‘Wildly incompetent’: Gov. Josh Shapiro flames Pete Hegseth’s leadership
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro commented on President Donald Trump’s war on Iran in an interview podcast with Pod Save America. Shapiro did not hold his criticisms back—of Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, or the war in general.
“What is your view on the war, how it was launched, and where the status is?” asked Jon Lovett, host of the podcast, of Shapiro.
“You absolutely cannot trust Donald Trump to wage this war. First, he told us it was to go after their nuclear arsenal,” Shapiro replied. The Pennsylvania governor pointed out that Trump also claimed that Iran’s nuclear program was “completely decimated” months ago in 2025.
“Then he said we went to war because if we didn’t, Israel was going to strike first… Then they kind of walked that back,” Shapiro notes Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s reasoning for the preemptive strike. But the rationale behind the war has changed once again.
“Then it was to deteriorate their navy, and then it was ‘regime change, and now we’re left with the son that seemingly could be more dangerous than the father,” Shapiro adds now that Mojtaba Khamenei has been elected the new supreme leader of Iran. Trump essentially moved succession along but did not destroy the old guard.
A war with no clear objective
“This guy has been all over the place,” the governor said of Trump. “He’s never once looked the American people in the eye, sitting in the Oval Office like he should have been… and said to the American people, ‘This is why we have to do this. This is the imminent threat.'”
Shapiro believes that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, contrary to Trump and his cabinet’s claims.
Even if Shapiro agrees that the senior Khamenei was a “bad guy” for a multitude of reasons—namely, funding and exporting terrorism, destabilizing the Middle East, and antagonizing America. Even so, Shapiro thinks that if there’s no clear objective, then it will be harder to pull out of it.
Worst of all, American lives are lost in the process over a war with no justification.
The worst person to lead the war
“I also have a problem with the fact that the guy who is supposed to be in charge of this, Pete Hegseth, is wildly incompetent.”
“He’s like an eight-year-old playing with toy soldiers everyday. His language is so f*cking offensive. They talk about this in a way that doesn’t respect the humanity in the region and is certainly disrespectful to our soldiers,” Shapiro remarked.
Controversially, Hegseth implied indiscriminate firing against non-combatants in Iran. The defense secretary also threatened “no quarter, no mercy” against Iranian combatants. If Hegseth’s words translate to policy, that means enemy combatants will not be allowed to surrender and will be executed. Should Hegseth command ‘no quarter,’ it may be grounds for a war crime.
But most baffling are the social media posts from the Department of War and the White House. These clips promote the war by splicing popular media and actual clips of the war. Some of these videos blend popular games into them. Even the propaganda material depicts the war as a comical affair.
“This was a war of choice by the president. It wasn’t clear why we went in, and it’s unclear how we get out,” Shapiro said. He also notes that China and Russia must be watching Trump’s incompetence unfold on the international stage while spotting America’s vulnerabilities.
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