Pete Hegseth wants 'male warrior spirit'? He's lucky my Mom isn't here to set him straight

On Tuesday, our newly-dubbed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth told our military’s top brass that they must restore the "male warrior spirit" to the armed forces.

“Male” spirit, Pete? Excuse me, Pete. My mother, Gladys Palast, was honored by President Bill Clinton as the very first woman who volunteered for the US Coast Guard after the attack on Pearl Harbor

Let me tell you, Little Petie, Mom was a WARRIOR. How DARE you insult my mother’s courage and initiative and then introduce General Bone Spurs Trump as the guy “who has your back.” Hmmm. Trump got out of the war in Vietnam by claiming he had a bone spur in one foot — but he can’t remember which one.

And let’s not forget, on the day after his second inauguration, Trump fired Adm. Linda Fagan as Commandant of the Coast Guard for no visible reason other than she has a vagina. Trump is lucky that Mom ain't around anymore, because I know she'd go back to the White House to kick his ass and show him what a woman warrior can do.

And also, just one day after the inauguration, he fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, a 4-star general, Chair of Joint Chiefs of Staff, a pilot with 130 hours of combat flights in an F-16, for no other visible reason other than Brown is, well … brown.

Brown was replaced, for the first time in US history, by a guy who never even attained the rank of general. Dan Caine is a flunky who flattered Agent Orange when he visited Iraq during his first term. Before taking charge of America’s military, Caine was a Wall Street speculator. Maybe, if the market drops again, Trump will award Caine a purple heart. Trump said he was moved to appoint Caine because of his nickname, “Razin' Caine.” Actually, his nickname is properly written, ”Raisin Caine,” because he was retired and dried up.

That's OK, because Trump doesn’t use our military to confront bad guys. The military’s new mission is to harass Democratic mayors because TACO Trump always folds and crumbles into pieces when an enemy bites. Vladimir Putin is still living in the glow of the Lewinsky he got from Trump in Alaska, and China boasts about invading Taiwan.

Putin and Xi Jinping don't think that Trump is a paper tiger. They've tagged him as a paper three-toed sloth.

To be old, un-gifted and fat

Hegseth called together all the top brass in the military to boost his side gig as a Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program salesman. He used the term “fat” three times. The generals and admirals, many of whom were ordered to fly thousands of miles to this PR dog-and-pony show, were forced to listen to their Secretary say:

“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.“

A bad look? Has Hegseth ever looked at our Commander-in-Chief, the bloviating porcine bigot in a red tie? Mom could have taken General Bone Spurs to the mat. (I am strictly non-partisan, but Mom wasn’t. Here’s a photo of her, two days before she passed away at 97, smiling in her “Impeach Trump” T-shirt.)

Our enemies must be laughing their keisters off knowing that our commanders were pulled out of the field to hear Hegseth commanding them to get a shave.

“No more beard-os,” said our Secretary of War. (Though I do applaud his physically attacking JD Vance with a razor … OK, I made that up.)

Declaration of War — on America

The most pathetic moment of Trump’s speech was at the beginning when he complained that he did not get applause from the generals upon his entry. Instead of the applause he was begging for, he got sly laughter. Then Trump turned on his threat machine. “Don’t laugh! Don’t laugh! You’re not allowed to do that! ... If you don’t like what I’m saying you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”

Still no applause but some nervous laughter. This is, after all, their Commander-in-Chief and he’s punished dissent and competence with not only firing but physical threats. After 4-Star Gen. Mark Milley retired as head of the Joint Chiefs, Trump removed Milley’s security detail. It’s only been a month since Trump and Hegseth canned Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency after they caught him telling the truth. (Trump has re-named it the Defense Stupidity Agency … OK, I made that up as well.)

But while the Hegseth and Trump speeches seemed to have been drafted by Groucho Marx, I have to agree with Trump: “Don’t laugh.” His speech was, effectively, a declaration of war on Americans, specifically, “inner cities” — the oldest trope for Black Americans -- “which we’re going to be talking about because it’s a big part of war now. It’s a big part of war.”

WAR??? The generals didn’t miss the point: they were dragged back to the States because their Commander is telling them that the real enemy is America itself, “the enemy within,” a chilling phrase he borrowed from his mentor, Roy Cohn, the Grand Inquisitor of the McCarthy era of political terror. Scarier still, Trump is bringing back McCarthyism with a bullet. Literally. He said,

“I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”

American citizens will now be target practice.

Think I’m kidding? It’s begun. Just this week, a member of our team was observing a demonstration in a Chicago suburb in front of a new ICE detention center. The demonstrators were outside a fence, protesting peacefully, when, according to our reporter, federal agents on the roof, utterly unprovoked, started firing pepper balls. How soon before some kid, trained as a soldier, not a cop, will fire real bullets after a “provocation”?

Trump’s hauling generals to his goofy confab can be put down as a ridiculous publicity stunt. But this stunt was scheduled only days after Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) directing the full force of the federal government to go after those who show “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

We have located the enemy, and it is … Portland.

For all the stifled laughter, the military understood the grim order: their next war will be against America.

• Greg Palast is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. See his reports at https://substack.com/@gregpalastinvestigates