There used to be a saying when Jon Stewart was hosting The Daily Show: "Clown nose on, clown nose off." Sometimes he was a comedian, while other times he was scolding Americans for not being liberal enough.
Seth Meyers on Wednesday night kept the clown nose on as he addressed the scandal of the day: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spending money to feed the troops surf & turf. As Molly Jong-Fast said, it was an "astronomical amount" spent on shellfish. As we reported earlier, CNN's Scott Jennings seemed to need to explain to Paul Begala that all of that food wasn't for Hegseth personally.
Meyers ran with that perspective for his bit on the "controversy," showing Hegseth wearing a lobster bib and claiming he was "meat-constipated" from eating millions of dollars of ribeye steak.
Since Meyers' show is on NBC, and he dipped into the reservoir of MS NOW to pull up a clip of none other than Jen Psaki acting outraged, and putting up headlines from The New Republic.
Are you ready to laugh? Well, get ready:
Seth Meyers (with the help of a Jen Psaki clip) joins Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert in not knowing about military surf and turf meals, "They spent $15 million on steak in one month. Who are you? Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce? If you're gonna eat that much steak, you better… pic.twitter.com/eskqq2b3US
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) March 12, 2026
The post continues:
… have come up with a new campaign for lucky strike. No wonder Hegseth always looks miserable. He's 24/7 meat constipated. That's the face of a man war fighting with his colon."
(I guess that's a Mad Men reference? Never watched it, just as I've never watched Meyers.)
Begging all of you to make one friend in the military https://t.co/gX8NlwJQg5
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 12, 2026
It’s a nasty mixture of extreme partisanship and literally zero understanding of the military on the Left these days. I can’t believe how far they are willing to push this absolute lie. https://t.co/nuuBkEmvaz
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) March 12, 2026
I'm not easy to surprise on this stuff but I'm genuinely surprised how far the libs went with this one without even making one phone call or reading one additional tweet. Is this stuff because they are all on Bluesky now? https://t.co/ywm3avzArA
— Foster (@foster_type) March 12, 2026
I broke down yesterday how this started. It was a Substack post that Molly Jong Fast then highlighted on BlueSky, and then Lincoln Project and Bulwark media just decided to run with, and then it spread to outlets like TMZ.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 12, 2026
It's literally a fabricated Slack channel narrative by…
"… the same usual suspects."
It’s making me realize the vast disconnect between the media class and those who have served. None are veterans. There are no writers in the room to sanity check any of this.
— John Michaels (@johnm5454) March 12, 2026
Imagine begrudging the most selfless people among us an occasional crab leg or steak.
— Hoyt Gier (@lowlevelbuzz) March 12, 2026
There will be an unfunny SNL sketch with Pete eating lobster
— Mary Frances (@maryfrances3271) March 12, 2026
Deployed 3 times in the navy. Carrier served us steak and lobster on some Sundays.
— Quan Wick (@TheFinalQuan) March 12, 2026
At first, i thought it was a casual pleasure for being away from my family for birthdays, holidays, etc
Now i realize - it was just greed. I’m sorry to the American taxpayer.
So, an important piece of info (unconfirmed) that someone posted was that for years there was a single vendor out of California that provided this food to DOD. Recently, the DOD opened the contract to multiple companies, destroying the California company’s monopoly status.
— Mathew Carson (@MathewCarson11) March 12, 2026
🚨Cracked it: I knew something was off about the fake outrage over the steak and lobster, because those are standard meals the troops get weekly at the DFAC.
— Alladdin (@Alladdin1983) March 12, 2026
I did a little digging. It seems the two vendors who had a monopoly on DOD food supply lost their contracts: VAL-PRO,… https://t.co/rhRRTNK6ED pic.twitter.com/5LjL53o4Jf
The post continues:
… (located in California) and CHICO PRODUCE, INC. (also based in California). The new vendor setup is now open to multiple vendors (see the last picture).
It always comes back to who gets the money not the issue of it being spent. That is just the cover. Great work.
— Alex Page (@pagerdude) March 12, 2026
They know they are lying. They also understand their intended audience.
— SGarland60 (@s_garland60) March 12, 2026
It is unethical as sin, but, unfortunately, quite effective in churning their base.
This is the place where I'd put up the pie chart of the budget showing how much of the budget goes to defense spending vs. how much goes to social welfare programs, for all the members of Congress posting that we could have free healthcare with that money.
If it weren't for two Islamic terrorist attacks today, this stupid story would still be making headlines. I would have thought the evidence that the U.S. struck an elementary school by mistake would have led the news cycle, but no, it's Hegseth stuffing himself with lobster for two days.
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