Stephen Colbert ripped into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for being the latest member of the Trump administration to “mess with religion.”
At a worship service at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Hegseth, 45, passionately read a prayer about “great vengeance and furious anger,” one that closely resembled Samuel L. Jackson’s monologue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 cult hit, Pulp Fiction.
Hegseth said the prayer was delivered to him by the lead planner of the rescue operation for two airmen shot down over Iran, and said it was entitled “CSAR 2517,” or “Combat Search and Rescue 2517,” which “I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.”
In Pulp Fiction, Jackson’s character, Jules Winnfield, quotes what he claims to be Bible verse Ezekiel 25:17, before shooting someone dead. However, while some parts of the monologue reference the verse, most of it is fictional and was created for the movie.
Colbert played a snippet from Hegseth’s prayer, before saying, “Now, if that doesn’t sound like it’s from the Bible, that’s because it’s not. Want to know what it’s from?” He then turned to show footage of Jackson’s monologue.
“Hegseth quoting from the gospel of Quenton Tarantino!” the late-night host, 61, responded. “If you’re not familiar with that gospel, it’s like the regular Bible, but Tarantino’s Jesus says the N-word a lot.”
The Late Show again juxtaposed Hegseth’s prayer with that of Jackson’s, after which Colbert said, “That mash-up really feels like your self-tape versus the guy who actually got the part.”
“Despite all this, I want Hegseth to succeed. He’s the Secretary of Defense. If he succeeds, that means America succeeds. So, please join me in prayer.”
The camera panned out, showing Colbert staring up at God, and continuing to mock the defense secretary by using altered lines from classic films. “God, I’m talking to you. You talking to me? Are you talking to me? War is like a box of chocolates. I am tired of these motherf---ing sins on my motherf---ing soul!”
“That’ll do, God. That’ll do.”
The actual Ezekiel 25:17 Bible verse ends with “I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
Everything else that Jackson’s character quotes in Pulp Fiction is invented for the movie, which Hegseth then cited in his prayer.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell defended Hegseth’s bizarre blip, saying that the defense secretary read from a “custom prayer.”
“Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction,” Parnell, 44, wrote in a statement on X. “However, both the CSAR prayer and the dialogue in Pulp Fiction were reflections of the verse 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service.”
“Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality,” said Parnell.
