Pentagon Pressure Test - August 31, 2026

**Cenk Uygur** (0:00)
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**Ana Kasparian** (4:57)
All right, welcome to The Young Turks.

**Cenk Uygur** (4:58)
Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian with you guys on a lovely Monday evening in America. So I'm in a fun mood, and that'll dissipate probably within 30 seconds of us starting the news. But nevertheless, I'm trying to bring a little bit of old school and Operation Joy into the main show.
And so today, we have an interesting set of news events. CBS has decided we're going to just drop the mask and go fully bigoted article against Abdul El-Said.

**SPEAKER_2** (5:29)
He should apologize to them.

**Ana Kasparian** (5:30)
He should apologize to them. Maybe that'll help.

**Cenk Uygur** (5:33)
Okay, so Ana is the only one in the country who says Abdul is not going nearly hard enough. But-

**Ana Kasparian** (5:38)
He's not. He went into a room full of Zionist scumbags and apologized to them. Why?

**Cenk Uygur** (5:44)
Okay, so we'll save that for a little bit later. And speaking of Zionists, settlers attack an NBC News crew and older Palestinian woman and beat them mercilessly. Of course they do, because they're savages. My god, have I offended people? Do I need to apologize to them? Do we all need to apologize to terrorists? Okay, anyways, you can see we're kind of worked up about the press' coverage of a lot of these races. And then a story about Pentagon ass kissers. Hegseth has apparently hired people for the express purpose of kissing his ass and making us pay for it. We'll get to that a little bit. But first, disastrous news on Iran.
Okay, let's do it.
I believe we're starting with a video, isn't it?

**SPEAKER_5** (6:35)
The attack came after US forces struck Iran's Larek Island after identifying preparations for an IRGC rocket launch that was meant to place new sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz. This is the first known US strike against Iran since late July. Iranian President Masoud Pazeskian spoke today about the exchange of fire.

**SPEAKER_6** (6:52)
We do not seek war, that has been our message to the world until now. However, in the face of aggression, we will not stand by.
We are capable of delivering decisive response. Instability in this region would affect everyone and create serious problems.

**Cenk Uygur** (7:10)
All right, Iran war is back on physically, militarily. We have struck Iran over the weekend, Iran has struck us back. Did it do any damage? We'll talk about that.
And what's going to be the next step in this?
It appears to be escalation and disaster, as our entire military seems to be warning both Hegseth and Trump.

**Ana Kasparian** (7:30)
Don't!

**Cenk Uygur** (7:31)
So Ana's got that story for you.

**Ana Kasparian** (7:33)
Well, it's very clear that the expertise of our military leadership doesn't really matter much to the weekend Fox News anchor and alcoholic Pete Hegseth. Because Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has just announced that he is resigning because of the ongoing tensions with Hegseth, that's been going on for months, by the way. Now, before we get to military leadership and what they've been saying, and what type of advice they've been giving Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, let's start off with some of the military strikes that the US carried out over the weekend. Because after nearly a month without any kinetic warfare, the US claims that it had carried out targeted strikes against Iranian rocket launchers on Lirak Island in the strait or near the Strait of Hormuz. So Central Command spokesman, Navy Captain Tim Hawkins claims that the rocket launchers were going to be used to disperse sea mines into the waterway that the Iranians want to have control of because they want to transit oil as well. So that storyline doesn't make much sense to me. And to be quite honest with you, even though we're unable to confirm any of this, I just don't believe our military at all, not even a little bit. But let me continue.