Defense secretary’s speech touching on physical fitness and doctrine of lethality was seen as ‘egotistical’ and ‘dangerous’
Naveed Shah, a veteran and activist who served as an enlisted public affairs specialist – an army journalist – uncharacteristically found himself searching for words to describe the address of the newly styled secretary of war to flag officers on Tuesday.
“A lot of the words that are coming to me aren’t fit to print,” said Shah, policy director for Common Defense, a veterans advocacy organization. “The people in that room who have served for 20, 30-plus years in uniform do not need Pete Hegseth to tell them about warrior ethos.”
Hegseth’s hour-long Ted talk-style address touching on physical fitness, the doctrine of lethality and the perils of DEI certainly drew more attention than a policy memo might have, and perhaps more than Donald Trump’s rambling, politically charged hour-long speech that followed.
Hegseth’s hour-long Ted talk-style address
This is an oxymoron. TED talks are twenty minutes long because that is how long people can pay attention, even if the content is interesting.
Therefore, Hegseth’s address was not TED talk-style.
There needs to be a new definition…
Heg Talk: A long-winded, egotistical rant in which someone who is not qualified for a job lectures those who are far more knowledgeable and experienced about stupid topics.
Hegsplaining
It was full of narcissism, self importance, and unnecessary solutions to problems that are made up or don’t exist… So pretty much a TED talk.
I don’t watch a lot of TED talks, but that’s not been my experience. It sounds more like TEDx to me.
You can’t treat a room full of leaders like a room full of followers and expect it to be in anyway productive…
trump treats everyone as a followerer, which is why the wealthy and powerful only like him when they’re grifting him.
“Basically, he’s saying that we’re no better than Hamas because people are joining because they want to break things and they want to kill people,” she said. “I mean, for anyone that’s been in the military, he’s not qualified to be secretary of defense. He’s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News.
“But to say these things in front of the preeminent generals and admirals leading our military? Has he no honor, to say that we don’t belong in polite society? Maybe he doesn’t.”
He’s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News. 🔥
Reminder that 70% of veterans voted for Trump and Republicans so I doubt that this is the majority opinion of the DUI hire and his dementia buddy’s speech.
One thing every general knows is that appalled silence looks and sounds exactly like respectful silence, and can also be a two hour eyes-open nap.
So how much did it cost to drag all of them to his special Ted talk? Government rules sure, but he just dragged all of the flag ranked official he could get his hands on and they are likely to be in hotels not barracks, and most probably flew commercial or use the VIP transports.
I’m less concerned about the cost than I am about putting the entire military leadership from POTUS on down into one room at a specific location even if it is Quantico
