What Trump, Hegseth told the top military brass

The hundreds of generals and admirals who’d been summoned from around the world listened Tuesday as President Trump mostly “talked for 73 minutes about the same things he talks about almost every day, no matter where he is or to whom he is speaking,” says a New York Times analysis. Biden. The media. The border. The Nobel Prize.

But The Atlantic writer Tom Nichols, a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, writes: “As comical as many of Trump’s comments were, the president’s nakedly partisan appeal to U.S. military officers was a violation of every standard of American civil-military relations, and exactly what George Washington feared could happen with an unscrupulous commander in chief.

“The most ominous part of his speech came when he told the military officers that they would be part of the solution to domestic threats, fighting the ‘enemy from within,’” Nichols says. “He added, almost as a kind of trollish afterthought, that he’d told Hegseth, ‘We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but military — because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.’”

For Hegseth’s part, a separate Times analysis says his vision of the military and what it should be was almost entirely defined by his 12 months of service in Iraq and his experience as a major in the Army National Guard.

Much of his speech focused on the kinds of issues he would have dealt with as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq or as a company commander in the Guard. He talked about grooming (no beards), about physical fitness.

“To some, Mr. Hegseth’s speech was poorly matched to his audience of senior officers who in most cases are responsible for complex military operations such as the maintenance of nuclear submarines, the management of America’s global alliances or the development of complex air-tasking orders, such as the one needed for the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year,” the Times says.

Here is the reaction to Hegseth’s speech of Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot in the Iraq War who lost both legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Here is a video of Trump and Hegseth’s speeches, from PBS.

Here is the text of Trump’s speech, from Roll Call.

Here are some facts and context on Hegseth’s speech, from The Associated Press.

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