Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this weekend floated a new perpetual winner for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But he didn’t name his boss, Donald Trump, who has thirsted for the accolade in recent years but has only been handed a secondhand medal and a questionable FIFA version.
Hegseth, during a speech to Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadets and military recruits at the University of Tennessee, instead revived his suggestion that the U.S. military should win the prize every single year.
Watch from the 7:30-minute point here:
Hegseth, whose role has been rebranded by a Trump executive order to Secretary of War and who last week was pushing for the livestreamed execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, said:
“For 251 years, Americans have raised their right hand and said, ‘Send me. Send me to fight the redcoats. Send me to fight the Nazis. Send me to fight the communists. Send me to fight the Islamists.’ And now you’ve said, ‘Send me to defend my nation to fight against whatever threatens our shores, our interests and our people.’”
“Because you’re actually in the peacemaking business,” he continued. “I once made a video that said if there’s one entity that should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year, it should actually be the United States military. Peace through strength.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and former Army National Guard officer, was referring to a 2019 video he narrated for conservative PragerU, which he kicked off by saying:
“If the Nobel Peace Prize was given out to people who truly made the world a more peaceful place, one group would win every year: the United States military, the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Now, you may be thinking, how can you award a peace prize to a group whose purpose is to fight wars? Fair question. I’ll tell you how: because the reason we are free, the reason anyone on earth today is free, is ultimately thanks to the U.S. military. “
Watch that video on YouTube.
Hegseth went on to list U.S. interventions around the world and said that “like it or not, the US military has been, and remains, as close to a global sheriff as exists on planet Earth, on the beat, keeping the peace.”
It wasn’t the first time this year that Hegseth had harkened back to his PragerU argument. During a press briefing in April on Trump’s war on Iran, TMZ DC’s Charlie Cotton asked Hegseth: “You changed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Would you consider changing the name again to the Department of Peace, since that’s what we’re all after?”
“Well, that’s the pursuit,” said Hegseth. “It’s a great question, actually. You go from Defense to War because you want to be proactive about peace through strength.”
“In fact, I once did a video that the one institution that should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year is the United States military because we are the guarantor of the safety and security, not just of our country but a lot of people in this world,” he added.