Trump now threatens USA Armed Forces with demotions at military summit
At the unusual meeting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the country’s military elite new reforms would weed political correctness from the U.S. armed forces.
President Donald Trump threatened to fire top military leaders who disagree with him at a rare meeting with hundreds of top generals and admirals, while his defense secretary accused the Pentagon of suffering from weakness and “woke” decay.
The president told a packed meeting of commanders in Quantico, Virginia, “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future, but you just feel nice and loose, ok?”
At one point during his 72-minute address, Trump referenced a racial slur while discussing nuclear weapons. “I call it the N-word,” he told his audience of mostly stone-faced officers. “There are two N-words and you can’t use either of them.”
With Trump as his backstop, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unleashed a new array of directives, telling the country’s military elite that they had gone soft and his new reforms would weed out political correctness from the world’s most powerful armed forces.
The addresses by Trump and Hegseth, after top military brass were summoned from commands around the world, came as Trump has ordered U.S. troops into a growing number of cities to support deportations and suppress crime.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, railed against “decay” at the Defense Department, telling the assembled commanders he would crack down on physical fitness and grooming standards, and throw out
“woke” policies. He spoke of “fat generals and admirals.”
Trump vowed to fire military leaders ”right on the spot” as he left for the high-stakes summit on Sept. 30.
Echoing Trump’s threats, Hegseth said if any senior officers did not resonate with his message, they should resign.
“If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, you should do the honorable thing and resign.”
New standards seek a fitter, clean-shaven military
According to Pentagon policy memos, fitness tests will increase in frequency and intensity for active duty troops, who must now pass twice-yearly tests. Military members will also have their body fat measured twice per year.
Troops with combat-focused jobs, such as infantrymen or tank crew members, must meet male-based test standards in their annual general fitness test, and they must also complete a “combat field test” once yearly.
Hegseth, who has long argued that women benefited from lowered fitness standards when they entered combat arms jobs during former President Barack Obama’s administration, said the move “is not about preventing women from serving.”
Top Dem pans Trump and Hegseth ‘culture war’ speeches Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, blasted Trump and Hegseth for what he called empty posturing that failed to address the country’s national security challenges.
“President Trump offered no national security vision, just rambling grievances and partisan attacks,” Meeks said in a statement. “Even worse, his call to use U.S. cities as ‘training grounds’ for the military is chilling. This is what dictators do.”
“For his part, Secretary Hegseth’s rants about ‘dudes in dresses’ and other culture-war bogeymen only underscored his unfitness to lead,” Meeks said. He called for Hegseth to resign over his “overall lack of professionalism and experience.”
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Trump tells generals of ‘the enemy within’
Trump told the assembled generals and admirals of his plans to take on “the enemy within” using military power.
“Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances,” he said. “So this is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”
Using street crime and anti-deportation protests as his justification, Trump has ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis and Portland. He also ordered active-duty Marines to Los Angeles.
Trump speech ‘filled with mistruths,’ retired general says Retired Lt. Gen Mark Hertling said Trump’s speech was “somewhat shocking” and “filled with mistruths.”
Speaking on MSNBC, Hertling, the former commander of Army forces in Europe, said, “I found my mouth open. I just couldn’t believe some of the things that were being said to this group of individuals who have such experience.”
“I find it really offensive that anyone is insulting them, and claiming that their promotions and their advancement through the services are the result of policies or ‘wokeness’ or DEI,” Hertling said. “It’s just not true.”
‘Two N-words.’ Trump references racial slur in discussing nuclear threat Trump told U.S. military leaders at Quantico on Sept. 30 that he refers to the nuclear threat as the “N-word,” referencing a racial slur.
The president noted he sent nuclear submarines “over to the coast of Russia” in response to provocative comments by a Russian spokesperson referencing a nuclear control system.
“We can’t let people throw around that word,” Trump said. “I call it the N-word. There are two N-words and you can’t use either of them.”
Hegseth’s long war on ‘woke’
Hegseth’s remarks dovetailed with his long-held views − the subject of his 2024 book, The War on Warriors − that diversity initiatives, political correctness and a perceived lowering of standards on behalf of women made the military weaker.
