Pete Hegseth, the former weekend warrior – he made it all the way to major in his 19 years in the National Guard – isn’t so much concerned that the U.S. military can defend the homeland as that it looks the part.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape,” said Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, who has four biological kids and three stepkids – none of whom are anywhere near military age – in his address to a collection of thoroughly unimpressed top military leaders on Tuesday in Northern Virginia.
No word from Hegseth on whether the 330-pound commander-in-chief who regaled the brass with his stories about “beautiful paper,” how much he loves his own signature, and why he takes it easy going down stairs, should be exempt from the new regs the warrior ethos guy wants to institute.
“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” said Hegseth, again, oblivious to the fat guy at the top of the chain of command lurking just out of sight, stage left.
No more “dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said – leaving unanswered: what about dudes caked in orange makeup?
No more “beardos” – ahem, JD Vance, White (supremacist) courtesy phone.
Seriously, Hegseth, who left the National Guard in disgrace in 2021 after being labeled an “insider threat” because of his collection of White Nationalist tattoos, was out there telling people who know that the military needs to be about more than who can do the most pushups how to better do their jobs.
“We are done with that shit,” Hegseth said – included among his zany directives in his TED talk: no more tattle-telling on people, including about their White Nationalist tattoos.
“If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, you should do the honorable thing and resign,” said Hegseth, who can’t do a pullup to save his life, so, you know, honorable thing, dude.
***
Hegseth was the comic relief at the Tuesday made-for-TV event, and for the most part, Donald Trump, the aforementioned 330-pound fat tub of goo, who can’t help but come across as the caricature of a cartoon villain, did what Trump does.
For instance, there was Trump musing aloud about not being able to use the “n-word” – he was, first, referring to the word “nuclear,” but then he got tantalizingly close.
“There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them,” Trump said, giving away that he really wishes he could use the other one and get away with it.
Then he riffed on the “beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper” that he uses for official documents, which he defined as: “I say, throw more gold on it, they deserve it.”
“I want the A-paper, not the D-paper,” Trump said. “We used to sign our piece on garbage. I said, This man will be a general, right? I want to use this, I want to use the big, beautiful, firm paper. I want to use the real gold writing, when you talk about the position, and they’re beautiful.”
Trump went on for 72 minutes like this – about his beautiful paper, his inimitable signature, how he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
ICYMI
“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not,” he said, referring to himself in the second person. “They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing. They’ll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took the solve the wars and the Nobel Prize will go to a writer.”
Narrator: Donald Trump hasn’t solved any wars.
The thing about walking down stairs is instructive. The weave got there because he got it into his mind that his predecessor, Joe Biden, was “falling down stairs every day,” which, Trump said, was why America wasn’t getting respect from world leaders.
Not like now, when the current president is telling the UN that the world is “going to hell” because of immigration and green energy.
“I’m very careful, you know, when I walk down stairs for, like, when I’m on stairs, like, these stairs, I walk very slowly,” Trump told a room full of generals and admirals, who had just heard, at length, about how they’re all fat and weak because their times in the biannual two-mile run aren’t up to standard.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have used the word “biannual” there – Hegseth is afraid that comes across as “too woke,” and we’re “done with that shit.”
Back to Trump:
“Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well,” the president went on, continuing on his approach to taking the stairs. “A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. Walk nice and easy. You’re not, you don’t have to set any record. Be cool, be cool, when you walk down, but don’t bop down the stairs.”
He’s still riffing here, and it gets better.
“One thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs,” Trump said. “I’ve never seen, ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba. He’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once.”
***
It’s hard to take a guy this obviously senile with any degree of seriousness, but there were clear dark overtones during his few moments of clarity.
Trump mused aloud about using U.S. cities “as training grounds for our military,” which comes across as ominous considering how he just ordered troops to Portland after seeing TV clips over the weekend reporting on protests there that had taken place in 2020 – five years ago.
ICYMI
“We’ve brought back the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority. That’s what it is,” Trump said. “Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within.
“We’re under invasion from within,” Trump said, doubling down on the talking point crafted for him by his Nosferatu, Stephen Miller.
“No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out,” Trump said.
“Our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s what the oath says, foreign and domestic. Well, we also have domestic,” Trump said.
***
Where we are after Tuesday is, if Trump’s handlers can keep him focused – impossible, but they keep trying – we could have a problem on our hands.
For the record, I’m not assuming that the problem is just the fear that the president will try to use the military to silence his critics.
It was clear, from those who were in the room with Trump and the major yesterday, that there was as close to less than zero respect for the two goofballs on the stage as we can get.
From the White House press pool report:
“They are much more still and quiet than he is accustomed to at political events or campaign rallies. Pool can see several officers sitting in a row looking expressionless and inscrutable with few smiles. POTUS’s attacks on Joe Biden have been met with silence. Some of POTUS’s lines are eliciting polite ripples of laughter. One man in a naval uniform is taking notes in a book. Another is rolling his head and looking restless as POTUS rails against the media.”
Maybe calling them all fat and weak turned them against you, eh?
Reuters reported comments from three who were there.
“More like a press conference than briefing the generals. Could have been an email.”
“Not quite a loyalty test, but on the spectrum of loyalty to ideology. Total waste of money.”
“It was a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing. Also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”
I don’t sense that these folks are going to let themselves get Nuremberged.
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Chris Graham
