There are no new stories of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth becoming so drunk that he has to be carried out of social events, as when he led the nonprofit activist group Concerned Veterans of America.

And nobody is reporting that he cried out, “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!” as he allegedly did during a bender during that same period following his 2005 return from the war in Iraq, which his lawyer denied.

But, by all appearances at his Iran war briefings, Hegseth remains a prime example of the old Irish adage that what comes out when you’re drunk is in you when you’re sober. He speaks lustily of killing with “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” He remains arrogant and heedless and quick to anger.

“A dry drunk,” a firefighter who had been with Alcoholics Anonymous for 42 years remarked to the Daily Beast.

The firefighter was using the program’s term for somebody who has stopped drinking but has not resolved the psychological problems that had compelled him to embrace the bottle.

“Drinking is a symptom,” the firefighter said. “You sober up a horse thief, you have a sober horse thief. You take the nuts out of a fruitcake, you still have a fruitcake.”

Hegseth is not known to be a member of AA. When pressed on allegations last year of his drinking, Hegseth labeled them as “anonymous smears” during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee

The Daily Beast asked the Department of Defense for Hegseth’s response to the suggestion that he is a dry drunk.

“It’s disgraceful that the Daily Beast is asking such........

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