Pete Hegseth’s Speech Was a Hyper-Macho Freak Show

Hey everyone, it's me Sam Stein managing at the book. I am with Ben Parker. My fellow editor here. We just finished watching Pete Hegseth state of the troops state of the armed forces state of the force. Yeah. State of the force speech. It was, yeah, state of the force address. Folks, this was insane. Hegseth is delusional. He's got a, what a George Patton complex. It's, it's, yeah, so here he is. He's standing behind a giant American flag talking about fat troops and testosterone levels and all this stuff. I was kind of blown away by it. But Ben, you're more well versed in these parts. Like, what did you even take away from this? This is a guy who, first of all, is like, got a hand to him. He's living his best life. He's, he's getting up in front of all the people he doesn't like and telling them all his ideas. How many of us have wanted to do that? Yeah, it's a little sad because he's got a really important job. And he's in the middle of, you know, kind of losing a war right now. So I'm not sure he's focused on the right things. He talked about a lot of different issues. Not a lot of them were winning the war he's currently in. But, you know, he's got a lot of, he's got a lot of problems and we're going to hear about it, I guess. Yeah. So he had them all paraded and before the speech, they're all doing these like exercises. He made sure that only the slim ones showed up. They're doing push-ups. They were jogging in place. They put out some promotional videos from the Department of Defense, Department of War. You know, it was, it was a lot. And then he took the stage and he started talking about the standard of the troop under Pete Hegseth. And let's play the clip called No Fatties. Brace yourselves people. It has transformed entire formations as it was intended to do. But it's worth saying, again, so that the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that. No fatties, no trainees, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops. The war department, as you know, is colorblind, gender neutral, and merit-based. You convinced? I'm not convinced he could win like a high school debate competition. I love how hard he clearly practiced that. Yes. Like in the mirror and all the millions. Absolutely. And he gets there and flips. Oh, damn it. Maybe he's done hard in the Rod War. He did try very hard and it was obviously, you know, something he practiced a lot. He was notably not speaking behind the lectern, but walking around. I would be curious to see if there was any teleprompters there to help him. But it hit all the zones, right? I mean, here he is talking about testosterone. They've been doing testosterone testing. So this is not just testing. They offered that to give supplemental testosterone treatments as part of military medical care. If you need extra testosterone, they'll give it to you. I guess so that then you can go and brag about your testosterone levels, though I don't know if that's really a flex. I don't know. It is in their world. But again, this sort of underscores how so much of this is just a branding exercise in him trying to appear. Tough. Here he's talking about testosterone. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top. It's like a nice cream sunday. We're just like a little testosterone on that side. Oh my god. Geez, you know, what would hurt, what would hurt Link say about this if we had them on? He said, this is not the kind of leadership communication that we teach in the military, that we value to get people promoted. You need to be very clear with your words and your goals to lead people to a common mission. And I got to say that is not what Peter Hexeth is doing here. No, he had a couple things that were more substantive than this. So there was one riff that I was, you know, watching where he, you know, he really went hard at the press corps in attendance. I mean, let's keep him on the back off a little bit that he has kicked out the pentagon press and there's litigation happening all around this. And he's invited in sycophantic media to the press. And he was just outwardly hostile to the press at one point. And we do not have this cup at one point. He said, you know, I appreciate a free press. But if you report on the war, the way you've been reporting, if you're talking about munitions stockpiles, that's tantamount to treason. I appreciate a free press, but you can't just say whatever you want. Right. Exactly. Out of the contradictory, but it was also a little bit chilling, right? To like listen to him say that, like he's accusing the press corps of treason. So that was one thing. And then the other newsy thing he did is he has this new project that he's launching. And let's just listen to the people involved in the project. So today we are leveraging a unique source of American advantage. One, our adversaries do not have our innovators, our senior leaders and our technologists, big thinkers and doers who will forecast the creative solution for tomorrow's conflicts. And that's why today, at my direction, I'm announcing Project Meridian, an