Hegseth’s Bumpy, Nonsensical Road
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 15, 2025
In recent weeks, Defense/War Secretary has sought unsuccessfully to throttle Pentagon reporters who write anything but press releases, has been caught up again using hackable phone message apps for deployment information, and has been fat-shaming Texas National Guardsmen being sent to Chicago duty.
Apparently to the ridicule of many who heard him as well as retired military leaders, Hegseth forced hundreds of the national top military brass into a required meeting at Quantico for a lecture by him on personal appearance and against any vestiges of identity other than lethal fighter.
In the last week he announced, then backtracked on creating a fighter pilot training base in Idaho, forced to ensure that it would be under U.S. command apparently only after being brought up short about hosting a foreign force base on American soil.
A federal judge last week upbraided Hegseth for cutting research grant reimbursements arbitrarily “without so much as a nod to Congress.”
Meanwhile, where Hegseth has been most responsive is in launching military attacks of dubious legality on small speedboats that he says, without evidence, are carrying drugs from Venezuela to the United States in coordination with Venezuelan officials. Hegseth has been active in researching the deployment of active, armed troops within the United States to meet Donald Trump’s sometimes delusional ideas that Portland is on fire or that the deployment of 300 National Guardsmen will stop Chicago crime, while simultaneously protecting Homeland Security agents.
Take the fat-shaming. Hegseth took to social media to say an unknown number of Texas National Guardsmen should be replaced for being too heavy, stressing that the standard in the Department of War is for fitness. If the job is to stand outside an ICE facility to ward off protesters with a gun, is the extra 10 pounds going to make for a poor guardsman? What we want to hear from Hegseth is a sane, legal justification for deploying Texas National Guardsmen to Illinois over the objections of local authorities in the first place.
Where Is the Substance?
We hear a lot of irrelevant nonsense from Hegseth, and very little about the defense of the country, its costs, its issues, its problem-solving.
Indeed, that alone explains why most major news organizations have told Hegseth they will refuse his demanded pledge only to print Pentagon-approved information, propaganda-like. That’s not how journalism works in a democracy. So, expect that Hegs4th will order reporters out of the Pentagon, an idea that Donald Trump now endorses because military officers just might leak a secret. Indeed, it might be the White House next.
We hear more from Hegseth about pushup contests he has with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. than we do from his assessment of growing threats in the South China Sea or any substantive pushback against continued Russian aggression against Ukraine. We have yet to hear from Hegseth or Trump how the U.S. will force Hamas militants to disarm, as threatened, for example. Or provide any detail or evidence about smuggling in the continuing drug speedboat deaths off Venezuela.
We still hear about Pentagon coups in which personal loyalty to Hegseth — never mind loyalty to Trump — is at issue. The Hegseth-launched investigations into leaks of unauthorized information that may be as banal as what rooms have been reserved for meetings have now resulted in lie-detection tests for hundreds of Pentagon employees, and the search among personal social media posts that do not fawn over Charlie Kirk in the aftermath of his assassination are reaching hundreds more.
There seems a lot more concern about moustaches and the occasional request to wear a religious hat in the military than there does about our military policy. “Lethalness” has become conflated with “anti-woke” concerns about raising physical standards in a military that quickly is becoming much less dependent on hand-to-hand warfare in favor of artificial intelligence-based weaponry.
More than uncaring about building diversity in the military, Hegseth is actively killing off programs that would bring women or those identifying in minority groups into the services.
Ukraine is showing that clever use of cheap drones is doing more for its national defense than military contracts for new lines of big hardware, including ships, that constantly appear on project cost overrun lists.
Hegseth appears more concerned with image than substance on multiple fronts.
And in public, he shows up most often either a bit player to Trump, who is making all the calls on weapons being made available for Ukraine, for example, or in settings in which he ridicules reporters or members of Congress for even asking a question.
And yet, recruitment figures for the military has rebounded despite Hegseth’s weirdness. There have been increased recruitment efforts and a lowering of bars against certain tattoos and even body-fat limits for the Air Force, contrary to the new fitness rules. Of course, a tougher job market and higher pay may contribute.
The question is why Trump sees him as a success.
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