Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sparked concerns with his unusual order summoning hundreds of military commanders to Virginia for an all-hands meeting — but it the speech by President Donald Trump that left onlookers really confused.
The president and his Pentagon chief pledged to end "woke" and "politically correct" policies they believe had undermined military readiness, but neither speech seemed to justify the extraordinary order summoning the top brass from posts around the world to a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, in the eyes of many observers.
"Pete Hegseth has recalled America's top military leaders from around the world for a meeting that's livestreamed on Fox," said the Capitol Hunters account. "It truly could have been a Zoom call."
"It’s really funny that Hegseth’s little GI Joe fantasy league speech was met with… silence," noted writer Roxane Gay.
"I didn’t want America to go fascist. I think that is very bad," posted Nicholas Grossman, international relations professor at University of Illinois. "But I take some solace in the fact that we got such stupid, petty fascists, the sort who order an in-person meeting of military leaders not to execute a large-scale purge, but to make them listen to him wax philosophical about gender."
"I'm still thinking it out but it sort of feels like this is the only form a fascist project could take in the America of this century," replied Bluesky user First Wordle Problems. Entirely phony and aspirational, assembled from bits of popular culture and popular pyschology. With no mass following committed to it in any real way."
"Hegseth complained about fatties and beardos, and now Trump is bragging about the quality of stationary [sic] he uses," added historian Kevin Kruse. "Their 'warrior ethos' is all about appearances, nothing more. Which is ironic because Trump looks and sounds like a-- here."
"Trump is now saying (and I am not making this up) that the U.S. should build more battleships because of a black-and-white movie he likes," wrote journalist Philip Bump. "Trump notes than in World War II they were building a ship a day but we don't build ships anymore. Does he … not realize that the military needs of 2025 are different than those of 1945?"
"Everything else aside (and it’s a lot) he sounds 100 years old," noted MSNBC's Chris Hayes.
"A serving member of the military might be court-martialed for saying in public what Trump did here," argued journalist James Fallows, reacting to Trump disclosing the U.S. had recently deployed a nuclear submarine near Russia. "The entire *point* of super-quiet submarines is that adversaries do not know where they are. Navy goes to extreme lengths to conceal any clues to their location."
"Bombing my big stand-up special in front of a totally silent room of generals," joked writer David J. Roth. "'What else, what else. Bagram Air Force Base, we're going to do that again, okay? And we're going to do it the right way: through specific types of tattoos, and haircuts.'"
"Trump opens with a threat to the generals: 'I've never walked into a room so silent … Have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud ... If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. but you just feel nice and loose,'" noted MSNBC producer Kyle Griffith.
"There have been a lot of rubicons crossed, norms destroyed, principles abandoned, ideals betrayed over the past 10 months but this seems like a truly significant turning point," added historian Paul Cohen.
"Pathetic," sighed writer Gary Legum, reacting to Hegseth's remarks. "Just a pathetic, weak coward overcompensating for his deep insecurities."
"We all know this 'warfighters' talk isn't about convincing our military to do anything except kill more civilians, specifically American civilians," argued the LOLGOP account. "That's the only new thing here."
"If I were a would-be dictator whose only civilian check on power had been consumed by total-complete partisan loyalty, something I would definitely do is call an unprecedented in-person meeting of the only people who could stop me and then proceed to illustrate why they should stop me," wrote journalist Timothy Burke.