PSYOP budget boosted 300% with Hegseth as Pentagon head

WASHINGTON D.C. – Shortly after Congress confirmed Pete Hegseth, arguably one of the most unqualified candidates in American history, to be the next secretary of defense, the former Fox News host announced his top priority was bolstering the military’s Psychological Operations, or PSYOP, budget by at least 300%.

PSYOP’s mission is to target civilian and military personnel in a theater of war to try and influence their motives and behaviors to be more favorable to U.S. objectives. However, with President Donald Trump allegedly trying to slash the country’s debt, Hegseth has said he will reallocate the funds from the military’s Public Affairs programs—designed to help keep the American people informed about how their tax dollars are being spent in the military through honest and timely information—instead of increasing the military’s $820.3 billion budget.

“I mean, I think Mr. Hegseth is a horrid human being, with all the allegations of misconduct, and whatnot,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “But we’re living in a world where the next war our warfighters must engage in is most likely going to be a war of information; that’s if we’re not already fighting it. And, as much as I hate to say it, Mr. Hegseth’s experience at Fox News gives him the experience we need to effectively disinform our adversaries and their allies around the globe.”

The decision to gut their budget has been met with intense confusion from the military’s public affairs career field, mostly because the vast majority of these warriors have never seen a budget line in their entire career.

“Wait, are you telling me other public affairs units get money to buy shit,” said Maj. Deane Shoemaker, public affairs officer for the Army Reserve’s 362nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment based out of Londonderry, New Hampshire. “I’ve got my Soldiers dipping into their own pockets for Adobe products just to edit their photos and videos, which they took on cameras they purchased out of pocket because the Army said ‘fuck you’ when we asked for the tools to effectively do our jobs.”

In an interview after his nail-biting confirmation vote, in which Vice President J.D. Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote, Hegseth said he calls his new initiative Newspeak, which is a term he developed (and didn’t blatantly plagiarize from George Orwell’s 1984) to describe how the Department of Defense will realign its priorities to reach out to the American public and our adversaries with consistent messaging.

“What Newspeak does is make it virtually impossible for foreign actors to create disinformation campaigns against American citizens because we’re influencing their narrative the same way we’re influencing the American public, too,” said Hegseth. “It’s time to stop wasting all those taxpayer dollars on messaging the American public with one message and our adversaries with another. We’re streamlining this process to make sure the whole world knows the truth we want them to know.”

In preparation for this new initiative, the Pentagon placed the entire Department of Defense in a social media blackout to ensure no more timely and accurate information could be shared prior to all official social media accounts being handed over to a new manager who’s trained in PSYOP.

“We’re not trying to hide anything from the public,” said a Pentagon spokesperson who spoke to us on conditions of anonymity. “We just don’t want to accidentally share any of the nefarious things we don’t want the public to know about. It’s different, trust me.”

The spokesperson also said to just ignore that feeling in your gut and don’t pay attention to anything you see or hear on T.V. or in the real world because they’ll tell you the truth when they’re done fabricating it. “There’s nothing to worry about.”