Hegseth channels his inner Tarantino with fake Bible verse from Pulp Fiction

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/16/hegseth-pulp-fiction-ezekiel-prayer

It was perhaps inevitable that a braggadocious Christian nationalist defense secretary elevated from his role as a weekend Fox News television host would pluck a fake Bible verse from a violent Hollywood blockbuster and present it at a Pentagon prayer session to rally the troops for the “holy war” in Iran.

On Wednesday, at the latest of his new series of worship services at the Pentagon to bless the Iran war effort, Hegseth stood at a podium and delivered a prayer for search-and-rescue crews he said was based on a Bible passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel.

Yet, as so often happens in the upside-down world that is Donald Trump’s second term of office, all was not as it seemed. The prayer Hegseth used appeared instead to be a bastardized version of a speech by actor Samuel L Jackson in the movie Pulp Fiction.

In its own helpful analysis of the situation, Newsweek presented all three passages of text: Ezekiel 25:17; Jackson’s dialogue from Tarantino’s 1994 cult black comedy; and the words spoken by Hegseth on Wednesday, which he stated were from so-called prayer CSAR 2517 (combat search and rescue), were commonplace in military circles, and were read to crews that rescued an air force colonel from an Iranian mountain this month after his fighter jet was shot down.