The Department of Defense got absolutely shredded after uploading an AI-generated picture of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with his pinky missing.
Posted by the DOD Rapid Response‘s account on X, the image features a stern-faced rendering of Hegseth standing beside a border fence beneath a billowing American flag while raising a three-fingered hand as a trio of nefarious figures watch on. One of the masked men holds a box of ever-so-subtly labelled “DRUGS” with the caption “100% Operational Control.”
Many online commentators were quick to point out that Hegseth not only appears to be standing on the wrong side of the fence but is also facing away from the bad guys and even raising his sadly mutilated hand as if acting like their bodyguard.
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Others wondered which of America’s 50 states the 32 stars on Hegseth’s flag are supposed to represent as well as which one of the original 13 colonies appears to have been dropped from its stripes.
The blunder comes at a delicate time for Hegseth as rumours mount about the White House’s dissatisfaction with his performance after a series of embarrassing gaffes, security breaches, and unhinged public appearances over the past few weeks.
The most acute criticism has focused on his central role in the Signalgate scandal, which first broke after The Atlantic‘s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat in which Hegseth and other top members of the Trump administration discussed highly sensitive details of imminent missile strikes in Yemen.
In the weeks since, it has emerged that the defense secretary also shared details of those plans via chats with his lawyer, wife, and brother in addition to bypassing security protocols to install the app on his office computer at the Pentagon. He also used the same phone number on various other platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Airbnb, and a fantasy sports site.
