Pete Hegseth's Big General Meeting | Chapo Trap House

The first one I'd like to talk about today is a continuation from something Felix and I talked about on Monday's episode, which was the announced all hands, all generals meeting in Quantico, Virginia, in which the head of our armed forces, all the heads of our armed forces were summoned to basically receive a motivational lecture by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Yes, I mean, on Monday we were speculating about what was going to be the content of this meeting, what would be the tenor of his remarks, and I believe we settled on it would be something gayer than you could possibly imagine, and I'm here to report that indeed that was the case. Most of the comments in the meeting were basically about how you should dress and what kind of facial hair you can and can't have as a member of a US army. And he's installing a makeup studio in the Pentagon? Yes, he is doing that as well. He's like, we need to get back to being men, but we also need to have perfect eyebrows. Contouring. Yeah, we need perfect skin. If you wear a nice lip gloss, that's acceptable, but no lipstick because that's for chicks. Did you see how he had a big laugh applause line? The **** around and find out line? Yeah, and three people in the entire audience went, woo, yeah. And those are clearly his aides. Those are like his staffers. I know. I mean, they had pretty much every ******* officer in the military there, so there's at least three guys who would think that was cool, but I think that's worse than getting total silence. Being summoned to that is like being told by your parents like, oh, we are going to a three-hour mass thing. Like, ****, dude. I do not want to be there. I already said it to Felix a lot, but it's like the most coked up thing to make everyone listen to your ass talk and all come and listen to you. I just imagine it's like 2 AM, and you're in some guy's shitty apartment with his overhead lighting. He's just geeked out, and he's like, we should start a band, actually. We should start a band. We should start a... I kind of want to do something that's hyper speed metal, but also combined with, I don't know, just electronic ---- or something like that. I've got a bunch of names, and you're just like, Jesus ******* Christ. You're there only because your friend is there, and he's your ride, and you can't ******* escape. That's what that is. We were saying that it's like when someone brings a party to a screeching halt. Everyone is enjoying themselves in their own quadrant of the room, and then just like the Pete Hegseth of the get-together is like, everyone stop. I need to talk about how I've been friends with this guy for three whole years. It's like the same in the other direction. It'd be like if someone would be like, let's all go around and talk about our trauma. It completely kills the vibe. Let's all play our favorite YouTube videos. I'm going to choose 12 of them to start, just to get the ball rolling, but everyone stop talking and watch this YouTube video on the TV. I'm Chromecasting it to the TV right now, and you've been a general for a long time. You're the ******* Joint Chiefs of Joint Commander-in-Chiefs. What if we opened a restaurant? What if there's a restaurant in the Pentagon? What if we made the Pentagon a giant restaurant, sort of a bistro, sort of like a gastropub or a bistro? I don't know what a gastropub is, but I think we should have one in the Pentagon. I think you guys should ******* run it, because I think you're so ******* good at running the army. I think you should ******* just ******* be like Anthony Bourdain. Remember that guy? Remember his show? He was so ******* good, man. He was so ******* real. That's because kind of like what we do. We travel over the world. We learn about other cultures, and we ******* take their food, and we ******* kill them, so let's just do a restaurant based on all the people we've killed. We should all get ******* tattoos, matching tattoos together. Pete Hexhead is busting out. I got this new card game. It's called Birds and Bees, and it's a little naughty. He's making all his friends kiss each other and ----. Well, some of the news coverage of this, it says here, Pete Hexhead's comments, he said here, the era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don't hurt anyone's feelings leadership ends right now, Hexhead said at the gathering at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Hexhead called for no more division, distraction, or gender delusions in an extraordinarily blunt speech on the importance of the warrior ethos, a term he used to describe the spirit that makes combat units effective. We must be prepared, he said. Either we're ready to win, or we are not. I know what he meant by gender delusion, but the way he put it, it sounds like he's saying like, okay, today, I don't care what you were assigned at birth, you're picking it today, and you're going to have that until after you retire from the military, I don't