Archive article: https://archive.is/EfZkV “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans,” he said. “No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression,” he added. “We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.”
He is such an idiot. Oh yes, let’s lecture career officers about what a real fighter looks like. It’s all just optics. Idiot.
Bad optics, at that. Hegseth just created the single largest opsec failure that the US has seen in over a century and used it to complain to career military generals that they look too woke.
If literally any other man tried this at any other time in American history he’d be in front of a court martial so fast your head would spin.
We owe Benedict Arnold an apology. He had way better reasons for defecting, and was a legitimate soldier and commander before then.
I can’t say the same of any member of the Trump Regime.
Meanwhile, the supporting act, Mr Droopeye…
Captain Bone Spurs
Dementia Donnie
Depending on Depends Donald
He used to work for Fox News, of course he has a skewed view on the importance of optics.
Our military needs to be wearing Hugo Boss, stat!
General Grant would like a word
Next years
birthdaymilitary parade is gonna be fire 🔥🔥🔥
Hegseth complained that as leader of this department he is constantly surrounded by unattractive, hairy, bear types. He wants to see nice smooth skin that is easy on the eyes and the military will require a more metrosexual look! He also wants to see more exercise and he needs hard bodies out there. The harder. The better.
Unleash the tactical twinks!
Ah yes, the male version of Totally Spies
Thanks I love it
If we can channel nationalism into a question of who has the best gay people that would be great
Jesus. It’s like if Mac from Always Sunny was the defence secretary.
That was made up by me btw. Just mentioning just in case. I mean he wanted no beards and more excersise I just filled in the rest.
Oh yeah, I know, it’s just not much of a stretch haha.
Again, nothing sexual.
Which is weird because I thought he wanted more civil war confederate beards.
Doesn’t Taco have issues with beards, by the way? I wonder if he has talked to “JD” “Vance” about that beard of his…
fun fact. vances beard is just trumps signature.
Pete Hegesth can’t grow a beard
It’s the only logical conclusion.
And his rape allegations were 100% true, apparently.
Too much facial surgery tends to do that
His comment about beards is iterally the least problematic/newsworthy part of his speech. Why the fuck would you focus on this and not, I don’t know, his straight outta 1984 “war is peace” statement? Extreme journalistic malpractice.
An outsized portion of African American soldiers get beard waivers because if they shave they suffer from “razor bumps” (Pseudofolliculitis Barbae); which is not just razor burn that goes away but a painful skin condition with unsightly pustules.
Basically Pete’s trying to be like “oh, can’t be professional if you’re black, sorry you don’t meet our stringent requirements”
I know about razor bumps and I don’t mean to make it out to be a total non-issue; my problem is with the headline and byline, which seem to make light of what was actually a deeply disturbing speech. “Look at this idiot, ranting about beards, much ado about nothing, don’t even bother reading about what he said, it was just stupid fluff, shoulda been an email lol!” is not the message that the media needs to tell the public when both Hegseth and Trump made several horrifying, fascism-escalating statements today. (And let’s be real, most people don’t actually read the articles, so burying the lede like this is functionally similar to not reporting on it at all.)
The media isn’t going to start being honest now because the moment they do, Trump’s going to pull their licenses/sue them for “defaming the government”/jail them/whatever.
People keep wondering why the news won’t report on what is actually going on? Why they keep capitulating to Trump.
The reason is that even when they want to, they have a gun to their heads.
Yeah but this is Daily Beast; calling out the DT administration (albeit in click-bait ways) is their shtick.
I agree they literally declared war on American citizens
Hegseth’s speech was met with a relatively muted response from the military brass.
Trump took the stage after him, noting that: “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before.”
Probably because this meeting
shouldcould have been an email.It should have been no email. Nothing about this was necessary.
I’d feel so fucking stupid as a general being lectured by this dropout and a draft dodging president about how they won no war “because of woke”. Absolute disgrace but to be expected for that admin.
This meeting should’ve been an internal thought if that
Train of thought should have ended in a resignation letter.
In fuedal Japan they´d have found his disemboweled body and wondered what caused it
Or maybe a Signal chat!
Wait … a white supremacist who rejects Viking Age cultural appropriation‽
I mean. so he says. beards are required with all kinds of religions.
The beard thing is targeted at POC in the military. Most black men can’t closely shave without catastrophic damage to their faces.
Oh I know. It’s just unusual for a tatted up white supremacist to not have some misplaced affinity for Vikings, based on the Nazified version of them rather than the reality. So for Hegseth to specifically call out a rejection of Nordic aesthetic is odd. The pagan part of his callout is weird, because Christian Vikings were very much a thing, too.
Plus we learned in Vietnam that racial tensions in your military doesn’t make a effective fighting force. All you end up with is a whole bunch of dead white leaders with no way to tell if the enemy killed them or their own men.
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What did Hegseth think was going to happen? That all the generals were going to stomp their feet and hoot and holler? That they were going to pump their fists in the air and shout “YEEEAAAH!” ?
That sh*t might work on Private Pyle but those Generals had more important things to do and places to be. They’re pissed that they’ve been summoned from all over the world by a guy who calls their troops “suckers and losers” to take part in a pep rally.
