Bulwark Takes - Snowflake Pete Hegseth’s War on Dad Bods

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

JVL and Andrew Egger take on Pete Hegseth’s strange, insecure reign over the Department of Defense.

Hey, everyone. This is JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Andrew Eger, and things are happening over the Department of Defense where the big, tough warlike warrior warfighters are feeling a little sensitive and really just want people to be nicer to them. And Andrew, do you remember when the Texas National Guard showed up in Illinois last week? Boy, do I. Yeah. Big moment. We had the governor of Texas tweeting about it and pounded his chest. with how Butch his elite war fighters were. And then we get the pictures of the gentleman from the Texas National Guard deep planning in Illinois. And some of them were a little husky. A little big boned.

That's okay. Big bone. I'll be in the National Guard and, you know, be ready to throw your weight around a little bit. Are you old enough to remember Silence of the Lambs? I've seen Silence of the Lambs. Jane Gun, the great Ted Levine going, oh, was she a big fat person? Was she a big fat girl? A little bit of that going on, and people out on social media clowned on Pete Hegseth over this, because he had just a few days before, given his big, like, I want you all doing pushups and chin-ups and shaving off your body hair and get all loyally and super not gay.

And anyway, over the weekend, Benengon announced that they had gone and replaced some of those. Husky, Texas National Guard soldiers with people who are more physically fit. And the defense secretary was on to the Twitter's beating his chest about standards are back. Yeah. Have you ever seen anything like this? It's really good. It's really funny on a couple. I mean, basically this is a story that's taking place on two levels, right?

You have the deployment of the National Guard that's going in. You have, you know, Pete Heggsett, God love him, you know, wanting to, wanting to enforce. standards and wanting to make make uh you know make sure that nobody's nobody's laughing at our troops make sure that that that everyone has has fear for our troops because they're war fighters and they're you know they're the best of the best they're the most lethal of the most lethal um and these are the people that he is trying to send into uh you know blue cities in a law enforcement role right which are literal wars all very macho yeah but then there's the other side of this whole thing which is that pete haggseth despite all of that sort of posturing and stuff is also extremely

sensitive to online critique, to the idea that, you know, like people are laughing at his different initiatives to the idea that, you know, people are letting down his initiatives and things like this. And so it's all kind of like a perfect storm here where you get these, you get this sort of like online clowning. Now look, these people who are going in, according to the actual government, the only thing these troops are there to do is to sort of assist local law enforcement in this sort of auxiliary role because that's what's allowed under the loss. Like, that's what they're saying in court. And, like, you could be a somewhat more heavy set, National Guardsman and do that job just fine. Right? So, like, it would be very easy

for Pete Hegseth to, uh, well, it would be easy for another guy in Pete Hegsett's role to just ignore this online clowning, right? Just, just, just, just keep doing what you're doing. Just, just keep soldiering forward, pushing ahead with, you know, the, the terrorizing blue cities and all these sorts of things. It's okay, buddy. Like, it's not, it's actually not that big of a deal. But, like, the idea that people are laughing at this stuff online is very, hateful to him. So not only do they go and pull those national cardsmen and, you know, replace them and basically say, well, you know, they were all rolled out so quickly. We didn't actually have time to put, put the correct standards in place that we otherwise would have, would have done

to get the, to get the fatties and the yugg goes out of there. But, but, but not only that, but you actually have Pete Hegseth, you know, sharing these articles now on X and saying, look, mission accomplished, we did it. We got, we got, we got the high BMI guys out of there. And, And, you know, things are now as they ought to be. It's really just an amazing story. I have a thing about, like, the idea of standards, because on the one hand, I believe that standards are good and that we should, we should hold people to standards, especially standards of, like, professional conduct.

But I do feel like the standards need to be tethered to, like, the actual job. Like, for instance, if you had somebody who was a painter, you would not ask. them to, like, pass a bunch of standards in sculpture. They're like, well, they're not going to be sculpting. They're going to be painting, right? And like with this, what you're doing is you're deploying the National Guard into American cities to do a quasi law enforcement role in which their job is to manage civilian interactions. I'm not sure that, like, any of that is really tied.

That's, that, again, we're looking for his training and disposition, right? Are they trained to do that sort of thing? Do they have the judgment and disposition to be able to do that effectively? Like, are they a size 32 waist? Didn't really bear on that. And this is where it gets to like the weird snowflakiness of Hegtseth. I want to read to you what he said when he was talking about just last week. Frankly, it's tiring to look at a combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops.