care, but we're doing it, same rules as Iran. Yeah, exactly, yeah. We learned a lot. Please report after the prepared remarks to receive your assigned agenda from Secretary of War Hexhead. My favorite moment, though, is that he said he demanded no more, quote, fat generals saying all service members would need to meet fitness tests and grooming standards. Now, when I heard about his comments about fat generals, I just thought like, I'm just imagining a scene where like, okay, they're all there. They've all filed into the big auditorium. They're sitting down to listen to the Secretary of Defense. They're kind of excited. He comes out. He's like, yeah, we're no more of this woke bullshit. We're going back to be a fighting kill force full of strong army men. They're like, yeah, all right. And then he's like, and another thing, I'm sick of all these ******* fatties. Every time I come around, I see these fat ******* generals. Just camera pans over, they're all stony faced, and there's one general there with like a big bucket of buttered popcorn. What is he talking about me? All of our commanders will have a regiment, including retinol for their skin. All commanders will have cum gutters by the end of the year. No, I love his comments. Okay, he also said he demanded no more fat generals saying all service members would need to meet fitness tests and grooming standards. No more beardos, he said. The era of unacceptable appearance is over. I like to imagine that in addition to stringent standards on facial hair, he's also instituting strict standards on pubic hair. You got to shave it high and tight down there. A tasteful landing strip is acceptable. Also, we don't want any Brazilians. Also, what the **** is he talking about? Maybe I might be off on this, but since when is any of the branches able to have a beard unless you're special forces, like he said? And he said the special forces guy can still have beards. You've only ever been able to have a mustache, right? Otherwise, you have to be clean shaven. We talked about it last episode, but there's a Zumwalt era reform that was put in place during the 70s as it pertains to black servicemen because that razor bump thing that affects 70% or 80% of black men, I think, and they get an exemption where they can have very short, well-kemped facial hair, but it's just to avoid them getting a very- They can have beards if we don't. This sucks. I mean, yeah, he basically did come out and say that. That was one of the first things he did, suspend that reform that's been in effect for 50 ******* years. And it's the only people that can have them outside of special forces, like we said. I don't know what the **** he's talking about. Yeah, and it's not a woke thing. It's to make it so that they don't have a skin condition that causes them to get booted out of the Navy. And grown hairs that ******* suck. Yeah. Also, all the guys that have- Veterans all have beards because they get out and they're like, I don't want to shave anymore, and they also want to look like special forces. Those are the guys with beards. They're not even service members, like that freak that just crashed into a Mormon church in Michigan and shot it up. That's who has the beards. And he was a Marine. Yeah. He says, simply put, if you do not meet the male level of physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don't want to shave and look professional, it's time for a new position or a new profession. He said he is also overhauling the DOD's Inspector General's office that is investigating him for creating a culture of walking on eggshells that he said has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver's seat. I don't think I'm too far out ahead on this, that all of his comments about how they're going to investigate complaints, and how they don't want any more complainers, and all this stuff about walking on eggshells, given who's saying it, I think this is basically about just making it okay to rape women in the military. Yeah. As if it wasn't already easy enough. Yeah. I mean, they've been really strict about that. They've been holding back and not letting anyone sexually assault each other. Yeah. I mean, this does also come on the heels of how, I forget, was it in Forbes? I don't know what it was in, but it was a report about how he's like, everyone thinks that he's manic now. Yeah. Because he's completely paranoid. That entire signal chat thing- Right. Yeah. It destroyed any bit of confidence that he had left. And so he's just showing up bleary-eyed and screaming at people. Well, I like that all of his comments are about new stringent standards for facial hair and physical fitness, but we're going to keep an open mind about signals intelligence and who's allowed in the group chat if you are a five-star general or the head of the Department of War. Well, that was a great way to start out his career in the cabinet. But also, you know all those generals, the way military people are, they love to talk ---- on each other's