Folks, welcome back to Amped Up—and look, today’s thumbnail says it all: Pete Hegseth playing G.I. Joe on a beach with Kristi Noem while claiming he couldn’t tell if he blew people up because of the “fog of war”?
Give me a f*king break.
Before we got into it, we began with a taste of schadenfreude—my schadenfreude, to be exact. David Shuster is a proud U of Michigan alum…which he should be, great school and all. But after four years of owning Ohio State, he came into The Big Game feeling invincible. So when the Buckeyes crushed it…well, a man must honor his bet.
Am I right?
Which meant Shuster—Michigan Man himself—opened Amped Up by singing the Ohio State fight song while I, Ohio resident, got to kick back and enjoy. A tasty appetizer before we served a heavy entree.
But unlike sports. or Hegseth’s intellect, we had someone serious with us today grounded in reality, science, decency, and actual public service. Today, we got to talk with Connecticut State Senator Saud Anwar. If every state had a state senator—or 50—like this guy, our country would be in a helluva lot better shape right now.
Saud is not just a legislator. He’s a physician, a pulmonary expert, a former mayor—is there anything the man doesn’t do? Seriously, I bet he could fix Elon’s rockets ships so maybe they’d stop blowing up—and a guy who actually gets what’s happening to working families in the real world.
We started with a discussion of the kind of dedication to public service I wish more of our elected officials possessed. Saud made a choice to live for almost two weeks on just $6.20 a day, the SNAP food allowance Republicans are slashing.
To show how utterly obscene it is that anyone questions this, while spending a Google Gazillion on things that go “boom” every year, most of which we never use. In fact, if you want to know how warped we’ve become, a Republican President once said this:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower said this, Supreme Allied Commander of American forces in Europe during World War II. So, you could say the man knew what he was talking about.
I’d give anything to hear a Democrat speak like this these days, much less a Republican, a klan whose words ring with stupidity and hypocrisy of Donald Trump Jr. ranting about drugs coming into our country.
Ok, back to the brilliant and compassionate Dr. Saud Anwar.
I’ve talked policy my whole career, but hearing a doctor and state senator describe losing weight, losing sleep, losing basic human comfort—because he wanted to understand what tens of thousands of his residents face daily trying to live on $6.20 ($6.20! I honestly can’t stop thinking about the f*king absurdity of it).
What Saud did was no stunt. It was empathy as action. It was leadership.
Saud didn’t mince words when it came to the Trump administration’s attacks on public health, SNAP, Medicaid, housing, vaccines, childcare—these are no longer theoretical.
Trump is leading a targeted assaults on the basic wellbeing of our entire nation. In Connecticut alone, 36,000–42,000 people are about to lose food benefits. Or to put it in English: They Will Not Have Money TO EAT.
But that isn’t enough pain for people just trying to get by each day on some food and zero gold crappers in the home. So 182,000 are slated to lose Medicaid. To put that in basic English: They Will Not Have Money For Treatment If They Are SICK Or DYING.
As Saud said, “What good is the federal government if it doesn’t take care of its people?” We should plaster that on every GD federal building wherever they sit.
We dug into the Trump administration’s illegal maritime bombings—yes, bombings—which violate U.S. law, military law, and international law. And Saud was just the right kinda blunt: if you start normalizing killing people without due process, whether at sea or at home, you are no longer a functioning democracy.
And you know what? He’s not wrong. We’re watching an administration shred constitutional restraints like they’re Pete Hegseth’s dignity in that pool photo. Or a Pete Hegseth Christian Nationalist tattoo. Or a Pete Hegseth letter from ma telling him she’s ashamed of him because he treats women like s*t.
Or a Pete Hegseth impregnating his eventual third wife, a producer at Fox, while married to his second wife. Or a Pete Hegseth saying “Kill Them All” about those who survived his first illegal attack, violating The Geneva Conventions.
Or a Pete Hegseth throwing an axe on the street for a Fox segment, missing the target completely, with regular folks, who hadn’t been warned, walking by. Or a Pete Hegseth lecturing generals on being tough in war.
Or…ok, folks, you get the point. To quote Captain America, “I can do this all day.”
But let’s return to Saud. He talked about local resistance, i.e. Connecticut’s efforts to protect residents from masked ICE agents, banning courthouse arrests, strengthening childcare, boosting vaccination rates to the highest in the nation, and trying—desperately—to maintain humane government in an era when the federal level is run by corporate oligarchs and cruelty merchants.
Saud also revealed he’s been personally threatened repeatedly—by anti-vaxxers, white supremacists, extremists—because he dares protect people. How evil of him! Instead of giving Trump 24-karat-gold corporate arse kissings, Saud shows up, passes legislation, and fights for regular folks.
That’s real courage. That’s real service. That’s real patriotism.
I’ll be honest: I don’t often say this about politicians. But this man gives me hope. Real hope. He’s doing the work. He’s speaking out—even against his own party when necessary. And he’s building a model for what democratic governance should look like.
Follow him. Support him. We need more leaders like Saud Anwar—and far fewer Fog-of-War Hegseths running around pretending their incompetence is valor.
