Stone Cold Idiot: Hegseth Kept Venmo Account Open to Public

Of all the apps out there, one has to really appreciate the one that allows you to cash in on a bet with a friend over the football games and collect your $20 on the Gulf Coast all the way from Hawaii, the $20 that you need to eat because you’ve made a decision to write for a living (“@Jason-Miciak” for all you readers who would love to chip in $2 to allow me to eat today and prove a point, that Venmo is a great App), and many of us do have Venmo as our favorite precisely because our support is dispersed throughout the countryside and lends itself to multiple small payments – nay, “micropayments” if one is feeling particularly cruel – and that is to be expected. But even those of us who enjoy a relatively “known” living as public commentators know that our contacts would otherwise be available for anyone to examine, we just presume that everyone understands that we’re wholly on the up and up, and keep most people wholly private… Which is what Pete Hegseth better damned well understand be the case since he, too – has his Venmo account out there open to the public, and yet he also has access to nuclear codes and such and thus has a little more to lose than the average writer-critic. He should be made aware.

The New Republic published a piece today on what they found when they looked through a Venmo account that was shockingly left open to the public, one in the name of Peter Hegseth and one they found to be loaded with DoD contractors:

The cast of characters listed under Hegseth’s friends on the mobile payment app, which includes Washington elites, defense contractors, and private health care executives, suggests that he plans to steer the Defense Department toward widespread privatization

Well, of course, silly geese. When you lead a department with over $1 Trillion in annual funding, there is one, and I mean only one, means by which to profit and that is to turn public money into private profit as fast as possible and that always involves privatization, always, and that’s why we can always tell who is in it to make money for themselves versus who is in it to get the country ahead. One puts privatization ahead of everything, the other puts the country’s interests first, and always. It’s not a hard tell.

Not only is the pattern obvious on first review, but the names of the contacts are all too naked in the light of day:

Hegseth’s list of Venmo buddies also includes Mike Gallagher, a former representative from Wisconsin who, after drumming up a lot of anti-China rhetoric as chair of the Select Committee on the CCP, vacated his seat last year to serve as head of defense at Palantir. His new employer stands to make a killing in AI contracts as a result of a breakdown in U.S. relations with China. Hegseth also had the contact for Christian Brose, chief strategy officer for Anduril.

Now, if you are Mr. Brose, you are not even the slightest bit happy with Hegseth because, well – Hegseth is surely expected to go to prison for the cause (If that were to be required, ask Trump), the people in the private sector who supply the actual money to these ventures do not expect to be hauled into your scandals, so having his name out there floating around as in “Why would you be in a private buddy contact with a Venmo account and the Secretary of Defense, Mr, Kickbac… I mean Mr. Brose?”

There is an art to this type of thing that seems to be lost on Hegseth. Of course, a lot of life’s subtleties go flinging by when one is numbed to reality by whatever sauce one uses to numb oneself. Not saying that Hegseth is drinking but something is going on. You saw last weekend in Europe. Whoa. And it’s not just defense, he’s also tied in to big Healthcare or Big Insurance, however you want to label it, he’s dialed in:

Hegseth’s Venmo also revealed ties to several executives of the UnitedHealth Group, including a vice president, a product director, and a public affairs consultant. UnitedHealth is the largest administrator of Medicare Advantage, which is the largest administrator of the private Medicare option.

My god, the conflicts go in every single direction. But that is why this is so interesting, because even though the contacts list is public, the transactions are not. So wouldn’t it be interesting if every two to three days, there was a $2500 “gift” from one of those executives at United Healthcare Group to Peter, just – you know, for meal money (Which is how I get help) and so it’s up to someone else to notice that after one month there is $17,500 in payments from someone at United Health to Peter Hegseth (If that were to be the case, I don’t know what the payments might be, only that the contact makes no sense unless there was a payment at one point).

It is all just so corrupt. And to think, we’d know nothing of even the possibility, had Peter not been such a moron as to keep his contact list public. Yes, yes, @Jason-Miciak is also public (I think). And yes, I’d allow myself to be bought off right now, but still – if I was about to be named SecDef, I’d both shut down everything that had ever been in my name, but also report everything ever – one never knows what the Chinese are up to,  so it becomes much easier when you get really honest, and – easier still, when trying to just do the best job for the country, not trying to privatize all that money…

Some people are just trying to do the best they can given it all. Some people cannot even turn around without giving someone further reason to worry that they’re corrupt…

God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] (And yes, my Venmo Account is @Jason-Miciak and I do take donations, especially now with my daughter on the opposite coast and health issues pressing) and I can be reached on X @JasonMiciak and now follow me on Bluesky

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