It has been a strange week to be Pete Hegseth. On Wednesday, the Defense Secretary stood at a Pentagon podium and delivered what he described as a prayer used by combat search-and-rescue crews, one he attributed to the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. The problem: it bore far closer resemblance to a pre-execution monologue by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
Hegseth's version opened: "The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men." Quentin Tarantino's original, spoken by Jackson's hitman Jules Winnfield just before pulling the trigger, begins almost identically. The actual verse in Ezekiel 25:17 is a single sentence about vengeance upon the Philistines.
"Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality." This is according to Sean Parnell, Pentagon spokesperson, who also confirmed the prayer was "obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction."
The next morning, Hegseth was back at the podium (this time for a briefing on the Iran war) and reached for a different passage. Recalling a Sunday sermon about Pharisees who plotted against Jesus even after witnessing a miracle, he turned to face the assembled reporters. "I sat there in church and I thought: our press are just like these Pharisees," he said. "The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn."
Within the hour, Pope Leo XIV (currently on a tour of Africa and already locked in an escalating feud with President Trump - check out our latest news on this matter) posted on X: "Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."
Historians of American religion have noted that while US administrations have long invoked faith during wartime, the Trump White House has gone further than most, using language that is, in the words of one scholar, "stark and unequivocal" in ways previous presidents avoided. For Hegseth, a self-described Christian nationalist whose use of religious imagery has become a hallmark of his Pentagon tenure, this week was, if nothing else, on brand.