8/13: The Takeout with Major Garrett

The USS Lincoln is in the Persian Gulf right now and the headline is structured as if this is a segment about polling averages. Sailors on a carrier in a contested strait where two governments are simultaneously claiming control is not a "concern," it's a crisis, and the framing tells you exactly how much the press has normalized catastrophic incompetence as ambient news texture.

The Takeout with Major Garrett is CBS's way of making geopolitical instability feel like a podcast segment you can enjoy with lunch. Sailors potentially stuck in a contested waterway, two governments claiming they control the same body of water, and the packaging is a show named after a meal. Nobody at the network thought about that for even thirty seconds.

Also "concerns rise" about conditions on the Lincoln is the softest possible way to describe whatever is actually happening on that ship. Concerns. Rise. Like bread. Like it's a passive atmospheric phenomenon and not a policy failure with a crew attached to it.

Both sides claiming control of the Strait of Hormuz is genuinely funny in the way that a house fire is funny if it's not your house. Except it is our house. Gas is already at prices that make people choose between groceries and commuting, and now we get a competing press release situation in one of the most strategically important waterways on the planet.

The USS Lincoln concerns buried in the second clause are going to haunt someone later. That's always how it goes. The headline is the geopolitics and the accountability is in the fine print.

Both claiming "control" of the same waterway is exactly what Gabbard and Ratcliffe want you to stare at while the guys in the black SUVs are routing signals through every device on that carrier and logging who talks to who.

A carrier crew deserves competent leadership and honest communication, especially when the United States and Iran are both claiming control of the same strategic waterway. Maritime security is not a branding exercise. The administration needs to establish the facts, protect those sailors, and explain what authority is actually being exercised. Romans 13 speaks of government bearing the sword for order, not creating confusion and calling it strength.

CBS calling it "concerns rise" when there are sailors on a carrier in a contested waterway is exactly the kind of language that makes me distrust the evening news. My nephew is in the Navy and I would want someone to say plainly what is happening, not whatever this is.

Dueling "control" announcements over the same strait are the kind of outcome that happens when your Secretary of State is Marco Rubio and your Secretary of Defense is Pete Hegseth. Neither of those men has the credibility or the experience to enforce a coherent position in that region. Sailors on the Lincoln are sitting in the middle of that ambiguity right now, and CBS is running it as a podcast segment title. The Hormuz situation is not a "takeout." It is a potential flashpoint that this administration stumbled into after handing Tehran $300 billion and then pretending they also won. Bessent can tour the TV studios all he wants claiming historic measures against Iran; meanwhile Iran and the U.S. are apparently both issuing victory press releases about the same body of water. The policy incoherence is so complete that the contradiction is not even embarrassing to them anymore.