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I'm convinced that the real purpose of this meeting was to gauge the willingness of top military officers to support a coup. I would be surprised if their private conversations in response to this spectacle were not spied on.
Fortunately, at least in public appearance, they don't seem thrilled with this administration.
I think you're crediting them with more foresight, shrewdness and competency than has ever been demonstrated by this admin.
Trump and Hegseth are not the sharpest tools in the shed, for sure, but they're also not the ones really making decisions. Stephen Miller is possibly in charge? JD Vance's vassalage to dystopian surveillance tech titan Peter Thiel is another influence channel.
That's a fair point about where the buck ultimately stops, but I'm not sure the "AI regulations bring about the anti-christ" guy is the Lex Luthor he wants us to believe he is either.
**They declared war on America.
Encouraged war crimes (against American citizens)**
Enacted a bunch of racist and sexist shit (beard thing)
Announced they were planning on starting wars as soon as they feel like it
Rejected and alienated large portions of the American population from serving on the brink of WW3
Dementia Don rambled incoherently for a long time
Threatened the generals if they didn’t show fealty to the pedo king
Said the generals aren’t sexy enough for Pete
What he did is he proved to everyone he didn't know a thing about the military.
This is the most fascist speech in a while, and there's competition
hundreds of senior officers most of which are probably keenly aware that America will possibly be at war with China in the next 5 years, and with Russia uncomfortably sooner. And this cokehead carted them all to Virginia basically just to do hyper conservative virtue signaling like it was an election campaign.
Did you see all that winning in that room? So much winning. Shave. Don’t be fat. And then the orange man rambled about fucking nonsense for like an hour. I mean he said literally nothing coherent or relevant to the meeting. I was so fucking inspired and filled with warrior ethos I shit myself. It was awesome!
troops to Portland because TV.
This guy reminds me of every dick-less wonder that issues "return to office" orders just so they can walk around and micromanage people.
That was the most closeted TedTalk I’ve ever seen.
“We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans,”
Lol, there are a shit ton of those in the Navy so many Valknut and Vesgir tattoos
He is such an idiot. Oh yes, let’s lecture career officers about what a real fighter looks like. It’s all just optics. Idiot.
General Grant would like a word 
Bad optics, at that. Hegseth just created the single largest opsec failure that the US has seen in over a century and used it to complain to career military generals that they look too woke.
If literally any other man tried this at any other time in American history he'd be in front of a court martial so fast your head would spin.
He used to work for Fox News, of course he has a skewed view on the importance of optics.
Hegseth complained that as leader of this department he is constantly surrounded by unattractive, hairy, bear types. He wants to see nice smooth skin that is easy on the eyes and the military will require a more metrosexual look! He also wants to see more exercise and he needs hard bodies out there. The harder. The better.
Doesn't Taco have issues with beards, by the way? I wonder if he has talked to "JD" "Vance" about that beard of his...
fun fact. vances beard is just trumps signature.
Wait .. a white supremacist who rejects Viking Age cultural appropriation‽
The beard thing is targeted at POC in the military. Most black men can't closely shave without catastrophic damage to their faces.
Oh I know. It's just unusual for a tatted up white supremacist to not have some misplaced affinity for Vikings, based on the Nazified version of them rather than the reality. So for Hegseth to specifically call out a rejection of Nordic aesthetic is odd. The pagan part of his callout is weird, because Christian Vikings were very much a thing, too.
Plus we learned in Vietnam that racial tensions in your military doesn't make a effective fighting force. All you end up with is a whole bunch of dead white leaders with no way to tell if the enemy killed them or their own men.
I mean. so he says. beards are required with all kinds of religions.
Hegseth’s speech was met with a relatively muted response from the military brass.
Trump took the stage after him, noting that: “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before.”
Probably because this meeting ~~should~~ could have been an email.
It should have been no email. Nothing about this was necessary.
I'd feel so fucking stupid as a general being lectured by this dropout and a draft dodging president about how they won no war "because of woke". Absolute disgrace but to be expected for that admin.
His comment about beards is iterally the least problematic/newsworthy part of his speech. Why the fuck would you focus on this and not, I don't know, his straight outta 1984 "war is peace" statement? Extreme journalistic malpractice.
I agree they literally declared war on American citizens
So, I thought this was going to be some secret strategy briefing heralding some awful new global project. Instead it’s a couple little boys peacocking around bragging about how masculine they are to a captive audience.
I wonder how the generals and admirals feel about being pons in this loser’s bruised ego theater?
The least cool thing a person can do is brag about how cool they are. Same thing applies to masculinity. When you preform like this, you’re expressing how weak, afraid, unsure and incapable you are. That’s the maga cultural movement in a nutshell.
Fuck every single person in civilization leadership at this moment.
That and they declared war on American citizens and said war crimes are encouraged.
What did Hegseth think was going to happen? That all the generals were going to stomp their feet and hoot and holler? That they were going to pump their fists in the air and shout "YEEEAAAH!" ?
That sh*t might work on Private Pyle but those Generals had more important things to do and places to be. They're pissed that they've been summoned from all over the world by a guy who calls their troops "suckers and losers" to take part in a pep rally.
This is what CEOs of failing companies do to make themselves seem important on their sinking ship.
I feel like the chance of a military coup in the USA just went up 1000%. I’m sure there’s plenty of MAGAs in that military but there’s gotta be a lot who take their oath and tradition very seriously.
Yes, he insulted very high ranking officers.
Yes, it will piss them off.
But most unfortunately, some of them are going to resign "in protest" and be replaced by bootlickers who do whatever trump says.
That is the goal, it's not to get them on Trump's side, it's a desperate attempt to get the ones willing to fight to quit before they can really fight in a meaningful way
It's like a Nazi Ted Talk.
Thanks melania for making them look like Nazi foot soldiers too:
"Military leaders will need to pass height and weight tests each year."
Each year? Height tests? How many ppl losing height year to year?
If this is the case then it is to drive out black people. Most black people get no shave chits due ingrown hairs. Unless you are on the front lines, who gives a fuck. Fuck President kid fucker and his drunk lap dog.
No beards on generals? Must be the cope from having this handsome gentleman beat their asses all the way to Dixie and back!