effort led by America's best minds to study the future of warfare. Under the leadership of the department's chief technology officer, Emil Michael, Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds. Elon Musk, Palmer Lucky, and Newt Gingrich, all of whom are up in the audience with us today. Please stand if you would. Oh my god. All right. All right. Okay. So Elon Musk, who I'm pretty sure said we we would have robot cars on Mars by now and makes more false promises than he does automobiles. Right. Palmer Lucky actually know like almost nothing about. So I got nothing. Do you know Palmer Lucky? Yeah. Palmer Lucky helped with Oculus and he does a lot of defense technology stuff. And when she knows he has billions upon billions of dollars in government contracts. The most recent thing I pulled up is a $22 billion US Army contract for high tech goggles. These are highly conflicted people. I mean, Elon Musk obviously has multiple companies with defense contracts. These are the guys who are going to, I mean, I know that's quaint to me to like think, you know, maybe there's a little self-dealing here. But these are the guys that you're going to trust to turn over to the future of the armed forces in warfare. And let's not forget Newt Gingrich, by the way, newt Gingrich's solution to the straight-of-four-moose issue. He said with a limited number of thermonuclear explosions, you can just dig a new canal, which he said it would be safe for Iranian attacks. Never mind from the fact that it would be radioactive. He's like, this is, you just nuke the UAE enough and you have a new canal that connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. I mean, that is our next generation leader. Yeah, but that's the type of off-the-wall thing and you kind of love, right? Put a moon column, new success with moon colonies and things like that. This is Batchet Crazy. This is Batchet. And it comes in the context of him, this being Hegseth openly. And he's bragging about it in the speech, openly getting rid of top commanders, top military officials, purging them from the army, basically because either they are pushing back against him internally or because he thinks they're woke or they're minorities or they were elevated because they're women. That's what's happening here. Yeah. And it's also worth mentioning that whether or not it was actually working, whatever, the Defense Department did have a whole bunch of advisory boards without side experts, including on technology, on the future of warfare and all this stuff. And Pnegseth, as soon as he got in, fired everyone from them. So it's not like it's a new idea to bring in outside experts, though, to future forecasting and stuff. Pnegseth has already fired all the people whose job it was to do that. So it's called Project Meridian. What he describes is studying the future of warfare and Newt Gengrich will be involved. How do you think Newt got that job? Do you think he was like, hey, come on, I was such a help to you 10 years ago when you were running for office, Trump. I've really legitimized you and I've just been sitting here for a decade. Or there's this sort of lingering idea that Newt's got like a big brain and he comes up with off, you know, these crazy ideas that, I don't know, sound interesting and then he kind of inspect them and they don't make any sense. So that could be it. I don't know. You think someone was sitting around the office of Secretary Defense and thought, you know who we need? I think it's a much more like Newt Gengrich was like, hey guys, like put me in coach one last time. I even get like in touch with Hegseth for that. That's a great, I would love to know how Newt Gengrich ended up involving this. I have no idea. There's an article from MPR saying he's long-word of an iteration of futuristic weapons that could destroy America. So Newt's been on this beat for a little while. He's dabbled in science fiction. Sited both futurist Alvin Toffler in the concept of psycho history when discussing stuff and he was dubbed Newt Skywalker. This is in 2001. So Newt's been on this for a while. Psycho history could be the title of his biography. Yeah, probably. I'm going to have to dig more into this. He did talk a little bit about tourism and space. So he and Eli might have crossed paths that way. There are some other things he we can play hosting troops. He's got this being Hexath has this idea for governors who may be incentivized to host troops. They're going to roll out some sort of, I don't know, kind of like, you know, who wants to be a millionaire or a princess-like game show where governors can pitch their ideas to him. Let's play that. We're calling on every governor in the country and adjutant general, every tag across this great republic to step up to the plate and bring us their best sales pitch. If your state wants the honor of hosting 15 to 25,000 of America's great troops, show us why and how you're going to do it. Cutting through the red tape, offering up the land, and rolling out the red carpet for our military families. This one confuses me. Is he talking about like