On Tuesday, American generals flew into Washington to attend Pete Hegseth’s mandatory meeting. Everyone waited with bated breath: would this be the moment when Makeup Studio Pete would go Full Himmler? Well, it turns out that the “Secretary of War” wanted to announce some big changes for the military. He wants all military branches to push out women and minorities, he wants to bring back deadly hazing rituals for boot camps and he wants to ensure that when push comes to shove, the American military will turn their weapons on American civilians. Donald Trump was there as well, and he spoke too. The whole thing was supposed to be another Nazi rally for Hegseth and Trump, only the generals were not a receptive audience. Military sources told Politico that the generals were pretty disgusted with the whole exercise.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech to top generals was supposed to serve as a rallying cry for military exceptionalism — but it didn’t land that way with many of the people it was targeting. Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all.
“More like a press conference than briefing the generals,” said one defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to fears of retribution. “Could have been an email.”
Defense officials, in the Pentagon and at bases around the world, spent much of Tuesday trying to make sense of the last-minute gathering at the Quantico base in Virginia. Hegseth called out “fat generals,” and, separately, pushed fitness standards that could limit women in combat roles, while Trump offered his justification for sending the military into American cities.
The 90-minute event — which featured military officials who swore an oath to the Constitution attending something more akin to a campaign rally — had the feeling of a Hollywood production. Trump even instructed officials to “just have a good time.”
The meeting took place hours before a likely government shutdown, and struck some officials as a distraction that threatens to shift the military’s focus away from foreign threats toward an unprecedented domestic role.
“Not quite a loyalty test, but … on the spectrum of loyalty to ideology,” said a second defense official. “Total waste of money.”
Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine suggested Russian and Chinese officials would worry that hundreds of American generals and admirals had gathered together. But some current and former defense officials instead feared the security risk of sticking almost all of America’s top officers in the same room. And they dismissed Hegseth’s effort to bolster the military’s aggressive image through grooming standards and ending diversity programs.
“It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,” said a former senior defense official. “It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”
Some officials spent their time doing back-of-the-envelope math on ChatGPT to figure out how much the spectacle cost. Others across bases chose to avoid watching entirely. “At this point, I am averting my eyes,” said a third defense official.
As always, I go back and forth between feeling terrified and feeling gutted and embarrassed. At the end of the day though… I know people like Hegseth and Trump want nothing more than to terrify people and I won’t give them that. F–k them. They want to feel like bigly authoritarians convening the He-Man Woman-Haters Club, and the generals were like “these dipsh-ts, good god.”
The faces of our generals as they listen to a 34-time convicted felon and 5-time draft dodger. pic.twitter.com/N4gNUWkjTJ
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) September 30, 2025
And after 40 minutes of cringe-Thunderous applause from the generals!
Just kidding. Total silence.
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) September 30, 2025
Trump to a room of generals: “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before. Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud.” pic.twitter.com/9AQrAIII8u
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 30, 2025
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
