I regret to inform you that the left has come up with a new hoax, and this one centers on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Multiple “journalists,” including Matt Yglesias, took to social media to either insinuate or outright claim that Hegseth was boozing it up during a recent presser in Europe. What is their evidence, you might be asking? We’ll get to that.

As to the backstory here, if you followed Hegseth’s nomination process, you’ll probably recall that the press used anonymous sources to accuse him of being an alcoholic. In the aftermath, several of his colleagues from Fox News as well as his time leading a veteran’s advocacy group debunked the notion, and nothing has been presented to date to back up the accusations. But as with all things regarding the mainstream press, the goal was simply to plant the narrative, truth be damned.