"No more thinking. No more individual initiative. No more Adapt, Improvise, Overcome. Just wait for your orders and do what you're told. Oh - and morale be damned. That is all"
Trump, Hegseth lecture military leaders in rare, politically charged summit
The unusual, hastily organized event became a forum for the president and his defense secretary to tout their partisan agenda.
Hundreds of the U.S. military’s top leaders listened in silence to highly partisan addresses from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, with each harshly criticizing their predecessors and hyping their political objectives during a summit that was extraordinary in nature but ultimately broke little new ground.
The event, organized by Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon, summoned generals and admirals from their command posts throughout the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, about 30 miles south of Washington, Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s hand-selected chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told attendees in his opening comments that the event was an “unprecedented opportunity and honor” for the assembled senior officers and their top enlisted advisers to hear directly from the military’s civilian leadership.
Trump, with an eager Cabinet official now in charge at the Pentagon, has repeatedly and unapologetically trampled on long-standing norms intended to keep the American military beyond the grasp of partisan politics. But Tuesday’s presentation stood apart as perhaps the most flagrant demonstration to date of this administration’s wholesale disregard for such principles.
Trump, in meandering remarks stretching roughly 70 minutes, joked that if those in attendance did not like what he had to say, they could leave the room — but “there goes your rank, there goes your future,” he added, drawing uncomfortable laughter from some. Since Trump returned to power, he and Hegseth have fired numerous generals and admirals, often without cause, while focusing on a disproportionate number of women and others whom the president and the defense secretary alike have accused broadly of espousing a harmful “woke” ideology centered on enhancing the military’s diversity and inclusivity.
There was enough brass in that room
to make John Philip Sousa blush
Trump, Hegseth lecture military leaders in rare, politically charged summit
The unusual, hastily organized event became a forum for the president and his defense secretary to tout their partisan agenda.
Hundreds of the U.S. military’s top leaders listened in silence to highly partisan addresses from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday, with each harshly criticizing their predecessors and hyping their political objectives during a summit that was extraordinary in nature but ultimately broke little new ground.
The event, organized by Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon, summoned generals and admirals from their command posts throughout the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, about 30 miles south of Washington, Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s hand-selected chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told attendees in his opening comments that the event was an “unprecedented opportunity and honor” for the assembled senior officers and their top enlisted advisers to hear directly from the military’s civilian leadership.
Trump, with an eager Cabinet official now in charge at the Pentagon, has repeatedly and unapologetically trampled on long-standing norms intended to keep the American military beyond the grasp of partisan politics. But Tuesday’s presentation stood apart as perhaps the most flagrant demonstration to date of this administration’s wholesale disregard for such principles.
Trump, in meandering remarks stretching roughly 70 minutes, joked that if those in attendance did not like what he had to say, they could leave the room — but “there goes your rank, there goes your future,” he added, drawing uncomfortable laughter from some. Since Trump returned to power, he and Hegseth have fired numerous generals and admirals, often without cause, while focusing on a disproportionate number of women and others whom the president and the defense secretary alike have accused broadly of espousing a harmful “woke” ideology centered on enhancing the military’s diversity and inclusivity.
It was an ugly, threatening speech, steeped in ideas that are naive and simplistic, and have had nothing to do with what the US Military has been all about for 50 years now.
If you feel like getting a taste of the utter bullshit that is this regime, here's the full 2 hours:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump
addressed senior military leaders in Virginia on Sept. 30
The president defended his polarizing use of the armed forces to police American cities, decrying what he said was “the enemy within” while insisting he should be allowed to use military force domestically. He extolled his decision to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War, lamented his inability to end the conflict in Ukraine, and tacitly acknowledged the highly sensitive movements of U.S. submarines off the coast of Russia.
“I call it the ‘n-word,’” the president said of the submarines, appearing to allude to the vessels’ nuclear power. “There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them.”
The assembled military brass sat through the presentations mostly silent, in keeping with the military’s nonpartisan tradition. Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University, said that they “managed well a very difficult walk along a high wire” by listening respectfully to both speeches without responding. Trump and Hegseth, he added, also deserve credit for appearing to show that they understand why the military leaders were remaining quiet.
