Pete Hegseth did not leave the room

The question of whether Pete Hegseth stayed in the operations room on September 2, 2025, is not merely a matter of scheduling. It is a question of identity. Pete Hegseth has spent his entire public life constructing a persona: the unrepentant warrior, the scourge of the JAGs, the man who does what is necessary. On September 2, he was presented with the ultimate test of that persona. A "narcoterrorist" boat was destroyed, but survivors remained—inconvenient, living embodiments of the "lawfare" he despises.

To leave the room would have been to defer to the very bureaucracy he vowed to dismantle. It would have been an act of passivity, a reversion to the "Department of Defense" mindset.

Therefore, this report postulates that Secretary Hegseth did not leave. He stayed. He watched the first strike. He saw the survivors on the high-definition thermal feed. He listened as the options were weighed. And, consistent with his order to "kill everyone," he presided over the second and third strikes. He stayed because, for the first time in his career, he had the power to be the "wolf" he always claimed to be, and he would not deny himself the satisfaction of seeing the kill.