branches. Oh, yeah. But you know, they all came together and they have to listen to this ******* National Guard to tell them what it's like to be in the military or what is the top standard. And you know, they're like, God, shut the **** up. You're not even ******* in the like, you know how they are. You know, they all ******* hate them. Yeah. No, I mean, that's it. That's what we said. Like having a National Guard guy, like get you all together to call you fat is like, I mean, guys who were in the Imperial Russian Army for like their entire lives, they pledged their lives to ******* Lenin for way less. It's like having someone that played varsity talking to like an NFL player being like, this is what you need to do. I would have gone pro if it wasn't for my knee. It says here, Trump spoke to the generals too. And I really enjoyed Trump's comments. He said, Trump followed, this is from the article I was reading, it says Trump followed Hegseth with his own speech saying that as president, he would have their backs and that he is committed to making the military stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer, and more powerful than it has ever been before. The president argued the military's job is not only to protect the US from threats abroad, but also what he repeatedly referred to as a domestic enemy in American cities. I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, said Trump, who claimed we're under invasion from within. Boy, that sounds ominous. Yeah, I mean, just file that into American Israel becoming the same thing over time. That's another thing too, though. Even these National Guard guys, whenever they deploy them to protest this stuff, those guys are like, I don't ******* want to be here. They don't give a ****. And now they're walking around the loop, kicking around the can going like, man, this sucks. Another thing that I think is funny about his comments about no more fatties in the general, it's like, basically, these standards that he's implementing for high level military officers is like Grindr. No fatties, no one uncut, no one under nine inches. And no loads refused. Yeah, definitely. We're done with this culture of refusing loads in the military. That's what you joined up for. You're taking them loads, boy. Also, him bringing back, they're going to lower the standards against hazing and what drill sergeants can do. And it's like, yeah, if you don't let your drill sergeant crack you open, then you are not a ******* soldier, sir. The Spartans. Hey, they were the greatest warriors of all time. And they didn't do it by being gentle with one another, you know? Yeah. In 10 years, Russians are going to post the chain video and be like, this is what they do in basic training for Marines. We'll never beat them because we're too woke to put an entire chain into a guy's asshole. The new military standard is going to be like that video from eight years ago of those British guys beating each other with a chair and then kissing. That's going to be the US military. Well, I mean, I was just thinking of this in terms of the history of the American military and how that lines up with this new no fatties, no uggos, no uncut players standard that Hegseth is seeking to achieve. And when I think about some of the most decorated, some of the most valorous, some of the most famous US military leaders and generals, half of them were little butterballs. Look up what Curtis LeMay looked like. And we all know the famous photo of Eisenhower, the guy who led Operation Overlord. Okay, look, he didn't have any facial hair, but he was looking a little zesty. I think we all know what I'm talking about. But go back to the Civil War. None of those guys were in shape. And they all had beards. That's like a little different, though. Yeah. But if you go back to when we had the Revolutionary War, everyone was wearing tights and wore wigs and powdered their face. So the Civil War guys, they lost their ******* way, too, due to woke, which is... The Civil War was fought over woke for a lot of reasons. Yeah. The unwoke guys were the rebels who also had beards and were fat. Also, what is this like our standards? Your top guys get their jobs done, the stuff, the most evil acts on Earth that you want them to do. And they're like, nodding off on heroin. Special Forces are all insane substance users and not in the best shape all the time, too. You guys remember General Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf from the first Gulf War? He was one of my heroes. He was kind of a fatty. I have his rookie card from those desert storm cards. Those desert storm cards are awesome. But another good example, Douglas MacArthur. Douglas MacArthur was one of those guys whose mom dressed him as a girl until he was like seven. Yeah. I mean, that used to be the thing. If you were like a Tobey Maguire type, you know, just sort of like an evil, like an evil, like an evil pussy getter, you got into musical theater. But if you were sort of fruity, you became a story