Oct 14, 2026 · 7 min · 7 segments
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not admitted to lying, though the Pentagon quietly raised the official U.S. death toll for the conflict with Iran from 19 to 21. The revision followed previous…
Rachel MaddowHost
Eddie GlaudeGuest
Tom NicholsGuest
The idea that somehow anything other than fawning, uh, reporting, fawning coverage is ... makes you as bad as the Iranian state media, uh, really is just appalling.
It's not to give the president good advice about the conduct of a major war in the Middle East.
It's to make the president look good, squash any doubts, and to try to, uh, present this war as a TV-friendly success, because that's what Pete Hegseth does.
I remember reading a great piece of analysis at the onset of this war about how any time an American president l- launches America into a war, there's always sort of this call for unity and a plea to, to not ask too many questions, and that it is our job as journalists to actually ...
Th- there is never a more important moment in which to be asking the difficult questions.
And part of the problem for the administration is that if Americans have a full accounting of what this war has cost, then they have to reckon with the fact that the war is not just unpopular because gas prices are high.
The war is not just unpopular because food soa- food costs are soaring as a result.
It's unpopular because Americans sent a message at the ballot box that they did not want unnecessary foreign entanglements, and the president lied to them and has executed everything but.
So the president never felt it necessary to give the American people a justification for this war choice.
Oh, they gave us a list, and then they gave us another list, and then they forgot about that list and forgot about the other list.
And then on top of that, right, they wanna deny the press the ability to cover the war in a way that would inform the American public that has in some ways been coerced to give its consent.
The idea that somehow anything other than fawning, uh, reporting, fawning coverage is ... makes you as bad as the Iranian state media, uh, really is just appalling.
It's not to give the president good advice about the conduct of a major war in the Middle East.
It's to make the president look good, squash any doubts, and to try to, uh, present this war as a TV-friendly success, because that's what Pete Hegseth does.
I remember reading a great piece of analysis at the onset of this war about how any time an American president l- launches America into a war, there's always sort of this call for unity and a plea to, to not ask too many questions, and that it is our job as journalists to actually ...
Th- there is never a more important moment in which to be asking the difficult questions.
And part of the problem for the administration is that if Americans have a full accounting of what this war has cost, then they have to reckon with the fact that the war is not just unpopular because gas prices are high.
The war is not just unpopular because food soa- food costs are soaring as a result.
It's unpopular because Americans sent a message at the ballot box that they did not want unnecessary foreign entanglements, and the president lied to them and has executed everything but.
So the president never felt it necessary to give the American people a justification for this war choice.
Oh, they gave us a list, and then they gave us another list, and then they forgot about that list and forgot about the other list.
And then on top of that, right, they wanna deny the press the ability to cover the war in a way that would inform the American public that has in some ways been coerced to give its consent.
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