Sometimes it’s nice to not take things so seriously.
When you work at the Pentagon, there aren’t many days where that’s the case. However, it seems like one reporter does his best to lighten the mood any chance he gets.
Jeff Schogol is a senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose, and though he leads a no-nonsense job for the most part, he always jumps on the opportunity for a joke.
Department of Defense Press Secretary Patrick Ryder is often at the other end of those funny questions, and this time was fielding one from Jeff about the “National Security Threat” that you probably saw trending on social media this past week.
That threat has to do with Russia, and specifically this:
Nuclear space weapon, huh? That seems rather concerning.
A topic like that could get a lot of people anxious, but not Jeff Schogol. He decided to relate the tense situation with a couple of his favorite movies, specifically a James Bond classic and the dystopian Red Dawn films, with this question directed at Press Secretary Patrick Ryder:
“I know this may be a question for Soviet premier Putin, but the awful thing that the Russians want to put into space…is it like Goldeneye, the thing from the 1995 James Bond movie? And is it time for all of us on the ground to join Jed and the Wolverines?”
What an exceptional question.
It would have been easy for Ryder to blow that question off, but instead, he clapped back with what has to be the best possible way to respond:
“Jeff, I’m not sure how to respond to that. Umm…I guess we just have to live and let die.”
Bravo! That deserves to go down in the history books as the funniest and most important reporting in the history of the United States government.
And as it turns out, Jeff Schogol basically has a “greatest hits” collection, and someone on X (formerly Twitter) took some time to put all of his all-time questions together in one video. Looks like I have a new favorite Pentagon reporter:
