Jimmy Kimmel Calls ‘Bulls**t' on Pete Hegseth's Texting Excuses
In his monologue Tuesday, Kimmel detailed the recent New York Times report that revealed Hegseth had texted leaked war plans to his wife and his brother. The sensitive information was apparently the same he'd accidentally sent to a journalist, as revealed by The Atlantic last month.
Kimmel showed a Fox & Friends interview clip of Hegseth downplaying the latest report, insisting he was only sending texts about 'informal, unclassified' topics. Hegseth added, 'That's what I've said from the beginning.'
'Right,' Kimmel replied. 'But it was bulls--t from the beginning too."
Kimmel continued, 'You texted the exact time and place the secret bombing would begin before the secret bombing happened, to your wife, on an easily hackable phone.'
'And his defense for this is, 'Who told you? And how dare they tell you?'' Kimmel joked. 'This is like your wife catching you in bed with another woman and your response is, 'Well, why did you come home so early?''
Kimmel also ripped into Hegseth's repeated attempts to divert media attention towards the 'leakers' who spoke to the press in the first place. He showed a montage of Hegseth saying the word 'leaks,' 'leaker' and 'leaking' over and over again.
'You are the leaker!" Kimmel told Hegseth. 'You leaked so much, you should be wearing Depends to work.'
His latest scandal, combined with rumors of a possible replacement, had Kimmel predicting that Hegseth wouldn't be secretary of defense for long.
'If you see white smoke coming from the Pentagon, it means they fired Pete Hegseth,' Kimmel joked.
Kimmel played the beginning of Hegseth's interview with Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade. Kilmeade accidentally referred to him as the 'former' secretary of defense before correcting himself.
'Oops,' Kimmel said. 'Somebody accidentally put the future in Brian's teleprompter.'
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