At the Quantico meeting, Hegseth said those convictions led him to fire a number of top officers, an apparent allusion to the abrupt retirements of Joint Chiefs chairman Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the top lawyers of the Army and Air Force, and Army Gen. Timothy Haugh of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, among others.
“It’s nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create, or even benefitted from, that culture,” Hegseth said, explaining he has attempted to spare officers who were merely complying with the previous administration’s orders and to fire those who “are truly invested in the ‘Woke Department.'”
Trump says ‘dangerous cities’ should be ‘military training grounds’ Days after he dispatched the National Guard to Portland, Trump said “dangerous cities” should be used as military “training grounds.”
“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” Trump said.
Trump has already deployed the National Guard to the southern border, to Los Angeles to quell protests against mass deportations, and to the streets of Washington, DC, where many are now tasked with “beatification” projects like picking up trash and raking leaves.
“Washington, DC, went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month,” he told the Quantico audience.
These statements struck Mark Cancian, a senior defense advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as worrisome.
“If he puts out some directive specifying that the military should use lethal force, then that could be a huge problem,” Cancian said. “The military is just not trained in the nuances about civilian rights and the use of lethal force,” he added.
Stone-faced generals, admirals quieter than Trump’s usual crowds
The audience was made up of men and women of various ages in military uniforms with neat haircuts. Pool reports indicate the crowd was much more still and quiet than what Trump is accustomed to at political events or campaign rallies.
Several officers were sitting in a row, looking expressionless and inscrutable, with few smiles.
The president’s attacks on former President Joe Biden were met with silence, the pool report said.
Some of Trump’s lines elicited polite ripples of laughter. One man in a Navy uniform was taking notes in a book. Another was rolling his head and looking restless as the president railed against the media.
Trump says ‘Defense Department’ name was ‘first sign of wokeness’
Trump praised the generals as “incredible people” straight out of “central casting.”
He said it was his idea to make the Defense Department’s name the War Department, a name it carried before it was changed in the years after World War II.
“That was probably the first sign of wokeness,” he said of the name change.
Who attended the meeting
Hundreds of the U.S. military’s seniormost officers and enlisted troops attended the event, including top generals from around the world.
The Pentagon did not provide an attendee list.
A camera pan during Hegseth’s remarks appeared to capture two of the military’s most far-flung brass in the auditorium: Army Gen. Xavier Brunson, who leads American and United Nations forces in South Korea, and Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, who heads U.S. Indo-Pacific Command from his Hawaii headquarters.
Many other top generals also appeared on the official video feed, including U.S. Northern Command leader Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, who oversees the military’s work along the Mexico border and its immigration enforcement support; Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, who heads U.S. Special Operations Command; and Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, who oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal atop U.S. Strategic Command.
More fitness, no beards
Hegseth announced 10 new directives, including implementing physical fitness standards, bringing combat arms positions up to the “highest male standard” and ordering troops to shave their beards and cut their hair short.
While generals and admirals at the meeting wouldn’t be forced to take their own physical fitness test, every member of the joint force would be required to take a physical fitness test twice a year and meet height and weight standards.
“‘We’re not talking hot yoga and stretching,” Hegseth added.
Costly gathering of top brass
On just a week’s notice, Hegseth mandated all senior commanders at the rank of brigadier general or rear admiral lower half and above to report to the Virginia base around 40 miles south of Washington, DC. President Donald Trump revealed days before the meeting that he would also address the generals.
Defense experts said the volume of top generals and their entourages descending on the base and the small town it surrounds was likely to create traffic snarls and a security nightmare.
Beginning the day before the meeting, “residents can expect increased security checks, altered traffic patterns and increased security personnel,” read a public notice on the town of Quantico’s Facebook page.
The cost of the meeting – bringing the senior officers and their staff to Quantico, lodging them, and securing the area – could add up to millions of dollars, experts told USA TODAY.
“A thing like this has never been done before because they came from all over the world and there’s a little bit of expense, not much, but there’s a little expense for that,” Trump said of the unprecedented meeting.
Democratic lawmakers and other critics blasted the meeting as a waste of money and said taking the nation’s top generals off their jobs for a pep rally-type event was a bad idea.
The meeting “raises profound concerns about security, cost and operational impacts,” among them that “our adversaries will know that many of our most senior commanders from around the world are tied up together with some portion of the highest level of the civilian chain of command,” Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, who both sit on the Armed Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
