Former Fox News weekend morning show host turned Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, returned to his old stomping grounds on Thursday night with a special appearance – complete with a comedy routine – at Fox’s annual Patriot Awards.
Hegseth, now known as the “secretary of war,” began his appearance on stage by noting some of the familiar faces in the audience and cracking a joke about one of the Trump administration’s worst scandals so far.
“So many dear friends, so many people I love, so many incredible colleagues. I see Mike Waltz. Mike, I’ll hit you up on Signal later,” Hegseth quipped as the audience both applauded and sighed.
“Too soon?” Hegseth replied, adding, “Come on!”
CNN’s Aaron Blake shared the moment on social media and added, “Will sure be interesting to see what that IG report shows. Hegseth was sharing details of looming military strikes on an unclassified app. It’s logical to assume if this fell into enemy hands, it could have jeopardized the mission and troops’ lives. But it’s a laugh line here.”
Signalgate was an earlier failure of Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon and resulted in calls for his ouster. The scandal centered around Hegseth discussing plans for the U.S. to bomb Yemen in an unsecured chat on Signal, which happened to include Hegseth’s wife and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. Waltz, who was also in the chat, was later removed as national security advisor and appointed as UN ambassador.
Later in his remarks, Hegseth also cracked a joke about Trump’s bombing of Iran.
“And that moment we realized that our bombers were out of Iran and the bombs had hit the target and the world didn’t know. It was a fun moment when Donald Trump turned to his assistant and said, ‘Go get me my phone,’” Hegseth said before making beeping noises for Trump posting to social media.
“The world– listen, FAFO, all right?” Hegseth added to applause, referring to the common acronym meaning “F*** Around and Find Out.”
Watch the clip above.
