In unprecedented encounter, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth assembled the entire senior military leadership at the Marine Corps Base Quantico last week, delivering a series of provocative and threatening speeches that revealed a stark departure from traditional military protocol.
But it was just one moment of that gathering that brought home how unsuited President Donald Trump is for the office he holds, wrote former Bill Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal for The Guardian Monday.
Trump's remarks as he entered the room packed with stoic, professional military leaders struck the writer.
"I've never walked into a room so silent before," he said, attempting to break the tension with awkward comedic gestures. When his attempts at humor failed, he quickly resorted to intimidation, warning the assembled commanders: "If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future."
The military leaders' silence spoke volumes, Blumenthal wrote. "Their discipline showed fidelity to uphold their oath to the constitution. By their stillness they presented themselves as models for the rest of the officer corps and the troops."
He went on: "Trump’s inability to understand their stolidity in the face of his provocations showed his incomprehension not only of the military but the presidency under the law. When he took offense at their stoney silence his rebuke disclosed that he saw them merely as his pawns. They were to his mind no different from his personal attorneys he had installed at the Department of Justice to do his bidding, including the suppression of the Epstein files."
Hegseth, preceding Trump, delivered an equally inflammatory speech. He barked obscenities and declared, "No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I've said before and will say again, we are done with that."
The speech was part of a broader strategy outlined in a National Security Presidential Memorandum that targeted what it described as an ideology of "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity," with a focus on "extremism on migration, race, and gender."
Hegseth's rhetoric was particularly aggressive. He criticized military leadership, stating, "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." He even went so far as to declare "No more beardos."
Trump followed up with his own menacing message, speaking about a "war from within" targeting major American cities "run by radical-left Democrats." When he delivered this line, the room remained in complete silence.
The event culminated the next day in Memphis, where Hegseth, alongside Stephen Miller, continued the aggressive rhetoric. Miller dramatically told a group of law enforcement officers, "The gangbangers that you deal with – they think they're ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are... You are unleashed.