This is what CEOs of failing companies do to make themselves seem important on their sinking ship.
I’m convinced that the real purpose of this meeting was to gauge the willingness of top military officers to support a coup. I would be surprised if their private conversations in response to this spectacle were not spied on.
Fortunately, at least in public appearance, they don’t seem thrilled with this administration.
I think you’re crediting them with more foresight, shrewdness and competency than has ever been demonstrated by this admin.
Trump and Hegseth are not the sharpest tools in the shed, for sure, but they’re also not the ones really making decisions. Stephen Miller is possibly in charge? JD Vance’s vassalage to dystopian surveillance tech titan Peter Thiel is another influence channel.
That’s a fair point about where the buck ultimately stops, but I’m not sure the “AI regulations bring about the anti-christ” guy is the Lex Luthor he wants us to believe he is either.
I feel like the chance of a military coup in the USA just went up 1000%. I’m sure there’s plenty of MAGAs in that military but there’s gotta be a lot who take their oath and tradition very seriously.
If they did they would already be doing something. There’s a line in that oath about protecting from domestic threats.
If they are doing something (and I’m confident that someone is. Likely quite a few of them), then we won’t know until they put the plan into action. That information leaking right now would be disastrous.
I really hope the people in that room know better than to allow this to continue. They should have couped him right there.
Since you mention it, by summoning leadership to the pentagon he just gave them plausible deniability for being in the same place at the same time, without being monitored (e.g. off base). If you wanted to jump-start a coup, that’s a helluva way to do it.
fucking lol
So, I thought this was going to be some secret strategy briefing heralding some awful new global project. Instead it’s a couple little boys peacocking around bragging about how masculine they are to a captive audience.
I wonder how the generals and admirals feel about being pons in this loser’s bruised ego theater?
The least cool thing a person can do is brag about how cool they are. Same thing applies to masculinity. When you preform like this, you’re expressing how weak, afraid, unsure and incapable you are. That’s the maga cultural movement in a nutshell.
Fuck every single person in civilization leadership at this moment.
Were you trying to say “pawns?”
Porns
Prawns
Yeah.
[sad trombone]
Instead it’s a couple little boys peacocking around bragging about how masculine they are to a captive audience.
Uhm, well there was a lot of that stuff, but Hegseth spoke for like 45 minutes and inbetween the usual incoherent rambling and machismo, and the book plug [!], there were some actual important announcements thrown in. Internal investigations is to be gutted, records of wrongdoing will be expunged, “DEI” purges will continue, and a whole lot of “you can do whatever the fuck you want now, we will back you” messaging. This was a rallying cry to the fascists in the audience, and I fear there is a subset that will act on it.
Haven’t made it through the entirety of Trumps speech yet, but most of the first ~20 minutes have been his usual meandering.
Edit 1: Heh, nice Freudian slip a bit later into Trumps speech:
That’s why I chose ‘razin’ Caine. He’s fantastic, by the way. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disappears that ‘razin’ Caine is no good? Just raise your hand. *inhales* I don’t see any hands raised.
It’s kind of a relief in a way, of all the ways “fascists war department leader calls all the generals home suddenly for a meeting” could go, raving about aesthetics is probably one of the least immediately dangerous for everyone else.
He’s trying to force black men out of the military, it’s not like he’s giving fashion tips.
Well and women.
I wonder if the public version of this pageantry is cover for the secret meeting where he singles out leaders for not being loyal enough or where they plan to coup … antifa?
Eh, after that public humiliation of the leadership, I am certain that any secret meeting won’t remain a secret for much longer.
A talk like that makes you no friends.
I literally just got added to the Super Secret military stuff group chat
That and they declared war on American citizens and said war crimes are encouraged.
No beards on generals? Must be the cope from having this handsome gentleman beat their asses all the way to Dixie and back!
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**They declared war on America.
Encouraged war crimes (against American citizens)**
Enacted a bunch of racist and sexist shit (beard thing)
Announced they were planning on starting wars as soon as they feel like it
Rejected and alienated large portions of the American population from serving on the brink of WW3
Dementia Don rambled incoherently for a long time
Threatened the generals if they didn’t show fealty to the pedo king
Said the generals aren’t sexy enough for Pete
“Military leaders will need to pass height and weight tests each year.”
Each year? Height tests? How many ppl losing height year to year?
The Army tests Height and Weight every year. Those rucks will take an inch or two off you as your vertebrae get crushed.
But, yeah, army already does annual height and weight.
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What he did is he proved to everyone he didn’t know a thing about the military.
Trump took the stage after him, noting that: “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before.”
The president, who famously avoided the military draft multiple time, then gave a far more subdued address, talking about everything from Joe Biden’s autopen, his love of the word “tariffs”, and the threat of nuclear weapons.
“I call it the N word. There are two N words and you can’t use either of them,” Trump said to an awkwardly silent audience.
“I call it the N word. There are two N words and you cant use either of them” Trump said to an awkwardly silent audience
This timeline has truly jumped the shark. Like on the one hand we are so fucked, but on the other hand reality has become something straight off the cutting room floor of a mockumentary series
That’ll happen when your “Predisent” is a demented rapist fraud with face paint and unfortunate tendencies toward sociopathy.
