Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of junior officers and enlisted troops at a base in Virginia on Wednesday to extol the virtues of basing Pentagon policy on culture-war issues and to complain about the news media.
Calling it a “State of the Force” address, Mr. Hegseth doubled down on his decisions to fire dozens of admirals and generals, bar transgender people from serving and eliminate diversity programs. And not for the first time, he used vulgarities to describe certain groups of Americans.
“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people who he believes have no place in the military.
As he pointed to a few reporters in the back of the auditorium, the defense secretary criticized “anti-American losers in our media,” accusing them of aiding the country’s enemies through their reporting on the war in Iran.
“It’s treason, actually,” he said of the reporting. “I mean, I hate to have to say it, but it has to be said.”
The event at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Va., reprised a session there in September last year in which he berated more than 800 generals and admirals about the need to slim down and to be more “lethal.”
The gathering on Wednesday was in many ways a rehash of the cultural stances Mr. Hegseth championed a year ago, but it was a lesser version of last year’s production, which included an appearance by President Trump.
The defense secretary praised the war against Iran — in which he declared victory just weeks after it began but has now dragged into a seven-month campaign — as a courageous operation “that every red-blooded American is proud of.”
He used the last portion of his remarks to announce new initiatives for the Pentagon.
They included the creation of a new “autonomous warfare command” for robotics, which he said would be the equivalent of the military’s geographic and functional combatant commands.
The secretary pointed out three civilians in attendance, Elon Musk, the Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, who wore a blazer over his signature Hawaiian shirt, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich. He called them “three of our nations’ best minds” and said they would lead a new effort called Project Meridian to study the future of warfare.
Mr. Hegseth said he would meet with the three men at a secure facility on the base in Quantico immediately after his speech.
He also stated his intent to build a new military base — what he called “a fortress” — somewhere in the United States, saying that state governors would compete to host it and offer hundreds of thousands of acres of state land to build it.
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops currently stationed overseas would be sent back to the United States and based at the “fortress,” he said, without explaining which countries would see a reduction in U.S. forces.
The Pentagon has been reviewing its force posture overseas, particularly in Europe, with an eye toward reducing the number of troops stationed outside the United States. In May, Mr. Hegseth announced he was canceling a deployment of troops to Poland only to be quickly overruled by Mr. Trump.
As usual, Mr. Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided “secular humanism,” adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.
The address allowed Mr. Hegseth to lay out his planned changes without facing questions from reporters about them or the war. The last time he gave a briefing on the Iran war to reporters at the Pentagon was in early May.
Nonetheless, he is the public face of the deeply unpopular war with Iran.
Thousands of Iranians and 18 U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict, which the United States and Israel started seven months ago. In one episode at the start of the war, more than 175 civilians, many of them children, were killed when a U.S. airstrike hit a school in southern Iran.
Despite the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary, Iran has retained its ballistic missile and drone capability, and its leadership has vowed never to give up its civilian nuclear program. As Iran’s fighting skills have evolved, the U.S. military burned through its munitions.
As gas prices rise because of the conflict, U.S. voters have grown more frustrated ahead of the midterm elections.
Mr. Hegseth has also not been able to get a Pentagon budget request for more funding approved, and has alienated not only Democrats but also some Republicans the administration needs to pass $1.5 trillion in new financing. In addition, a Republican congressman is leading a drive to impeach Mr. Hegseth. He also does not have Senate-confirmed leaders to head the Army, the country’s biggest military service, or the Navy.
At the end of his remarks, Mr. Hegseth received a standing ovation. Last year’s speech was greeted by stone-faced generals and admirals who made sure not to cheer, per the norms of a nonpartisan military.
“Last year’s Quantico event was a tough test for the military,” said Peter D. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades.
“The president gave a campaign-rally speech full of partisan applause lines, and the secretary gave a speech full of critique of his predecessor’s policies,” Mr. Feaver said. “But the senior officers listened respectfully and quietly, making it clear by their decorum that they were nonpartisan and yet prepared to carry out all lawful orders even if it meant a change in policy direction.”
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