Top military brass aren’t exactly excited about a bizarre “pep rally” with President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, political analyst David Rothkopf revealed on The Daily Beast Podcast.
Rothkopf, a foreign policy and national security commentator, predicted that the highly unusual all-hands meeting in Virginia on Tuesday won’t go down well, based on his conversations with several generals, admirals, and other sources close to them.
“I can tell you: It is not going down well,” he told Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty. “This is seen as a waste of time, and it offends them at a pretty fundamental level.”
Hegseth, who prefers the moniker “Secretary of War,” stirred alarm and controversy last week when he ordered top U.S. military officials all over the globe to convene in Quantico without immediately disclosing a reason.
It was later revealed that the mysterious meeting essentially amounts to a photo op where the former Fox News host is expected to deliver a speech on “warrior ethos.”
“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” a defense official earlier told CNN. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: Get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”
Rothkopf said the summit is exactly what he would expect from a former Fox News host turned defense secretary. Hegseth served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2003 to 2021, with deployments to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, before rising to fame as a co-host of Fox & Friends in 2017.
“The guy who is the least qualified secretary of defense in our history, and they’re gonna lecture the career leaders of our military at this particular moment,” Rothkopf said.
“We’ve got this guy and he’s flexing like he probably did at a hundred bars over the course of his life, saying, ‘Look at me, I’m a tough soldier.’”
The Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Trump, who has never served in the military and successfully dodged the draft five times, announced over the weekend that he was gatecrashing Hegseth’s rally to send “a good message” to the troops.
“It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things,” he told NBC News. “You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about.”
But Rothkopf said that in military officers’ view, the U.S. is “essentially letting the air out of the tires” by having underqualified officials at the helm of the Defense Department and intelligence agencies.
“Getting them all together in a room to listen to this frat boy and this draft dodger lecture them about a ‘warrior ethos’ is, you know, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
“So having a pep rally in Virginia led by a couple of nitwits is not what the United States government or the United States military needs right now.”
Sought for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly blasted Rothkopf.
“This no-name nerd has never served anything except his own checkbook and no one... cares what he has to say about decorated combat Veteran [sic] Secretary Pete Hegseth or warrior ethos,” she said.
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