general. Frederick the Great, same thing. He if he just he there's never been a guy like this since him. Like I if there has been, I haven't heard of him. He would like if he saw a woman, he would like start throwing up. FDR when he was a child looked like Griffith from Berserk. Looked like like he looked like a they them. All those guys back then they were born they thems. I think I think I yeah, you were you were like in like the Victorian era or like actually until pretty recently for a lot of men, you were a they them until about your seventh or eighth birthday. It was basically like your mom had the right to make you a girl until you passed a certain age. My favorite fact about the career of Douglas MacArthur is that when he went to West Point, his mom moved to West Point and got a house right outside of West Point. And every day at West Point, he met her for lunch. He had lunch with his mom every single day at West Point. But you know, like Trump had some comments about sort of like we're harkening back to like the good old days of the US military and Navy. In addition to his comments about how we're fighting a war on cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and quote, we're going to straighten them out one by one. And that's going to be a major part of some of the people in this room. That's war too. It's a war from within. We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. Then he said, I quote, I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way, he said. I don't think it's old technology when you look at those guns, but it's something we're actually considering, the concept of battleships. Nice six inch side, solid steel, not aluminum. Trump then expressed his fandom of a television documentary from the 1950s. I used to watch Victory at Sea. I love Victory at Sea. I love the idea that we would make aluminum battles because of ******* biting. I think we should go back to wooden battleships. He was talking about, I mean, they actually, I think actually the Zumwalt class destroyers, like the new stealth battleships that admittedly do look really ******* ugly. This is actually kind of an instance of him being right, but for the wrong reasons. Those battles, those ships are like kind of shitty, like their radar cross section isn't as good as they thought it would be. So he may like inadvertently get rid of another boondoggle just because it's like gross looking. But like, isn't the concept of a battleship sort of like something of a era of warfare that like doesn't exist anymore? Like back when like navies would fight each other in open oceans, you know, like the Battle of Midway or something like, I think the Navy, like they just need like an aircraft carriers. That's basically it. Yeah. You go out to sea to like distribute your fighter jets and bombers. Yeah. But like, I mean, like some aircraft carriers, like you probably don't want to have them completely undefended, even if you do have like vertical missile launchers and ----. They're there for show, you know? It was so cool how we kept having planes slide off the aircraft carriers. Like, oh, lost another one. But yeah, Felix is like calling them like, yo, if I retrieve it, can I have it? You can pay someone with like a tugboat to go out and get it. Just go to the Red Sea. Yeah, the Red Sea is not even that deep, you know? Felix, let's hire a salvage crew. First come, first serve. This is legitimate salvage if we can like sort of raise an F-16 from the bottom of the Red Sea. And then you could have like a sort of a refurbished fighter jet. It's like it doesn't fly. Certified pre-owned. They would be calling me the white American pickers. It doesn't drive, it doesn't fly, but he can sit in it and have fun and go zoom, zoom. I could just repurpose the car. I could make that my new DCS station. You're like, this is my bedroom now. Just sleeping there. Going on in the article, it says here, Trump also repeatedly discussed nuclear weapons during the speech. I rebuilt our nuclear, he said. I moved a submarine or two. I won't say about the two over to the coast of Russia, just to be careful because we can't let people throw around that word. He continued, I call it the N-word. There are two N-words and you can't use either of them, it's a pretty funny line. I call nuclear the N-word and it's the other N-word you can't use. Say nuclear two times. Say it two times. **** MAGA. I will say them if I want to say them. I won't let this tyrant hold me down. I will use both words. This is going on. This is from the Intercept, by the way. And it is funny that like, a sign of how well the speech went over is that like half of these guys just leaked to Intercept about how embarrassed they were having to listen to this ----. But it says here, Hegseth stalking back and forth across the dais during his address, invoked Jesus's golden rule to do unto others while threatening that those who challenge the United States will be, quote, crushed with violence. Hegseth continued, in other words, to our