With AuthEver-embattled Pete Hegseth is under fire for calling top brass away from their command posts to attend a “short speech” on the “warrior ethos.”
The Defense Secretary—who now goes by the title ‘Secretary of War’, and who’s consistently drawn criticism for his prioritization of optics at the Pentagon—has apparently demanded that every military official above the rank of one-star general fly in for a Tuesday meeting in Virginia, even if they’re stationed abroad.
People with knowledge of plans for that event revealed to The Washington Post that the former Fox News personality intends to make a video of his brief address, which will focus on military standards and culture, and that he asked for top brass because “guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint.”
While the White House insists the meeting will serve as a show of force, social media has granted Hegseth little mercy in the hours since news of the plans first broke.
“Definitely a meeting that could have been an email,” one user wrote on BlueSky. “Caligula’s putting on a little show,” another added, in reference to the insane and brutally tyrannical Roman emperor of that name, which in Latin means ‘little boot’ and refers to his childhood growing up on military campaigns.
“My dad was a colonel who trained pilots going into battle,” another user said. “If he’d been summoned to a lecture about the ‘warrior ethos’ from a Fox News host, he may have dive-bombed the Pentagon.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose social media team have lately sought to emulate the kind of viral Trumpisms that won MAGA the election last year, was also quick to get in on the action.
“POOR PETEY HEGSETH!” Newsom posted on X. “WANTS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY BUT LOOKS LIKE THE GUY TLC FIRED FROM “DUCK DYNASTY,” he added, in a weird, deep-cut reference to the A&E reality TV show of that name about a Louisiana family who sell duck-hunting products.
“WEAK, NO BRAINS, NO TALENT, ZERO FUTURE!,” the governor went on. “HE WANTS TO BE SECRETARY OF “WAR” BUT CANNOT EVEN THROW AN AXE OR DO A PULL UP. SAD!"
Others, however, see the so-called Secretary of War’s upcoming PR bonanza in a decidedly less humorous light. “The meeting is the latest in a series of chaotic decisions that have come out of the Pentagon since Hegseth took the reins in January,” Claire McCaskill, who formerly served as Senator for Missouri, wrote in a column for MSNBC.
“We already have [Donald Trump] who is all over the map when it comes to military matters,” she wrote, adding “our country’s top military leaders will be in one place at a now highly publicized meeting,” and that from a security standpoint alone, “that should definitely raise concern.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Pentagon for comment on this story.
