{"id":12288,"date":"2026-04-16T12:44:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/?p=12288"},"modified":"2026-04-16T12:44:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:44:45","slug":"130306802-cms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/?p=12288","title":{"rendered":"Pulp Fiction: Did Pete Hegseth quote Pulp Fiction verse at prayer meet in Pentagon? Here is the truth | World News &#8211; The Times of India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-130307088,imgsize-57238,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/did-pete-hegseth-quote-pulp-fiction-verse-at-prayer-meet.jpg\" alt=\"Did Pete Hegseth quote Pulp Fiction verse at prayer meet in Pentagon? Here is the truth\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>There are movies that become such cultural icons that they reverberate through the ages. <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/quentin-tarantino\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\">Quentin Tarantino<\/a>\u2019s Pulp Fiction is one of them, leaving a cultural imprint so big that you can just quote the movie\u2019s lines without context. <!-- -->And the most popular meme from that, which any fan can quote out of memory, is Ezekiel 25:17: a monologue that sounds Biblical, feels Biblical, and for decades has been treated as Biblical.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"5\"\/>Except, it isn\u2019t.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"7\"\/>The real verse is austere, almost indifferent, a line about vengeance stripped of poetry and theatre. What Tarantino did was clothe it in grandeur, giving it rhythm, morality and the illusion of ancient wisdom. He turned a sentence into a sermon, and in doing so created something far more memorable than the original. <!-- -->That is the version most people recognise. It is also, in a slightly altered form, what surfaced this week inside the Pentagon.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"12\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h3>The Big Picture<br \/><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"14\"\/>At a Pentagon worship service, US Secretary of War <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/pete-hegseth\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\">Pete Hegseth<\/a> recited what he called \u201cCSAR 25:17,\u201d presenting it as a military prayer tied to combat search-and-rescue missions. He suggested it was meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17, which is where the confusion begins.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"18\"\/>What he delivered was neither the Biblical verse nor Tarantino\u2019s monologue in its original form. It was a third version, a military adaptation that borrows its structure and emotional force from the film while anchoring itself in scripture for legitimacy. Tarantino himself had performed a similar act of expansion, taking a sparse Biblical line and transforming it into a cinematic sermon. Hegseth\u2019s version repeats that process within a different context, replacing theology with operational language.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"22\"\/><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"24\"\/>The \u201crighteous man\u201d becomes a \u201cdowned aviator,\u201d \u201ccharity and goodwill\u201d turn into \u201ccomradery and duty,\u201d and the closing invocation of divine authority is recast as a callsign, \u201cyou will know my call sign is Sandy One.\u201d <!-- -->The wording changes, but the architecture remains unmistakable, with its rising cadence, moral framing and climactic declaration of vengeance.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"28\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h3>Driving the news<br \/><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"30\"\/>The setting gives the moment its weight. This was not an offhand remark but a worship service inside the Pentagon, livestreamed and presented as part of an institutional practice.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"32\"\/>Hegseth introduced the prayer as something used by \u201cSandy 1\u201d to address A-10 crews before combat search-and-rescue missions, including a recent operation involving downed US personnel over Iran. <!-- -->He described it as commonplace in military settings, which suggests that the line has already been absorbed into a specific strand of military culture where repetition has granted it the feel of tradition.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"36\"\/>Viewers watching the service recognised the familiar cadence immediately, and the clip spread online, prompting questions about whether a Hollywood monologue had been repurposed as a prayer. The reaction also revealed a gap between those encountering the words as pop culture and those encountering them as institutional language.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"39\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h3>Why it matters<br \/><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"41\"\/>The instinctive reading is to treat this as a misquote or a moment of confusion, but that misses what is actually happening. This is not a simple case of someone mistaking Tarantino for the Bible. It is an example of how language accumulates layers over time.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"43\"\/>The Biblical verse provides authority, the cinematic version provides drama, and the military adaptation provides context. Together, they produce something that feels coherent and convincing, even if it is not textually faithful to any one source.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"46\"\/> <\/p>\n<div class=\"wLCOS vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"ap_Bf\">\n<div class=\"ZM4zO\">\n<p><i class=\"bo2C4\"\/> <span>Watch<\/span><\/p>\n<p> <!-- -->Ezekiel 25:17 &#8211; Pulp Fiction (3\/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"49\"\/>That is why the question of whether Hegseth knew what he was quoting does not have a dramatic answer. There is no clear evidence that he consciously referenced Pulp Fiction. He presented the line as something rooted in Ezekiel and embedded in military practice, which suggests that the distinction between scripture, cinema and adaptation has effectively dissolved in this context. The line functions as a prayer because it sounds like one and because it has been repeated often enough to acquire authority.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"52\"\/><\/p>\n<p><h3>Meme Lovers<br \/><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"54\"\/>There is also a broader pattern that explains why this moment feels entirely at home in Trump-era politics. This is a political ecosystem that treats culture as a usable vocabulary, where cinema, television and meme language are routinely drawn upon to frame ideas and communicate meaning. Authority is often borrowed from familiarity rather than from original source material.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"56\"\/>Pulp Fiction fits neatly into that framework because its most famous monologue already carries the cadence of scripture and the clarity of a moral fable. <!-- -->It offers a ready-made structure through which violence, righteousness and purpose can be articulated in a way that feels both dramatic and definitive.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"60\"\/>Hegseth\u2019s \u201cCSAR 25:17\u201d sits at the intersection of these influences, combining elements of scripture, cinema and military tradition into a single piece of language that feels complete in the moment it is delivered.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"62\"\/>The discomfort it generates comes from recognising that the line does not need to be identified as a film reference to be effective. It has moved beyond that stage and now operates as something that sounds authoritative, carries moral weight and fits the occasion, even if its origins are far more complicated than they appear.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"64\"\/><\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/us\/did-pete-hegseth-quote-pulp-fiction-verse-at-prayer-meet-in-pentagon-here-is-the-truth\/articleshow\/130306802.cms\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are movies that become such cultural icons that they reverberate through the ages. Quentin&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23896,29811,29812,6628,29813,7400,29814,29810,29815,23818],"class_list":["post-12288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-combat-search-and-rescue","tag-ezekiel-2517","tag-military-prayer","tag-pentagon","tag-pentagon-worship-service","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-pete-hegseth-quote","tag-pulp-fiction","tag-pulp-fiction-verse","tag-quentin-tarantino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/d.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}