https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/hegseth-pentagon-town-hall.html
By John Ismay
Feb. 7, 2025
Hegseth Uses His First Town Hall to Attack Non-White, Non-Male Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coasties
The defense secretary, speaking to the Pentagon work force, defended his “unconventional approaches” to an audience that included women and people of color.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave his first public address to the Pentagon work force on Friday, spending much of the session defending his efforts to dismantle diversity and inclusion policies.
Mr. Hegseth opened his remarks by saying “all glory to God,” and said that President Trump had asked him not to maintain “the status quo.”
“We’re going to take unconventional approaches,” he said.
Speaking to a room filled with African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and white Americans, both men and women, he offered a full-throated attack on the military’s decades-long efforts to diversify.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” said Mr. Hegseth, who served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2001 to 2021 and is a former Fox News host. He later added that he dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the Pentagon because they “served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting the force.”
The U.S. military, which was racially segregated until 1948, has at times made an effort to be more inclusive to women and minorities, though it stood firmly against allowing gay men and women to serve openly until forced to do so in 2011.
Hogsbreath is a poseur, a phony, a shithead, a wimp, and a REMF.
UPDATE — THERE’S MORE
Mr. Hegseth said he had visited the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, near El Paso during a trip to the southern border this past week, noting that as the most senior enlisted soldiers in the service, sergeants major are responsible for maintaining standards among their troops.
“It starts with the basic stuff, right?” Mr. Hegseth said. “It’s grooming standards and uniform standards and training standards, fitness standards, all of that matters.”
As a civilian, he is often seen wearing an American flag pocket square in his suit coat, as he was during his Senate confirmation hearing last month, and sporting a full-color American flag belt buckle, as he did when Vice President JD Vance swore him into office as defense secretary and again onstage at the Pentagon on Friday.
Wearing the American flag as an article of clothing is prohibited by the U.S. Flag Code, which establishes proper and improper ways of respecting the national ensign. The Defense Department’s own website reiterates that in a 2019 article posted during the first Trump administration.
{snip}
As soon as the question-and-answer portion of the event began, the Pentagon cut the video feed.