Did an Army prankster insert a photo of Jeffrey Epstein captioned "WHY WE FIGHT" into a "Manual for Warfighters" published by Pete Hegseth? No, that's not true: That story came from a satirical account on X that posts comedy content. There were no news reports about any such prank involving 100,000 printed copies for "soldiers training to invade Iran".
The joke appeared in a post on X (archived here) on March 8 in a post that said:
BREAKING: A prankster in the Army reportedly inserted a photo of Jeffrey Epstein beneath the caption "WHY WE FIGHT" on the 1st page of the PDF file of Pete Hegseth's new "Manual for Warfighters" the military just printed 100,000 copies of for soldiers training to invade Iran.
This is what the post looked like:
BREAKING: A prankster in the Army reportedly inserted a photo of Jeffrey Epstein beneath the caption "WHY WE FIGHT" on the 1st page of the PDF file of Pete Hegseth's new "Manual for Warfighters" the military just printed 100,000 copies of for soldiers training to invade Iran.
-- The Halfway Post (@HalfwayPost) March 8, 2026
The Halfway Post has a bio (archived here) that reads:
Dadaist graffiti news. Halfway true comedy and satire for your doomscrolling by @DashMacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them.
Subscribe to my Substack ➡️substack.com/@thehalfwaycafe
A search on Google News for articles with the terms "why we fight" "Jeffrey Epstein" and "manual" brought up no news articles (archived here) about any such prank.