It's tiring. to him personally it gives him a tire to make some need his nap time you know what this is it's so weird it's so weird to be a super duper butch war fighting warrior tip of the spear and also to be so obsessed with what people are tweeting about you

yeah I mean it all for for Heggseth in particular and that this is like very much a psychodrama of this one guy. I mean, what it all comes back to is just sort of his, his personal obsession with image, right? I mean, he was in the military. He does have the military background, by all accounts, he did fine while he was in there. But ever since he has been in the military, he has been in sort of a series of these sort of like PR type roles, right, where he's running these nonprofits and raising money sort of like in a sort of troop adjacent space. Or he's on TV and he's playing this character of the morning news host with the military background.

and sort of like playing up the sort of military vet machismo and all of that stuff. And now, again, like carrying that forward into being the Department of Defense Secretary who was picked because Donald Trump really liked that image, right? Because Donald Trump sees him as the kind of guy who carries forward the appropriate sort of branding for the U.S. military. And it's just everything he does is shot through with this stuff where, you know, it's look again i i'm totally right there with you in terms of the standards like whatever physical jobs u.s service members need to be able to do it's important to you know that they be able to do

those and that they're important they be trained to those standards right i mean that stuff matters right 100% that stuff matters but for heggseth that stuff matters less than this idea that we're always talking about how much they matter and we're always you know we're always hustling to get there and we're always doing burpees you know on social media clips and do they like that part yeah Exactly. And again, and again, what the part is, you alluded to it just a minute ago, what the part is is very different if you are like deployed overseas in a like actual military context versus if you are deployed to Chicago. And again, Hegseth has completely collapsed all of this stuff, which is why, you know, it's, it's, even, even the guys who are deployed as National Guardsmen to Chicago, it's very big sort of national security crisis if they are not looking like Mr. Universe out there. One more Hegsaith quote here. It's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country and the world. I get a little crazy about this.

So time is finite, right? They're only 24 hours in a day. And look, I'm all for self-care. And people do a lot of times, there's a body-mind connection where to be your sharpest mentally, you need to be exercising your body physically. I totally understand that. But also, when you're a general or an admiral, your job is really logistics. You don't need to be able to pick up a pugil stick and, like, do American gladiatorship on behalf of the American darned forces. What you need to understand is, like, well, how do you move forces from place to place?

How do you ensure supply lines? This is, you know, there's an old joke in military circles about how, like, amateurs do strategy and professionals do logistics. And that's, again, it's just the weird fixation that like, I want my generals spending 90 minutes to two hours in the gym every day and not like sitting doing advanced analytics on how to manage supply lines for their command. Do you not understand what the job is, Pete? What I want to know is why Pete Hagezeth does not come out very forcefully lobbying for like a military dispensation for a Zimpic for every general, right? I mean, you just clean up a problem right away. You save all of that time for the actual duties involved, or, you know, these people to have some semblance of a life to maintain a grip on their humanity.

That's probably kind of important for our top generals as well. But, you know, just do that. And then your fat general's problem is solved much more quickly and simply, Pete. Yeah. The Mahas don't like that, though. They like HGH and Ivermectin, not a Zempec or Certralin. It's very, very complicated. So the other thing that happened is that if you are in.

media outlet that has not signed a pledge of loyalty to the Department of Defense, you lose your press pass over the Pentagon. And that loyalty pledge includes a promise not to solicit even unclassified information from any employee who has not been officially approved to release that information, which is a complicated way of saying not reporting. So it is a way of saying that if you have a press pass, the only thing you're allowed to publish are the things that we officially release to you. Yes, you are allowed to transcribe the press releases, and that is mostly the main thing under this. This has been a very weird story. Deadline is today, is Tuesday, and it goes into effect tomorrow Wednesday, which means, like, we are right on the cusp of

this. And it has been a weird story to watch because the Pentagon has already had to pull back quite a bit on what they were trying to get journalists to sign to, which was basically like, we promise that we will not do any reporting along the lines of what you just said. That was going to get signed by like zero percent of outlets. And that includes, you know, the most wildly pro-Trump places in the building. Like even one American News network was not prepared to sign that. So they have somewhat walked it back to to now being this weird sort of like halfway document where where they're saying, you know, the Pentagon expects that journalists aren't going to do any of this sort of thing. And And you journalists understand that we, the Pentagon, expect that you will do no reporting in the building or on military matters that we have not expressly authorized or otherwise.

And even this is just a ridiculous thing for the federal government to be making anybody jump through these hoops in order to be doing the basics of free press reporting and being able to do the mutually beneficial work of going to briefings at the Pentagon, hearing what the U.S. government line is on a lot of these sorts of things, getting a U.S. government spokesperson to answer their questions. and, you know, defend the case of what it is that they're trying to do. I mean, it's not like a, it's not like a, it's not like a privilege to these journalists to have this arrangement. It's, it's for the benefit of the government as much as anything else to have these things happen. And so they're in this weird situation now where, like, they obviously do want that to continue to happen. But they also, they can't really say they want that to continue to happen because they're MAGA, you know? I mean, it's a big part of MAGA that, like, the press is this just sort of stupid institution that shouldn't exist and you shouldn't never given the time of day. And so now, again, they're at this sort of halfway document.