“The speeches raised a lot of questions that the military will have to grapple with in the months ahead,” Feaver said. “But they won’t have to do so on live TV, and so a very tricky moment in American civil-military relations did not produce the disaster that some feared.”
Trump was introduced by Hegseth, whose fiery warmup act for the president at times relied on profanity and crass, inflammatory language. The Pentagon chief had planned the event without expecting that the president would be involved, issuing a mysterious order last week summoning all senior military commanders and their enlisted aides to Virginia but providing them no information about the itinerary. The order, first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, alarmed some after the firing of so many generals and admirals this year.
During his remarks Tuesday, Hegseth, a former Fox News personality who served as an officer in the National Guard, lectured the men and women — each with decades more military experience — seated silently before him. He vowed to make the military “stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer and more powerful than it has ever been before,” repeating numerous talking points he has used throughout his tenure atop the Pentagon — including that the military brass needs to crack down on standards ranging from physical fitness to grooming and discipline.
He blamed “foolish and reckless politicians” for allowing the military to stray from its primary focus, to fight and win wars, and pledged to fix what he called “decades of decay” in the force. He also declared that “politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” the guidelines that shape how U.S. troops use lethal force in combat, are gone.
He also specifically forecast additional firings, saying “more leadership changes will be made, of that I am certain.”
Hegseth cited the Gulf War — in which U.S. troops and allies beat back an Iraqi invasion and annexation of neighboring Kuwait within months, from 1990 to 1991 — as an example of a conflict that he sees as a model for the United States. He characterized it as a “limited mission with overwhelming force and a clear end state.”
He also cited President Ronald Reagan’s buildup of the U.S. military in the 1980s as playing a significant role, and noted that many military leaders then drew on combat experience in Vietnam.
“The same holds true today,” Hegseth said. “Our civilian and military leadership is chock full of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who say ‘never again’ to nation-building and nebulous end states. This clear-eyed view all the way in the White House, combined with President Trump’s military buildup, postures us for future victories.”
Hegseth said he will overhaul the channels troops and civilian employees have available to them to anonymously file whistleblower complaints, report toxic leadership, or point out unequal treatment based on race, gender, sexuality or religion.
“No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells,” Hegseth pronounced. “Of course, being a racist has been illegal in our formations since 1948. The same goes for sexual harassment. Both are wrong and illegal.”
Upholding high standards, Hegseth declared, “is not toxic,” decrying what he said has been a “bastardization” of phrases like “toxic leader.” The Pentagon, he said, will undertake a review of such phrases, empowering military officials to “enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”
That last-minute assembly has raised questions among critics about its cost — particularly for an address that could have been delivered by secure videoconferencing equipment. Flying, lodging and transporting all the military leaders from as far away as Japan, the Middle East and Europe is likely to cost millions of dollars, according to two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and estimated based on past government travel experience.
The event also raised security concerns about having all the top leadership in one place, particularly given that Tuesday is the end of the fiscal year, with a government shutdown looming. Guidance issued by the Defense Department states that if a shutdown occurs, all travel should be “terminated,” but with exceptions granted by senior leaders.
Military leaders voice concern over Hegseth’s new Pentagon strategy
The critiques from multiple top officers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, come as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities.
Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons top brass to a highly unusual summit in Virginia on Tuesday, according to eight current and former officials.
The critiques from multiple top officers, including Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, come as Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.
President Donald Trump will attend the abrupt gathering of generals and admirals at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where Hegseth is expected to deliver remarks on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” even as uniformed leaders fear mass firings or a drastic reorganization of the combatant command structure and the military hierarchy.
The debate over the National Defense Strategy — the Pentagon’s primary guide for how it prioritizes resources and positions U.S. forces around the world — is the latest challenge for top military officials navigating the Trump administration’s unorthodox approach to the armed forces.
