Policy
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October 1, 2025
Trump and the defense secretary summoned the best military leaders on the sides of authoritarianism and abuses, but the officers did not curl the message.
No one knew why the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, summoned 800 of the best American military leaders, posts from around the world, at the base of the navy in Quantico, in Virginia, yesterday for the most expensive and boring PEP rally in world history. He wanted to release “warrior ethics” among men-and the handful of women present, he said in his speech. The rally marked “the liberation of American warriors, in name, in action and in the authorities,” he continued. “You kill people and break things to make a living.” You are not politically correct and do not necessarily belong to Polie. ”
Maybe Hegseth thought he was addressed to the last class of ice recruits. How could he say to this auditorium filled with distinguished officers, in uniform and decorated with medals, seated with a perfect posture, which they “do not necessarily belong to Polie”? It was a moment – there were many others – when I couldn’t help but ask me what the assemblies thought. Probably something in the sense of what the Air Force veteran, the senator, Mark Kelly, told journalists after the speech: “This is what you get when you install the guy for Saturday morning information as a defense secretary.” Or as someone joked: “Kegstand secretary”. In any case, he has received no applause and no laughs from the crowd.
Hegseth took the opportunity to announce some new rules, including what he called “grooming standards”. “More beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We are going to cut our hair, shave the beard and adhere to standards,” he said. This ban on the beard is frankly racist, because black men suffer disproportionately from a skin condition which makes the shaving painful, sometimes impossible. But it doesn’t stop there. Since he “directs that the war fighters in combat jobs perform their service fitness test for a normalized male standard by the non-sexist age marked above 70%”, women will not be in combat unless they can correspond to the exact fitness standards of men. He raised the ban on the cruel hazing of young recruits in training and seemed to encourage the torture of enemy fighters. He made fun of “rules of commitment” as “weak” and “awake”. Oh, and no fat authorized in the body of Hegseth warriors.
“If the war secretary can make a regular hard PT [physical training]As well as each member of our joint strength, “he said.” Frankly, it’s tiring to watch the combat training, or really any training, and to see the big troops. Likewise, it is completely unacceptable to see large generals and admirals in the corridors of the Pentagon and leaders in the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It’s bad, and it is not who we are. Thus, the HegSeth decrees, “today, in my direction, each member of the joint force at each rank is necessary to pass a PT test twice a year, as well as to meet the requirements of size and weight twice a year each year of service.”
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What did these men think when their commander Morbide Obese in chief dandoned on stage a few moments later for a 72 -minute harangue? Trump made the headlines with his speech, warning these leaders that their mission is changing and that they will soon focus on “the enemy inside”.
But he hung his scary call to illegally use the military force against “the enemy inside” with wacky tunes on Joe Biden, which he insisted to sign the official commission of each officer with an autopen. Not Trump: He told them that he was delighted to sign them personally. “I love my signature. I really do it. Everyone loves my signature, “he said.
Especially the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump’s eyes were swollen; One eye fell. He looked more and more denied when he dropped. He seemed to be shaken when those assembled did not applaud him either. But it was very clear on the new mission of these leaders: using American cities “as a training ground” for the US military. “Democrats manage most of the cities in poor condition,” he told officers. “What they did in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles – These are very dangerous places. And we will straighten them one by one.
The chief of the veterans for responsible leadership has castigated the abomination of quantico on social networks, in particular the message of Hegseth according to which the goal of the networks was to “kill people and break things”:
This is a shameful message. There was a soldier with whom I served in the army who was later killed in Mosul, Iraq, who said that the reason he joined the army was because he thought it was the greatest force for the good that the world has ever known. He said soldiers not only told his soldiers to be fatal, but he also taught us to be compassionate and empathetic and not to worry about the American people, but also people who love freedom and research from all over the world. It is the true warlike philosophy that many of us veterans who know and love. I think of him a lot tonight and I will be damned if sons of female dogs like Trump and Hegseth will transform our great army into something resembling the Russians. His memory and service should not be in vain.
A former defense official said Politico The meeting was “a waste of time for many people who categorically had the best things they could and should do. It is also an inexcusable strategic risk of concentrating so many managers in the operational chain of command at the same time and public place, to transmit an insane message of little merit. ”
The officers obeyed orders, but they did not have to love it, and they did not appear. Silence was sometimes deafening.
All these officers woke up this morning to the news that the government had closed, with Trump and the Republican leaders of the Congress refusing to reverse the drastic cups of health care in exchange for democratic votes. I am also strangely optimistic about this development. Trump promises mass layoffs, but there have already been hundreds of thousands of layoffs. He has already canceled expenses in the programs approved by the Congress, without a protest glance of the Republican leaders. Now he says that he can use closure as a pretext to reduce popular programs such as social security and health insurance, and I can only say, in the immortal words of Pete Hegseth: “Fafo”. When the police ignored his obvious attempt at line of applause, the gaze on his face said: “It is five hours somewhere.”
The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, fell the last time he faced this potential result, in March, to the chagrin of most Democratic senators. He feared, he said, what Trump would do with the power that the closure gave him to play with the federal workforce. In six months, we saw Trump assume this power anyway; This time, Schumer did the right thing. I do not know where it is going, but I agree with Marcy Wheeler that, although some Americans will suffer, they will also be able to see that the only sector of the government which continues to function as before is the growing and increasingly violent machinery of the application of immigration. Most ice agents are considered “essential workers”. You will not be able to get a social security employee on the phone if you have problems, but you will see your neighbors with brown skin illegally seized by masked thugs.
We do not head towards an authoritarian regime; We already live under one. And the earlier the more people realize that, the sooner we can start to retaliate effectively.
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