Welcome to another edition of this guy, the show that picks on one guy who's making America

worse and explains why they suck. I'm Aaron Ryan, the host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast.

And I'm Alyssa Mastromonico, the other host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. Today's guy

was almost the guy several months back, but we ultimately went with another guy because we were

positive that this guy would be out of a government job within weeks. But Secretary of Defense,

Pete Hegeseth is still here. And so today we're tracing the path of a hymbo who has done nothing

but fail up. Failed college athlete, two-time failed husband, failed leader of multiple

veterans advocacy organizations, failed Senate candidate.

Taking on Amy Klobuchar on her home turf is always a mistake. Failed thought leader, failed

author, middling weekend morning show host, and now a pretty bad secretary of defense.

Do you mean Secretary of War? Sure. Peter Boregarde Hegzeth was born on June 6th, 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a basketball coach dad and a business coach mom. Wait, Aaron, that cannot be right. You caught me, Alyssa. Borregard is not his middle name. It's Brian. No, no, no, no. My dude was born in 1980. Aaron, I actually would be an older and wiser and much better sect-def. That's correct. Me and Pete

Heggseth would have been in high school at the same time. When I learned that fact, it fucked me up.

The guy looks pickled from the liver out. Your skin should not have a purple undertone when you're

not old enough to get the Denny senior discount. Pete was raised in Forest Lake Minnesota, which I've driven through approximately one billion times, as it's between the town where I grew up in the nearest decent shopping mall. It's pretty nondescript. They do have a Perkins, though, which garnered a mention in Hegsett's class of 99 high school yearbook as the gang's favorite hangout. I mean, I admit, Perkins hit the spot back when I was in Madison. Sometimes you just want pie. After his freshman year, Pete began a relationship with a classmate named Meredith Schwartz. The two would continue to date all the way through high school and be named most likely to marry. More on that in a bit. If you opened a dictionary to the entry for Guy who peaked in high school, you won't find anything because that's not a word. But if it was, there would be a picture of Pete Hegseth next to it. Standout basketball player, the coach's son, class valedictorian. Wow, and he seems like such a dumbass now. I guess decades of heavy drinking does make you stupid. Hegsteth considered attending West Point, but instead went to Princeton. At Princeton,

he played basketball riding the pine for two seasons and averaging 1.2 points and 0.1 rebounds per game.

Aaron's that good. The Daily Princetonian described him as a recruiting afterthought who

toiled in obscurity. Hegset enlisted in the ROTC after the terror

attacks of 9-11 and soon after found more success as a provocateur than he did on the basketball court.

In 2002, he served as editor-in-chief and publisher of a student newspaper called The Princeton Torry,

a place for the most tedious dorks on campus,

to present conservative ideas to a young audience. The big, bold cover line on Hegset's first issue

as a publisher read, Coming Out of the Closet. What? I think it's supposed to be like a double

...