Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was ridiculed online Wednesday after promoting a bizarre 36-second video showing service members exercising outside the Pentagon under the banner “This is War.”
The video, posted by the official Rapid Response account of the so-called Department of War and reposted by Hegseth, opens with an overhead drone shot of a large group running through a parking lot. It then cuts to service members performing a series of exercises on the grass.
Several participants can be seen wearing gray shirts with the words “This is War,” which Hegseth was also spotted sporting in a video posted earlier in the morning.
The footage quickly drew mockery.
“Is it war?” wrote former chief Pentagon spokesperson Chris Meagher. “Or is it the Secretary running around the Pentagon parking lot?”
Allison Jaslow, a two-time Iraq War veteran and former CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, was also unimpressed.
This is not war, actually,” Jaslow posted on X. “I’m guessing whoever is running @DOWResponse has never been.”
Cybersecurity expert Crispin Burke, a retired Army aviator, zeroed in on another detail: “Is...there a drone taking this video in DCA airspace and right next to those ‘No Drone’ signs?”
Democratic communications strategist Josh Dorner posed another mystified question for his social media followers: “Are we invading…the Pentagon?”
Journalist David Phinney responded simply: “Huh?” while Adam Zuckerman, a political strategist, pointed to the shirts worn in the video that read “This is War.”
“This is insane,” he wrote.
"We are a ridiculous country," concluded HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Date.
Is it war? Or is it the Secretary running around the Pentagon parking lot? https://t.co/xm8LaehnfP
— Chris Meagher (@chrismeagher) September 30, 2026