Lesbian pundit Rachel Maddow said Monday night that President Donald Trump is leading the country deeper into conflict with Iran with a “broken” U.S. government and military that he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have broken.

She made her comments hours before Trump’s 8 p.m. EST deadline, in which he pledged that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless the country negotiates the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical international waterway whose closure has led to skyrocketing fuel and food costs worldwide. Trump’s comments were widely interpreted as a threat of genocide, and he also promised strikes against Iran’s civilian infrastructure (which would constitute war crimes).

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In her broadcast, Maddow noted that the Trump administration claimed military victory over Iran early into the now-nearly six-week conflict. But since then, Iranian forces have repeatedly destroyed or shot down U.S. military aircraft.

She noted that Hegseth has either fired, pushed out, or seen the departure of numerous key military leaders in the run-up to the war, including the Army’s top general, the head of its training command, the head of its military strategy, the Navy chief of staff, the head of special operations command, the top Air Force commander and chief of staff, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the head of the Navy command, the head of cyber command, the director of the National Security Agency, and top military lawyers.

“You can have lousy civilian leadership [of the military], to an extent, if you can count on an excellent professional military to know what to do and to do it well despite bad leadership,” Maddow said. “But in this case, our country is simultaneously taking these wild swings directed by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, with no apparent foresight about what kinds of consequences those swings will bring, while also Trump and Hegseth and fundamentally destabilizing the U.S. military itself.”

“And now we’re into the wartime part of it,” she said. “They are breaking all of it. And now we are seeing what it’s like for them to wage what is turning into a major war with a government and a military that they have broken.”

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