Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth once again complained about press coverage of the war in Iran, this time using Biblical references to compare the media to the Pharisees, the group that was hostile to Jesus.

Hegseth told reporters, “This past Sunday, I was sitting in church with my family, and our minister preached from the book of Mark, the third chapter, and in the passage, Jesus entered a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees came to watch, and as the scripture reads, they came to see whether Jesus would heal him … on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. You see the Pharisees, the so-called and self appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down to report, but their hearts were hardened. Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.”

He went on, “As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him. I sat there in church and I thought, ‘Our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press.’ Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors. The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative.”

Hegseth complained that the media hadn’t focused on such aspects of the war as the rescue missions to save two airmen whose plane was shot down in Iran, even though that story was covered extensively.

He also said that he “can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist pedaling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops.”

He claimed that media outlets “explained away the disastrous and disgraceful Afghanistan withdrawal” during Joe Biden’s administration, even though there was extensive coverage of the Aug. 26, 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which killed 13 servicemen and 170 Afghan civilians. At the time, Afghans were scrambling to be evacuated as the Taliban regime returned to power. Biden’s poll numbers took a hit and never recovered.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Hegseth’s press restrictions violated the Constitution. The Pentagon had tried to implement a new policy, in which reporter workspaces would be located outside the building itself, after the judge issued an earlier order striking down policies that attempted to limit reporting only to authorized releases of information.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump faced a backlash after he posted an AI image on Truth Social depicting him as a Christ-like figure healing a sick man. The president later claimed that he thought that the image showed him as a doctor, but it was removed from his social media feed.

In the same hour as Hegseth’s press conference, Pope Leo posted on X, “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” The post was an excerpt from a speech the pontiff gave in Cameroon on Thursday.