An Audience of One: Why Trump’s Generals Were Summoned to the Capital

There has been a lot of gossip in recent days following the announcement by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s defence secretary, that all the US’s senior officers had been ordered to Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia this week,

Why summon so many of the top brass, at short notice, and in person?

There was some chatter that Hegseth was going to unveil a new military strategy, perhaps even a significant overseas deployment - or even an intervention.

Others suspected a link with the standoff over the budget in Congress, amid talk of a looming government shutdown. Some suggested a major reorganisation: after all Trump has already sacked the chair of the Joint Chiefs, the chief legal officers of all three branches of the military as well as other senior officers in the last nine months. Maybe a cull was coming.

And then there was even some darker speculation about why the Trump administration wanted all the country’s senior officers in one room at one time; one contact wondered if it was Trump’s Ritz-Carlton moment: five years ago, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gathered hundreds of Saudi royals, billionaires and senior government officials at a luxury hotel in Riyadh - and separated them from a good chunk of their assets.

Trump was fulsome in his support at the time, tweeting:

I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing. Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!

Perhaps Trump was going to conduct a similar exercise in demanding demonstrations and proof of loyalty from the entirety of the military command?

If the generals were expecting a big announcement, they were in for a surprise. Instead discussion of the wars abroad, of America’s overstretched commitments or of threats from rivals in Asia, Russia, or of the Middle East, they were treated to one of the most surreal speeches I have ever heard

The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, started with a nod to history. The ‘Department of War’, he said, has an ‘origin [that] dates to fourth century Rome.’

Perhaps Hegseth knows his Roman history; but perhaps not. His reference - presumably to Vegetius - who wrote that if you want peace, you have to prepare for war - was written not long before the sack of Rome, the collapse of much of its empire and Western Europe descending into the gloom - for hundreds of years.

It is hard to think of a worse parallel to kick off with.

He then switched to biology. The reason why pacifism is so naive and dangerous.’ he said, is because ‘It ignores human nature’ . Warming to the theme of applied theory of evolution, he said: ‘either you protect your people and your sovereignty or you will be subservient to something or someone. It’s a truth as old as time.’

I’ll leave it to you to decide if that stands up to scrutiny. That last sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Hegseth’s aim was to use this framing to make a statement of strength:

We owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO.

Perhaps some of the generals know what FAFO means. I had to double check: F*ck around and Find Out.

Some in the room shifted uncomfortably, others remained poker-faced. The promise of invincibility is one that most senior officers might think privately, but are not foolish enough to say in public, let alone out loud:

We have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close.

Next came an outline of a clear and present danger.

This is a moment of urgency, mounting urgency. Enemies gather. Threats grow. There is no time for games. We must be prepared. If we’re going to prevent and avoid war, we must prepare now.

This surely, was why the generals had been summoned.

It was urgent, Hegseth went on, to fix

decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders.

The ‘decay’ was not hollowed-out arsenals or brittle alliances, but culture.

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the woke department.

He insisted on plain speech:

We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes, to just tell it like it is in plain English, to point out the obvious things right in front of us.

He was declaring if not a war, then at least an attack: an attack on what he called ‘toxic ideological garbage.’

The US military may be worried about the changing world, about budgets, about recruitment, about new technologies, about over-stretch - and more.

Hegseth did not talk about any of those.

He went on about the toxic ideological garbage, which, he said, had ‘infected our department.’

So, he said:

No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris.

Finally, Hegseth turned to appearance and fitness.

Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.

Here were men and women who have commanded forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Pacific and Europe, having to listen to a lecture about their waistlines.

Hegseth pressed on:

So, whether you’re an airborne Ranger or a chairborne Ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test… And we’re not talking, like, hot yoga and stretching.

How a brand new private or a four star general changes their height is a mystery to me. Perhaps there is forthcoming Ozempic medication that can make you taller, as well as thinner.

Hegseth was not finished. He didn’t say that tattoos are OK (because he has them). As of yesterday, beards are out.

No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.

It was not clear if he means all beards; or just ones which involve a lot of sculpting.

Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards.

So it’s time to smarten up.

Oh. And also to reintroduce some initiations to help create an esprit de corps. Well, at least some initiations.

Of course, you can’t do, like, nasty bullying and hazing.

But some light bullying is fine, he said.

And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.

More was to come from the man responsible for the world’s greatest fighting machine.

The time has come, he said, for new policies. One, he said modestly,

I call it the no more walking on eggshells policy

Explaining what that means, Hegseth said

No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

It’s time to be open, he said. So open, in fact, that less than 24 hours later, the Pentagon said that is going to introduce polygraph tests - and require NDAs, which gag those who sign them - for civilians and those in uniform.

A penny, then, for the thoughts of the men and women who had gathered for what was a dressing down, a telling off and a scolding. If standards are as low as Hegseth claims, then it was clear to everyone in the room - if not for the Secretary of War - that this is the fault of the generals themselves for failing to do their duty.

Worse, being told off is one thing; having that done in public, is something else. Some have been angry that they were forced to fly to Washington (around 30 miles from Quantico), rather than Hegseth coming to see them.

Rather than bolster morale, this is all but guaranteed to raise hackles - and demands for Hegseth’s head.

Washington has seen many odd spectacles in recent years. But this one will linger. The questions raised by the gathering remain unanswered: why bring the nation’s senior officers to the capital in the first place? And why risk alienating them at a moment when, by the administration’s own admission, ‘enemies gather’ and ‘threats grow’?

There is one obvious answer, of course.

Trump has complained about fat soldiers (he complains a lot about other people’s weight, despite his own generous girth); about odd beards; and presumably about why young recruits don’t get ‘toughend up’ the way they used to (there’s a good reason why, by the way).

So Hegseth’s performance - at the expense of the generals - was for an audience of one: this was all about showing loyalty and devotion to the commander-in-chief. The generals were hired extras

That is not normal in a functional democracy.

So a penny for the thoughts of the generals.

But I’d be surprised if those trained in the importance of the chain of command and of the imperative to follow orders are not fuming at what they’ve been made to sit through.

For those of us who watched and listened, it was like one of those films where a character picks up the bottle to check if they’ve drunk something stronger than they’d realised.