People familiar with the editing process, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations, described a growing sense of frustration with a plan they consider myopic and potentially irrelevant, given the president’s highly personal and sometimes contradictory approach to foreign policy.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell declined to comment on the substance of the classified document or whether concerns had been raised in the editing process.
“Secretary Hegseth has tasked the development of a National Defense Strategy that is laser focused on advancing President Trump’s commonsense America First, Peace Through Strength agenda,” Parnell said in a statement. “This process is still ongoing.”
Trump political appointees within the Pentagon’s policy office — including some officials who have previously criticized long-standing American commitments to Europe and the Middle East — drafted the strategy, now in its final edits.
The draft plan has been shared widely with military leaders from the global combatant commands to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some of whom questioned what its priorities would mean for a force designed to respond to crises around the globe, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Dissent during the drafting process is normal, but the number of officials concerned about the document — and the depth of their criticism — is unusual, several people said.
Caine shared his concerns with top Pentagon leadership in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“He gave Hegseth very frank feedback,” one of the two people said, noting that Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby was also included in the discussion. “I don’t know if Hegseth even understands the magnitude of the NDS, which is why I think Caine tried so hard.”
The second person said Caine has tried to get the NDS to remain focused on preparing the military to deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a conflict.
Hegseth and his policy officials have signaled that the Pentagon will withdraw some forces from Europe and consolidate commands in a way that unnerves some U.S. allies, particularly amid Russia’s war with Ukraine and its recent, repeated incursions into NATO airspace. For years, Pentagon strategy has been anchored in the idea that the nation’s best defense was in building and maintaining strong military alliances abroad.
Critics of that approach within the administration have argued that it has mired the U.S. in expensive wars on foreign soil, instead of securing domestic U.S. interests. Trump’s approach so far has largely been to prod allies to spend more on their own defense, at times alienating Republican defense hawks in Congress who are also urging higher defense spending at home.
While Trump has undertaken bombing campaigns in Yemen and Iran, his main focus has been surging the military toward missions close to American soil.
Under his command this year, the Pentagon has struck alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, deployed U.S. troops and weapons to the southern border, and sent the National Guard and Marines to U.S. cities, where they have aided deportation efforts and sought to curtail what the president has called “out of control” urban crime. Some of those domestic deployments are being challenged in court.
Over the weekend, Trump on social media ordered troops to Portland, Oregon, saying he was allowing them to use “full force” to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents whose operations have drawn sporadic protests in the city. Hegseth said Sunday in a memo to the Oregon National Guard that the mission would include the federalizing of about 200 Guard members.
Much of the internal criticism of the new strategy regards the document’s emphasis on threats to the U.S. homeland even as China continues a rapid military buildup that uniformed leaders have warned is narrowing the U.S.’s edge in the Pacific, according to several people familiar with the matter.
There are still substantial sections of the document that do focus on China, but these are largely concentrated on the threat of an attack on Taiwan, rather than global competition with the U.S.’s largest adversary, five people said. Colby has long warned that the U.S. military is unprepared for the risk of a Chinese invasion and called for Washington to shift attention and resources toward the problem.
“There’s a concern that it’s just not very well thought out,” one former official said of the strategy.
The document’s tone is also far more partisan than past strategies, saying the Biden administration caused an erosion of America’s military in rhetoric similar to Hegseth’s speeches, two people familiar with the plan said.
Hegseth, meanwhile, is leading an overhaul of the armed forces, promising to cut the roughly 800 generals and admirals overseeing the U.S. military by 20 percent and redraw the lines of the U.S.’s combatant commands. The secretary has already fired senior officers, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti. A disproportionate number of women have been relieved during the sackings.
The Pentagon’s interim defense strategy, which The Washington Post first reported in detail in March, included a similar focus on Taiwan and homeland defense, going as far as to urge Pentagon leaders to “assume risk” in other parts of the globe to meet both priorities.
That interim document also hinted at the emerging strategy to use military personnel in a more assertive role at home and abroad. The Pentagon was directed by Hegseth to “prioritize efforts to seal our borders, repel forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities, and deport illegal aliens in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security,” according to the document.
