Today on Ben Kissel Politics, the news cycle reads like a surrealist play.

Pete Hegseth decided to announce the mission of the newly rebranded Department of War not with a statement, but with a kind of spoken-word poem—because nothing says military might like snapping fingers in the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg takes climate activism literally into the fire with her flaming flotilla, proving that protest at sea doesn’t always stay afloat quietly.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump insists that anything on video that makes him look bad is simply AI trickery. According to this logic, deepfakes have been haunting him since the ‘80s.

And finally, Epstein’s victims are speaking out—vowing to release the names of their political abusers while military jets fly overhead, a scene so cinematic it could only be real life.

It’s poetry, pyrotechnics, and political paranoia—served with the usual side of sarcasm and disbelief.

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