‘Did You Not Hear?!’ Pete Hegseth Gets Snippy With Reporters Pressing Him for Details on Iran Plans

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth battled reporters who pressed him for details on the next phase of operations in Iran.

During a brief, tense question-and-answer session at the Pentagon on Monday, Hegseth was asked to provide further details on what comes next in Operation Epic Fury.

“Are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran?” A reporter asked.

“No, but we’re not gonna go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” Hegseth said. “I think it’s one of those fallacies for a long time that this department or presidents or others should tell the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here’s exactly what we’ll do.”

He added:

Here’s exactly how long we’ll go. Here’s how far we’ll will go. Here’s what we’re willing to do and not do. It’s foolishness! And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we’ll as far as we need to go to advance American interests. But we’re not dumb about it. You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years. We’ve proven that you can achieve objectives that advance American interests without being foolish about it. Now, will we be bold about it? Are we willing to be decisive about it, do we put months and months of planning into what kind of effects we wanna achieve? Absolutely. But going forward, why in the world would we tell [the press] … [or] the enemy, anybody, what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective? We fight to win. We fight to achieve the objectives the President of the United States has laid out, and we will do so unapologetically.

NBC’s Courtney Kube then asked, “President Trump put a four-week timeline on it — are you saying that’s wrong?”

After another reporter was called on, Hegseth returned to answer — and promptly dismiss — that query, taking a shot at NBC in the process

“I heard the question about four weeks, it’s the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question,” Hegseth said. “President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives we’ve set out to achieve and what he has shown ability to do that other presidents can’t quite seem to have the aperture to do. Well, I mean, Joe Biden didn’t even know what he was doing. Is to look for opportunities and off ramps and escalations for the United States that creates new opportunities to execute what we need on our own timeline. So you can play games about four weeks, five weeks, he has all the latitude and I’m glad he does because there’s no better communicator than our president expressing those things.”

Moments later, NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer pressed the secretary.

“I understand, to your point here, that you don’t want to broadcast everything for our adversaries to hear, but the American people also want to know what they’re sending their men and women to war for,” Meyer said. “Is there a concern of this spiraling into a longer war.”

“Did you not hear my remarks?!” Hegseth shot back. “I mean, we’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual clear objectives. We know, we have plans, we have generals, we have chairmans, we have commanders, CENTCOM commanders — Admiral Cooper, who’s executing very deliberately to ensure outcomes that I laid out are accomplished. But we would never in front of a press pool lay out how long that may take. The mission for our warfighters, which is what matters to us, is very, very clear. And they’re executing it right now, violently.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

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