Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn't mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don't go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage.
– Ivanka Trump recounting lessons she learned from her father in an excerpt from her book
Trumpworld survivors know that good optics are the cardinal rule with the big guy – second only to successfully executing open-air corruption.
Thick-browed Pete Hegseth is nothing if not a Trumpworld survivor – for now anyway. We expect the day will come when this Fox Weekend chest-beater, currently running a real war involving the smoking ruin of U.S. bases, death and global havoc, is finally thrown under the bus.
Hegseth arrived as a Trump nominee plagued by alcohol abuse and roofie-rape allegations. Once confirmed, he delivered exactly the performance the White House reality show casting director wanted. He dubbed himself “War Secretary,” and, with a cartoonish strut, became a walking case study in steroid overuse.
A warrior caricature is as essential to the Trump show as Betty Boop femininity. But when Trump faced the greatest real challenge of his presidency – the forced release of the Epstein files in January 2026 – he needed extras as backup.
Enter Hegseth’s three social media influencers, riding to the rescue. Between them, these Three Musketeers have a combined one million X followers, more fans on podcasts and TV, and, as it turns out, Trump government positions too.
The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe broke this delicious story (he also revealed the airport food cart caper and is one reason to maintain your Wapo subscription – despite Bezos, the place still has great, well-sourced journalists on staff).
Lamothe did not report on the substance of the trio’s social media activities in relation to the Epstein files, but the timeline speaks for itself. About a week after the files were released, Hegseth announced he was cutting Pentagon ties with Harvard and creating a task force to review military war colleges and other academic institutions. He staffed this woke-hunting task force with the aforementioned trio of former military men turned right-wing social media figures. They were given civil service acronyms – HQE (Highly Qualified Expert) or SGE (Special Government Employee) – and “.civ” government emails. The Pentagon refused to tell Lamothe whether, or how much, they were paid, or what their jobs were or how long they would be in them.
Retired Air Force colonel Kurt Schlichter, a popular right-wing flame-throwing trial lawyer, Townhall columnist, and former standup comic, is probably the best known of the three. He has 620,000 X followers whose favorite word – judging by their enthusiastic, if often grammatically incorrect, replies to his posts – is “retarded.”
Schlichter, a self-proclaimed “major influencer,” is a reliable source of MAGA snark on Fox, Newsmax, and beyond, having been around since Andrew Breitbart hired him years ago. Whether he’s still actively practicing law is anyone’s guess – his name is no longer on his firm’s website (he was still listed as recently as June).
In a crowd of surly manosphere influencers, though, Schlichter’s woman problem stands out as particularly… acute. He rarely misses a chance to trash females.
Responding to former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, he wrote: “Frigid wine women fear and loathe the things of men. This is why they should be patted on their empty heads and directed to the kitchen to prepare sandwiches” (you might recall that “make me a sandwich” is a rape-propaganda Tate Brothers meme spewed at female teachers by brainwashed preteen boys).
Schlichter has also called Democratic political women “fat, ugly and retarded” and liberal white women “an abomination.”
Given this penchant, it’s no surprise that he frequently dismisses Epstein’s victims as “hookers” or prostitutes and liars. From his very first comments on the files – in the form of a ranting YouTube video – he cited his experience as a trial lawyer, called the case “lies” and “nonsense,” and, apropos of nothing, mentioned that his mother is a judge. Unlike Hegseth’s mother, Kurt’s mommy has yet to weigh in on her son’s radical misogyny. He has repeatedly called those interested in the Epstein case “retarded.” He insists there is “no global sex trafficking ring.” and that he, along with Rep. Thomas Massie, “is laughing at how stupid” people are for believing there is.
The second Musketeer, is another former colonel and civilian lawyer named Thomas R. Anderson, who has racked up 320,000 followers on X under the nom de guerre Cynical Publius. As the files came out, Publius too shifted right on cue to slamming the Epstein case. There is no “there there,” he whined in one tweet. Some other greatest hits include: “We know everything there is to know;” There is “very little” in the files; Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna are “narcissistic charlatans bent on harming Donald Trump;” “Trump was the first person to report [Epstein] to the police” (despite not having a shred of evidence to back that up); and our personal favorite, “There is no ‘Epstein List.’”. Anderson/Publius also claimed that making any Trump and Epstein connection was defamatory and slanderous.
Mississippi-based podcaster Rob Maness, the third Musketeer with a Pentagon HQE title, spent months calling for the release of the Epstein files. But on the day the Wall Street Journal dropped its story on Trump’s contribution to Epstein’s 50th birthday book, Maness abruptly reversed course. After firing off two final tweets on July 17, 2025, he never mentioned Epstein again:
Predictably, Kegseth and his very online MAGA patriots ran for cover once the Post story broke. Publius squealed that he was only hired to serve on the task force and had nothing to hide. Maness accused the Post of defaming him, claiming the information about his Pentagon work was “illegally obtained personally identifiable information from government data sources.” Schlichter published an entire Town Hall column calling the Post “regime media” that “hits like a girl” – notably without ever denying that he had the government gig.
We all know it takes a social media village to make a sick bully named thousands of times in the Epstein files palatable. Lockstep messaging from Posobiec to Loomer to Schlichter to the Foxbots has been the name of the MAGA game for a decade. But War Sec. Hegseth now appears to be so freaked out by the exposure of his optics games and war disasters that he’s running polygraphs on dozens of officials, desperately hunting leakers while our Gulf bases go up in smoke – off camera.
Not sure the analogy works. The Three Musketeers are generally seen as heroic figures, on the side of good. These clowns are on the side of evil. I can see Kegsbreath as D’Artagnan though. Their differences will become apparent when they are asked to stick together “all for one and one for all”. Plus they are all working for the evil Richelieu, not against him.
Richelieu died of multiple illnesses and organ failures, bonfires were lit by the “common people” to celebrate his death, after which his body was stolen from his tomb during the French Revolution, his skull taken and his face removed. Hmmmm……….
And our drone program is dumped and department devoted to minimizing civilian casualties trashed (oops, that was a girls school?) These three...more fine uses of our tax dollars (we saps who pay them.) Does Anderson/Publius know that the person who coined the "no there there" phrase was a lesbian with a decidedly un-Mar-a-Lago face?