WaPo Torched For Dis­miss­ing Pete Hegseth’s 2 Bronze Stars As ‘Com­mon,’ ‘Par­tic­i­pa­tion Tro­phy’

Posted in Election 2024  •  Published by

The Wash­ing­ton Post took a vir­tu­al beat­ing on Fri­day after pub­lish­ing an arti­cle declar­ing that the two Bronze Star medals award­ed to Pete Hegseth, Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee to lead the Pen­ta­gon, were less than because they were award­ed for “Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice” rather than for “Val­or.”

In the arti­cle, mil­i­tary reporter Alex Hor­ton argued that Bronze Stars “were issued some­what lib­er­al­ly through­out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” and sug­gest­ed that because Hegseth was an offi­cer rather than enlist­ed, the award — which he said had been com­pared to a “par­tic­i­pa­tion tro­phy” — had even less com­par­a­tive val­ue.

“While many offi­cers have risked their lives on the bat­tle­field, the major­i­ty of fight­ing and expo­sure to dan­ger is per­formed by the enlist­ed troops they com­mand,” Hor­ton wrote.

The next sen­tence refut­ed most of the article’s claim, how­ev­er. After five para­graphs effec­tive­ly — and thor­ough­ly — dis­parag­ing Hegseth’s Bronze Stars as though they were far from proof that he had dis­tin­guished him­self as a com­bat vet­er­an, Hor­ton wrote the fol­low­ing: “Hegseth also received a Com­bat Infantry­man Badge, which is award­ed when infantry sol­diers and offi­cers engage an ene­my in com­bat.”

In order to receive the Com­bat Infantry­man Badge (CIB), sol­diers must meet ALL of the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

  1. Be an infantry Sol­dier sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly per­form­ing infantry duties.
  2. Be assigned to an infantry unit dur­ing such time as the unit is engaged in active ground com­bat.
  3. Active­ly par­tic­i­pate in such ground com­bat. Cam­paign or bat­tle cred­it alone is not suf­fi­cient for award of the CIB.

In order to earn the CIB, Hegseth had to not only be assigned to the unit that par­tic­i­pat­ed in direct armed con­flict, he had to be an active par­tic­i­pant in such com­bat action. Horton’s will­ing­ness to write off Hegseth’s “Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice” Bronze Stars as triv­ial while only includ­ing his CIB as an aside sug­gests an agen­da that many on X picked up on.

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“.@WaPo is seri­ous­ly argu­ing ‘Actu­al­ly, Hegseth earn­ing two bronze stars in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t that impres­sive,’” John Has­son wrote.

“Every Bronze Star recip­i­ent, along with the fam­i­lies, should can­cel their sub­scrip­tion to the Wash­ing­ton Post imme­di­ate­ly. Of all the gut­ter trash thrown at Pete Hegseth, this may be the worst of the worst. Absolute­ly shame­ful,” Joe Con­cha added.

Fox News host Will Cain — who cohost­ed “Fox & Friends Week­end” along­side Hegseth and Rachel Cam­pos-Duffy — added, “So now they have moved to dimin­ish­ing Hegseth’s Bronze Stars. This is so gross but it’s also des­per­ate and flail­ing. Shows the ille­git­i­ma­cy of all the attacks. Just a total Kavanaugh.”

“The Wash­ing­ton Post hates Pete Hegseth so much that it’s now decid­ed the Bronze Star (which Hegseth was award­ed 2x) is meh and not very impres­sive. Which is weird, because the Wash­ing­ton Post wrote tons of arti­cles about col­lu­sion hoax­er Robert Mueller’s Bronze Star. Curi­ous!” The Federalist’s Sean Davis post­ed.

 

“When Biden award­ed the Bronze Star to an intel­li­gence ana­lyst, @Washingtonpost called it ‘one of the Army’s most pres­ti­gious awards.’ But when @PeteHegseth earns two of them, WaPo says ‘Actu­al­ly, they’re pret­ty com­mon.’ It’s (D)ifferent for some peo­ple,” Has­son added.