‘Daily Show’ Spills Why Pete Hegseth Is ‘So Cavalier’ About War Crimes

“Daily Show” correspondent Desi Lydic on Tuesday reminded viewers of disturbing comments Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made years before he became embroiled in a scandal over a pair of deadly military strikes on an alleged drug trafficking boat.

Hegseth has been accused of overseeing an act of “murder” or “war crime” in a Sept. 2 attack on survivors who clung to the boat’s wreckage. Lydic said she wished for a sign that he would have been “so cavalier” about war crimes.

That’s when she tossed to a 2019 clip of the former Fox News host defending Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army major charged with killing an Afghan detainee who was alleged to be a Taliban bomb maker, and pardoned by President Donald Trump before the investigation was completed.

“If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well. Then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?” Hegseth asked during a “Fox & Friends” interview with then-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), an Iraq War veteran. “Put us all in jail!”

Lydic shrugged her shoulders as the “Daily Show” crowd applauded.

“Hey! You said it, not me,” she quipped.

Lydic also mocked the “secretary of defensiveness” for responding to the scandal’s backlash with a “Franklin the Turtle” meme that showed the beloved titular character riding a helicopter and apparently firing missiles at drug boats.

“This whole image is deeply disturbing, especially the part where the turtle is wearing a helmet. Why does he need a helmet? His whole body is a helmet!” she joked.

She then dissed Hegseth for using Franklin in such a manner.

“There’s already several turtles who famously kill people for a living, use them!” said Lydic in a nod to the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Watch more of Lydic’s Tuesday monologue on “The Daily Show.”