enemies, F-A-F-O, Hegseth said, using an abbreviation for **** around and find out. He revealed that he had just sent an email to the assembled leaders containing 10 new Department of War directives. They were written for you, said Hegseth. These directives are designed to take the monkey off of your back. The thing I'll note here is that he says he invokes Jesus's golden rule to do unto others. But I think he is omitting the probably much more important second part of that golden rule, which is not just to do unto others, but in fact, do unto them as you would have them do unto you. So I think he's created this moral universe in which Jesus's golden rule of morality is **** around and find out. Jesus says if others do unto you, crush them with unrelenting violence. I love that because it's also like no one knew what revenge is until Jesus came around. Until three years before Jesus was crucified, it was just like someone does something to you, and you just die. You just take it. When he came up with the golden rule, that's when people were like, oh, if someone kills my family, I should kill theirs. No, but in their case, Jesus came back after three days, and he doxxed the Romans and got them all fired from their jobs. I mean, once again, I talked about this on Monday, but imagine you're a career officer in the US military. You've served for the last 30 years. You joined in Vietnam, and now you're an admiral or a general, and then you have this coped out lunatic talking about basically using Gen Z slang and TikTok. He's like, to all our war fighters out there, we're going to kill our enemies, and then we're going to dab and hit the gritty on them. If you don't know what the gritty is, look it up, and if you don't want to look it up, you're fired. To all you fatties, if you can't hit the gritty before leaving here today, then find a new line of work, buddy. Veterans in our country are being taken care of. Many of them are ending up committing slurslide. Many of our veterans are coming home and unaliving people at Mormon churches all over the country. Boy, that's a story that dropped out of the news really quick. Oh, yeah. I mean, even the Kirk thing now, you're just seeing the most insane AI memes being made by like gropers, and people just are like, eh, what are you going to do? Let's just podcast about it. I don't know. Who knows why he did this, but it does seem like it's a retaliation against Mormons for the guy who killed Charlie Kirk, allegedly. Oh, yeah. Well, they also want to address the ******* epidemic of big old women smashing glass bridges with boulders. I was literally going to go to the Rocky National Park the other day to see my favorite glass bridge, and it was closed down because this woman smashed a boulder through it. And people say that the dog... There was a kid that died. People say the dog saved the kid, but that was AI. That video is fake. Wait, what? But the stories are real. The stories are real, but the videos are fake. The video is just an approximation because... The recreation. You're right. No one was there to film it at the time, and the AI video is a faithful recreation of the large stone fat woman glass bridge incident in which a golden retriever saved a small child's life. And that golden retriever is now head of the US Marines. It's so dangerous, too, because you can impose security all around these parks, but they're going to get in, and there's boulders everywhere. So it's not like they're sneaking them in. They're just getting them while they're there. So I think we need to maybe have a boulder removal federal team. Maybe have the National Guard come in and remove boulders from the Rocky National Park. There are way too many rocks in America's national parks. They're dangerous. They're lying there. They're wreaking all kinds of havoc. People are tripping over them. And now big fat sows are using them to smash glass bridges and kill dozens of people. Even places like Italy and Switzerland, they have snipers. If they see a big old woman heading towards a glass bridge, and they think she might go for a rock, they will snipe them. I'm like, why isn't America doing that? Well, because our war fighters have had their hands tied by red tape and bureaucracy. If you're a giant fat sow in the national park, and you're thinking of doing this, I got four letters for you. F-A-F-O. Lock them up. And indeed, in the background of all this, Andrew, as you rightly pointed out at the beginning of the episode, Hegseth did order a new makeup studio to be installed at the Pentagon right by the briefing room. It says, your changes and upgrades to the Pentagon briefing room are nothing new and routinely happen during changes in an administration, a Defense Department spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. Cadet, where is your micro blade? Look at me, son. That contour is ----. Go back. Like R. Lee Ermey screaming at you about your skincare regimen. I bet you're the type of faggot that would put hand lotion on your face.