jobs are to be TV stars,” one former defense official said with an eye roll. “They don’t understand that governing is a separate job from getting elected/picked for things.”
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The DoD Rapid Response account was born during the reign of Hegseth’s first press secretary, John Ullyot, a former Marine with the slicked-back hairstyle favored by the Trump sons. Around the time the account was launched, Ullyot brought in right-wing podcaster Graham Allen, who starts each day by tweeting “CHRIST IS KING,” to run the Pentagon’s digital media. Ullyot was also the force behind the memo removing legacy media reporters from their offices at the Pentagon and replacing them with the likes of Breitbart and One America News.
But then Ullyot went a little too far. After DoD took down the webpages about Jackie Robinson’s military service, the Navajo Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen, and Ira Hayes—a Native American who was one of six Marines who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima—Ullyot crowed that “D.E.I. is dead at the Defense Department.” When public uproar followed, the pages were restored (but not before “dei” was temporarily added to the U.R.L. for Robinson), and Ullyot was moved to a “behind-the-scenes role” at the Pentagon. In other words, defenestrated.
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Sean Parnell, an Army combat veteran and onetime Pennsylvania Senate candidate, quickly took over Ullyot’s job of body-checking the press and producing Hegseth appreciation videos for various DoD social media accounts. “Does he ever sleep?!” swooned one post showing Hegseth taking off for the border. “Wow @SecDef has a true heart for our troops,” sang another. Under Parnell’s guiding hand, the Pentagon social media accounts became not so much about the troops or policy, but a kind of Tiger Beat for the stars in the MAGA universe. Here, for example, is Hegseth giving a tour of the Pentagon to H.H.S. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joshing around a conference table while action movie music plays in the background. (“MALA x MAHA,” Rapid Response tweeted.) Here’s Irish M.M.A. fighter Conor McGregor giving Hegseth a hearty hand clasp and saying, “Fight, fight, fight, as the big man says!” And here is action film director Michael Bay getting a tour of the briefing room. “We greatly appreciate Mr. Bay taking the time to come meet with us at the Department of Defense,” Parnell said in a statement to Puck. “He is a storytelling giant, and anything the Pentagon can do to help him accurately portray the U.S. military in any filmmaking project is always welcomed.”
A recurring theme of the DoD Rapid Response and other Pentagon public affairs accounts is that Hegseth is finally restoring prestige to an American military that had been degraded and victimized by the woke, D.E.I. policies of the Biden administration. But following these accounts, it becomes clear that it’s not the military’s reputation they’re restoring, but Hegseth’s. The lügenpresse may have tarred him as a misogynist with extremist, Christian nationalist views (and tattoos), but isn’t he the perfect person to lead America’s warriors into the future: a macho man who takes no prisoners and makes no apologies, a man much like Trump himself?
Which is why Parnell is the perfect spokesman for Hegseth. A native of Western Pennsylvania, Parnell is a former Ranger who served combat tours in Afghanistan. In 2021, despite receiving Trump’s endorsement, he had to suspend his Senate campaign when his ex-wife accused him of strangling her and hitting their children. (Parnell denied the claims, though a court found his ex-wife to be “the more credible witness” and sided with her in the custody dispute.) Parnell, of course, presented himself as the victim, a man fighting a legal system that always sides with the woman. “As a father in family court the deck will always be stacked against you,” he wrote in a post on Father’s Day 2024, announcing that he had finally secured a more favorable custody arrangement. Like Hegseth, he is a warrior fighting to take control of a system he views as corroded and by woke, effete elites.
The audience for all this Hegseth stanning is, of course, the MAGA base. They don’t care about the details of defense planning or force posture
in the Indo-Pacific. They care about riling up the libs and taunting the media. They relish the cartoonish masculinity of guns and tats, of offensive jokes and push-up contests. They dream about restoring aggressive, white Christian maleness atop all institutions, but especially those that specialize in state violence. This is the Pentagon of Donald Trump, the man who campaigned the first time around on untying soldiers’ hands in war. “The problem is we have the Geneva conventions,” he said on the trail in 2016, “all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight.” This is the Pentagon of the man who, in 2019, pardoned American soldiers facing charges of war crimes. The person who campaigned for their pardon? Pete Hegseth.
“This is incredibly serious stuff,” said Kevin Baron, former executive editor of Defense One. “So to see the kind of snarky, cruel, juvenile fronting for that mission is disheartening and dangerous. It’s dangerous because it sets the tone for the whole force, including everyone at the bottom of the pyramid, the 18, 19-year-old recruits.” The teenage recruits who, if Parnell and Allen’s Pentagon social media accounts are to be believed, want nothing more than to be like Hegseth when they grow up.
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That’s all from me, friends. I’ll see you back here next week. We can trade tips on how to smuggle French wine into the country. Until then, good night. Tomorrow will be worse.
Julia
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