{"id":42987,"date":"2026-04-25T11:02:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T11:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/42987\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T11:02:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T11:02:50","slug":"tmz-asks-two-questions-of-hegseth-during-briefing-on-operation-epic-fury-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/42987\/","title":{"rendered":"TMZ asks two questions of Hegseth during briefing on Operation Epic Fury"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Reporters from the entertainment network TMZ asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> two questions during a briefing about Operation Epic Fury.<\/p>\n

Operation Epic Fury was the military operation the U.S. conducted on Iran earlier this year.<\/p>\n

TMZ correspondents Jacob Wasserman and Charlie Cotton both asked Hegseth a question following the briefing.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard you talk a lot about bombing people and places, and when you give these orders to carry out this extreme level of violence, what\u2019s going through your mind and your body?\u201d Wasserman asked, according to The Hill newspaper. <\/a>\u201cDo you have, like, an adrenaline rush? Are you scared? Do you feel like you\u2019re on a power trip? Just walk us through and paint us a picture of what it feels like mentally and physically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth said that the question was \u201cvery TMZ\u201d and his goal is to defeat the enemy and make the soldiers feel empowered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want them to feel empowered to have every authority they need, within our rules and within our law, to bring maximum violence to the enemy, because war is violent, war requires doing difficult things,\u201d Hegseth said. \u201cBut I want our people to feel empowered so it\u2019s our guys that come home and their guys do not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cotton asked Hegseth about renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War.<\/p>\n

Cotton said the department should be called the Department of Peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s the pursuit,\u201d Hegseth responded. \u201cIt\u2019s a great question, actually. You go from Defense to War because you want to be proactive about peace through strength. And, really \u2013\u2013 I gave a speech in front of generals about what the ethos of the War Department is all about because I wanted to go through every echelon of this department.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 Reporters from the entertainment network TMZ asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth two questions during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[2362,34,8443,1484,27527,18,3072,27526],"class_list":{"0":"post-42987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pete-hegseth","8":"tag-department-of-defense","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-military-operation","11":"tag-operation-epic-fury","12":"tag-peace-through-strength","13":"tag-pete-hegseth","14":"tag-tmz","15":"tag-war-department"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116465015295208291","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}