Even the halfway document, though, nobody is signing it. I mentioned one American news before. They are the only ones who have signed this sort of revised version of the document. You know, all the big publications, Washington Post, New York Times, the Atlantic, you know, Shusied a press, CNN. They are not signing this document. I believe. As of your city reporting, and newsmax. Even other right-wing publications. Yes, Newsmax has not signed. Both the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner have said they're not going to sign. Fox News. Hasn't said one way or another yet. So maybe about the time we published this video, they'll have, I mean, they're in an

awkward spot because, you know, they're huge, the biggest, by far the biggest publication on the right and Pete Heggseth is like formerly one of them. So it's kind of awkward. But, but, you know, it's, and none of the trade publications either, like none of the actual like, you know, military focus. Yeah, exactly. So, so they're, they're looking at a situation where like Pentagon press, press briefings starting tomorrow are going to be like one guy from OAN.

It's just like, is that actually? Pete Hegseth, the whole thing is so sort of shambolic and silly, and this has been so true of his tenure in particular, like, all these initiatives. I don't know. It would all be really, really funny if it were not, again, like the U.S. military. That's the butt of all of these shows here. Let me take the other side of this, though.

If you were Pete Hegseth, why isn't this a pure win-win? Because the reality is because, like, NPR and the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN and the AP, et cetera, et cetera,

are all responsible journalistic outlets and not propaganda outlets, they will still continue to call whenever they have a story, to call the Pentagon and get their side of it. They just won't be in the building. And so isn't this like Hegsef getting the best of all worlds? I kind of think you could imagine a world where there's a, you know, an anti-press defense secretary who feels that way. But I don't think that is really how like Maga operates.

I mean, like, so much of, of the MAGA sort of ethos around all of these things and the mystique, it's all geared around like, we are spurning you and we're flipping you off and we're spitting on you and we're kicking you and all that stuff. But you're still coming back. Like, you're still here, right? You're still in the room. It's, it's Donald Trump at every rally, like, getting everybody in the whole crowd to like turn around and do ritual, two minutes hate against all of the TV cameras in the press box and all the people there where it's like, you know, like, we are. are getting, like, you're in sort of a position of power. Like, you're the media in the mind of like a random Trump supporter. You're the media. You're, you know, you're the mainstream. You're, you're this big journalistic enterprise. But like, we're the ones who have the power here because we're the ones who are booing you and you're shaking our fist and yelling and having a good time. And you're going to keep coming back. And like that's that, that the sort of tension of those two things. Like, like if Donald Trump tried to do that and it was just one TV camera from one American News network, it would be a lot more boring. And I think like Pete Hegg said, he's a media guy. Right.

I mean, he wants to have them there to kick around, which is why. I mean, if he, if he just wanted them to all stop coming to the briefings, they wouldn't have budged on the original policy, right? I mean, they, they, they, they, the fact that they're doing this like sort of halfway thing now, and you've got, you know, Sean Parnell, the, the defense department spokesman kind of knitting his brow and her rumphing about how these guys are moving the goalposts on them, because, because all we're saying is that you need to understand that this is what we want you to do. You know, I mean, like it's like plainly they're trying to get to a place where the, enough people will sign it that they can keep like,

keep the whole thing going on without seeming to cuck on it. Yeah. So it's, I mean, they're in a really stupid, completely self-inflicted position here. I mean, again,

like I said, it is slash would be funnier if it were not that like, the clown institution here is the entire U.S. military and the goofballs we have running it. Yeah. It's kind of amazing that all those Republicans voted to confirm beat Hegsef as a secretary of defense, even when every last one of the,

one of them knew that this is like the least qualified guy to ever be nominated for a serious cabinet post. Many such cases. Can I can give you a like a weird hypothetical? Do you think if they could all do it over again like today, like today? If it was like, you know, if there were some amendment to the Constitution where 10 months in, you reassess the cabinet, do you think we'd have like the same vote as before? Or do you think that guys like Hegsat, guys like RFK, like they would actually get more pushback

the second time around? I actually don't know how I think that would go of the second time. second time. I am reasonably certain that none of them would change their minds even a little bit. There is a term in finance world when two counter, when a party and a counterparty are making a deal that they both know is bad, but they want to just get to yes anyway. And the term is, I'll be gone, you'll be gone. Which means that by the time the bad shit happens, this tranche of derivatives or this product or this stock split or this burgeon acquisition, by the time the bad stuff happens, it's somebody else's problem.

And I think that's probably how Republican senators view all of the Trump cabinet nominees. You could very well be right about that. I wish I were confident that you were not right about it. Yeah. Same. Same. All right. Well, it's great.

I'm very happy that Secretary of Defense Hegeseth is getting his laser hair removal and getting baby oil all over himself and getting super hard-bodied. I'm sure that's going to really help our military. God forbid we ever find ourselves in a shooting war with China. Hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. Come sit with us, ride shotgun as American democracy goes on a rocket's led to hell. Good luck to America.