Not taking the hint from Americans’ waning trust in their work, the corporate media have decided to further tank their credibility by launching an anti-Christian info op against Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee, Pete Hegseth.

The Associated Press (AP) kicked off the weekend-long vilification campaign Friday evening, publishing a hit piece centered on one of the Army veteran’s Christian tattoos. Authored by Tara Copp, Michelle Smith, and Jason Dearen, the article attempts to tie Hegseth to “white supremacist groups” by claiming his “Deus Vult” bicep tattoo — which is Latin for “God wills it” — is “associated” with such organizations.

The hit job cites a complaint made against Hegseth ahead of Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, at which point he served as a member of the D.C. National Guard. After reportedly seeing photos of Hegseth’s tattoos on social media, a former D.C. Guard member sent an email to the physical security manager of Hegseth’s unit, who passed the concern along to the unit’s leadership, claiming that the “Deus Vult” tattoo is “associated with [white] Supremacist groups” and “falls along the lines of [an] Insider Threat.”

According to the AP, the original post came from Travis Akers, a then-Navy intelligence officer. Akers is a far-left activist who has celebrated the military “embrac[ing] the Black Lives Matter movement,” claimed there is “systemic racism” in the U.S. armed forces, and opposed efforts to keep pornographic materials out of school libraries.