Pete Hegseth — the United States Secretary of Defense — stood at a podium inside the Pentagon on Wednesday, opened his Bible stamped with a Jerusalem Cross and the words "Deus Vult," and led a room full of military officials in a prayer.
A prayer from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction.
Not loosely inspired by. Not vaguely similar to. Near-verbatim. The same fake Ezekiel 25:17 monologue that Samuel L. Jackson delivers in the movie right before he unloads a handgun into an unarmed man sitting on a couch.
That's the prayer the Secretary of Defense chose to bless the Iran war.
Here's What He Actually Said
Hegseth told the room the prayer was called "CSAR 25:17" — Combat Search And Rescue — and said it was handed to him by the lead mission planner of Sandy 1, the team that extracted downed Air Force crew in Iran.
Then he read it out loud. Pray with me, he said.
"The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen."
Now here's the Samuel L. Jackson version from the movie:
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
They swapped "righteous man" for "downed aviator," "charity" for "camaraderie," and "the Lord" for a fucking A-10 Warthog call sign.
That's it. That's the edit. Everything else is Tarantino.
The Pentagon's Response Made It Worse
When the clip went viral — because of course it did — chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell didn't deny it. He couldn't. Instead, he posted on X that the prayer was "obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction."
Obviously inspired.
The official position of the United States Department of Defense is that their secretary read a movie quote at a worship service and that's fine because it was obviously from a movie.
Then Parnell added that "anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality."
My guy. The actual verse from Ezekiel 25:17 is one sentence long: "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them." That's the whole thing. Everything else in Hegseth's prayer — the path, the valley, the brother's keeper — is from a screenplay. Written by Quentin Tarantino. Who adapted it from a 1970s Japanese martial arts film called The Bodyguard.
This is who's running your military.
This Is the Second Time He's Done This
This wasn't even a one-off. According to Word & Way, this was the second month in a row Hegseth read a violent prayer at a Pentagon worship service to frame the Iran war as an act of divine justice.
He's not just playing soldier. He's playing preacher. Megachurch energy. Full Righteous Gemstones. Standing at the Pentagon with a custom-stamped Bible, leading group prayer with a Tarantino script, telling everyone this war is God's work.
And he told the room that what they hear in these services should impact the policy and military decisions they make.
Read that again. The Secretary of Defense is telling Pentagon officials that a worship service — where he reads fake scripture from a violent crime film — should influence how they wage a war.
Remember Who This Man Is
This is the same Pete Hegseth whose former Fox News colleagues smelled booze on his breath before he went on air. The same guy whose co-workers had to call him before shifts to make sure he didn't oversleep from partying. The same guy a whistleblower said was "frequently intoxicated on the job" and had to be carried out of official events.
Carried. Out.
And now he's at a Pentagon podium doing his best Samuel L. Jackson impression, except Samuel L. Jackson was acting, and he knew it was fiction, and he didn't use it to justify an actual war.
JD Vance Did the Same Shit in 2024
And because this timeline is a goddamn parody of itself, let's not forget that JD Vance — at a Faith & Freedom Coalition breakfast during the 2024 campaign — literally called the character Jules from Pulp Fiction "one of my favorite theologians."
At an evangelical breakfast. Theologians. A fictional hitman from a Tarantino film. And the room clapped.
These people cannot tell the difference between scripture and a screenplay. Between faith and fandom. Between the Bible and a Blu-ray.
Bottom Line
The Secretary of Defense of the United States stood inside the Pentagon, held up a Bible stamped "Deus Vult," and read a prayer that is word-for-word the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17 — a fake verse from a movie about hitmen — to bless a war. The Pentagon confirmed it was "obviously inspired" by the film and told everyone to shut up about it.
This is the man in charge of the most powerful military on Earth. A man who couldn't stay sober at Fox News. A man who had to be carried out of events. And now he's playing megachurch pastor at the Pentagon, quoting Tarantino to a room full of generals, and telling them it should shape how they make war decisions.
Samuel L. Jackson played a hitman who knew the quote was bullshit. At least he had the self-awareness.
Hegseth doesn't. And he has the nuclear codes.
← Back to rants