changing the basing structure? Yeah, like where the bases are? Because, I mean, let me back up here and say, like, there is a reason that at least, like, not most, but like a huge number of America's largest military bases are in the south. And the reason is just mostly weather. Like, if you want troops in an area where they can, you know, practice flying, practice going out in the field running around, practice sailing the ships, you're going to want it to be, you know, warm and not icy most of the time. Like, that's the reason that a lot of it is located in the south. Is he now saying that like, I don't know if the governor of North Dakota is like, I will do anti woke. And then like, we're going to move Fort Hood to North Dakota. Like, what is he talking about? And also like, it's pretty explicitly saying, we're going to, this is like the theme that, like the unifying theory of XF. But it's pretty pretty explicitly saying, we're going to use military policy to reward domestic politicians, and not even consider what's in the best interest of the Department of Defense, right? It's not going to be about where the Defense Department needs troops. It's going to be about like what the states are offering in return for getting bases. Is that what he's saying? Yes, that's what he's saying. He's trying to help it. It's a cult. He's a culture warrior. That's what he's talking about. And it gets, it gets deeper than that. Starts bringing up in one passage. He's talking about Rome and Jerusalem and Athens. And it's just like really hard to follow. But there is something that, and we'll play in a second, but he does see this in like this kind of a messianic way, right? And that kind of infuses all this stuff. And he's kind of the central figure to it. Let's play the clip and have you react to it. Now, I don't need to give a sermon about the failings of higher education. Because it's not your job. I once wrote a book about it. From the Ivy Leagues to the most liberal to most liberal arts colleges, our colleges and universities have become anti-American DEI worshiping woke factories. Qualities like grit and courage replaced with political correctness and social justice. God and country traded for Che Guevara and critical theory. What do we need? We need students of Western civilization in the pillars of our republic. Leaders who understand the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the power of Rome, and the freedom of Philadelphia, circa 1776. I guess it's important to note that there is also a lot of reporting recently that he himself is looking at a political future. You don't say. Yeah, but like actively looking, right? Like he thought about, you know, I'll pull it up. I think President is one. There's some talk about him being running for governor. Some more, but I forget where there was talking and running for governor of Tennessee a while ago. But then I, I think he decided not to do that when Trump decided this is my reading of it. I think it's actually been reported. There was some thinking that he might run for office in Tennessee. In 2026, as we've getting him out of the administration, a way that wasn't embarrassing, but I think they decided that would be embarrassing. So they stuck with him. Okay. There was talk of him running for governor of Tennessee in 2026. Then in August of this year, there was a report that he is talking about a possible run for president in 2028. And so, you know, he's denied it, but that kind of speech is not going to put to rest the denial. I mean, that seems like blatantly like laying the ground for something domestic political. No, it totally is. And you, you really put your finger on it right before I played that last clip, which is this is a secretary of defense who is so much more concerned with who he perceives as domestic political enemies than he is with actual foreign enemies against the country. He is a culture warrior and not a warrior I'd be out of the country. He like, we haven't played a single clip here of him talking about the war in Iran or the threat from China. He's talking about like, you know, minorities and serving in the military and woke this and the universities are enemies. Like, that's not his job, but he thinks it should be. He absolutely thinks it should be. He's also talking about new fingers too. There was one last thing they put out a book apparently, and if 144 page book to the 600 troops who are attending this speech, it's compilation of his speeches. Oh my god. It includes a forward from Trump saying, I will not ask you to fight the moors. The lack of self-awareness is profound. I will not ask you to fight any more. After this one, we're just going to get through this one first. All right. Well, that was that. It felt like I was watching something out of a kind of like a mix of deep and patent. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Fair enough. All right. That's Ben Parker. I'm Sam Stein. We sat through that PTAXS speech so that you didn't have to. And for that, all we ask is that you hit that subscribe button. Just do it. It's worth it. Take care, buddy.