Link. Posted by AP on YouTube. A few questions were taken, it being unclear whether they were staged or culled or identified in advance or extemporaneous.
The item speaks for itself. Luckily he did not have to blow his nose.
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It would be wrong to leave it there. Even if a lapel handkerchief is a ceremonial fixture of being a suit, wearing a suit, it still is a handkerchief suggesting it's use in the normal course of events, for which a national flag is clearly be inappropriate.
Whoever thought it was a good touch has bad judgment.
That said, Hegseth was not unclear. His European appearance coincided with that of JD Vance, and both spoke in what struck Crabgrass as a condescending manner to people who've centuries of experience and not under three hundred years of existence as a nation, a nation which would not have any Aryan people like Hegleth or Vance except they - the ancestors - came here from Europe as immigrants from need. More respect seemed appropriate for a far more extensive and tortured history whereby Western culture evolved to become Western culture.
It is not something invented here. The epics of Western culture were all written there. Vance's Augustine wrote there, Newton and Einstein were from there. The Bronze age was there. The Iron Age followed there. The industrial Revolution was founded on European soil by Europeans. Capitalism and banking, and Marxism, were all things from Europe before being a part of a colony that rebelled but had to find itself and its way.
Respect seemed lacking, and Trump is ultimately responsible for, and likely approving, how his representatives handled themselves. They were clear and spoke with no hemming or hawing, nor with any idiosyncratic speech habits, but somehow the norm of dealing with equals got confused. Good politically, long term, you judge.
Things seemed to go beyond bravado, approaching insult. Hegseth seems headed to do well as Secretary of Defense. The attitude he showed there needs to be used among defense contractors, including those with launch contracts. But that is a top down thing. South Africa was a British colony after the States rebelled and became independent. In terms of the history of things.