Gutfeld! Monologues - Secretary of War Hegseth and the Return of Meritocracy

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

As seen on Gutfeld! Greg talks about how Pete Hegseth is keeping up his promise to shake up the Pentagon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bill Swade. Good evening, everyone. So the White House says they now have federal approval to build a 250-foot arch in Washington, D.C. And according to the Army Corps of Engineers, it's the same design used to construct Nancy Pelosi's eyebrows. Amazon executives are discussing a reboot of The Apprentice with Donald Trump Jr. as a possible host. Not to be outdone, Joe Biden's son is starring in the new season of intervention. Senator Lindsey Graham recently said that the bubble wand that he was photographed holding at Disney World was not his. When asked where it went, Graham said that's between me and the emergency room doctor.

Yesterday and today, War Secretary Pete Hedith was grilled for hours by rambling morons. Asked how he stayed so calm, he said he'd already survived a three-year tour of duty on Fox and Friends. This week, a United Airlines flight collided with a drone over San Diego. The collision was so powerful, a male flight attendant briefly turned straight. Singer Ray J. is being questioned on the claim that he slept with 12,000 women. Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeet is being questioned on his claim that he slept with one woman. In Cincinnati, that's in Ohio.

An elderly couple has met every week for 36 years to enjoy a bowl of chili. They said, we've been together so long, we finish each other's farts. Finally, to help curb street prostitution, Oakland is installing tall barriers to prevent men. from accessing hookers.

Yeah, like that'll stop this guy. We'll be back with more Gutfeld. So Pete Heggseth testified for the first time since Operation Epic Fury began, where he dropped even more bombs there, including one on John Garimendi, who just hours earlier called it a quagmire. Secretary Hexeth, have you been lying?

Secretary Heseth, you have been lying to the American public about this. this war from day one, and so has the president. You have misled the public about why we are at war. When I said reckless, feckless and defeatist of congressional Democrats at the beginning, that came after watching you say the same thing on CNN this morning, a quagmire. My generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, years and years of nebulous missions and utopian nation building that led us to nothing.

The way you stain the troops, when you tell them, Months in, two months in, Congressman, you should know better. Shame on you. Nice. All right. It's weird, though. You know, Pete really hates the word quagmire. No wonder he got so upset when I told him it was my safe word. But two months. In the previous administration, that's how long it took Biden to walk across the Rose Garden. And in that time, do you know what the troops have undertaken, what they've succeeded? what they've undertaken, what they've succeeded, the success on the battlefield that creates strategic opportunities,

the courage of a president to confront a nuclear Iran, and you call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies, shame on you for that statement. Don't say I support the troops on one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That's a false equivocation. Who are you cheering for here? And you sit there and go on TV for your clickbait about quagmires.

It undermines the mission. your hatred for President Trump blinds you to the truth of the success of this mission. Yeah. So who are you cheering for, Congressman? We've erased Iran's military leaders

and new capabilities quicker than it takes Kamala to polish off a six-pack. We blockaded this straight of Hormuz, which Trump says is choking Iran like a stuffed pig, which shows that even after all these years, he still thinks of Rosie O'Donnell.

But Dems have a filter which turns every success and a hatred for Trump. In fact, they're now asking questions that were once off limits when sloppy Joe was snail trailing his way around the Oval Office. Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough? Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be the commander-in-chief?

Did you ask the same question of Joe Biden for four years? Mr. Secretary, Biden is not the president. The most insightful commander-in-chief we've had in generations. And you want to compare, I mean, you want to ask that question after you and your fellow Democrats defended Joe Biden, who could barely speak and didn't know what day of the week it was? He governed through an auto pen. He got a secretary of defense who went AWOL for a week. He's not wrong. Under Biden, our military became the shell of the force that wiped out the Axis powers and knocked out terrorists.

And what happened? The backbone of global security lost. its spine. The Pentagon promoted pronouns, pride events, and equity over lethal force, combat readiness and putting fear into our enemies. Troops were lectured on bias and standards were lowered to meet diversity goals. Thanks to our DEI dogma, our troops couldn't fight any battle that required storming two flights of stairs. They wanted to let in recruits who thought the battle of the bulge meant they get free Ozempic. The result, the Army missed recruiting goals year after year, the worst recruitment, crisis, and decades.

It got so bad they were selling surplus camouflage to the view in the hopes it made them harder to see. But I wonder if any of that's changed. Pete, is there anyone I should talk to? Talk to colonels and majors and staff sergeants and two-star generals, and you ask them about the environment of our military right now and its capabilities right now, compared to under the Biden administration, under Obama,

they will tell you it is night and day. And because this war department allows them to get back to basics, no more distractions, no more debris, it's simple accountability, training standards, lethality, and they respond to it. Low standards never inspired anyone. Just ask the entire staff of Jesse Waters' prime time. So none of this should come as to surprise to Democrats,

because before Pete ever got this job, He told you everything he was going to do. He wrote an entire book about it. In fact, he described his plan on America's premier brain trust for elite military strategy this very show. Take the vaccine mandate, take genderism, D-E-I-C-R-T, whatever it is. There's a new phrase called patriot extremism, which you learn about in the book that the military is using

to try to filter out normal, strong men from the ranks of the military. Meritocracy is dropping, standards are dropping, lethality is dropping, and it's social justice, politically correct nonsense. We've got one military. We either keep it and keep it lethal, or we don't have the ability to defend ourselves. Yep. But since the old regime taught the army to hate America, it made sense to them to make sure that they sucked at fighting. But Pete laid out his vision, rid the military of DEI, get back to lethality, bring back real physical combat standards, and stop apologizing for them. No more quotas or lectures about white privilege, just discipline.

merit strength because the job is to win wars abroad whenever necessary, not culture wars at home. But the real truth, and I say this as one who knows, Pete is the same exact person he was before he took the job, which makes him so terrifying to these bozos. He's an authentic, honest dude who stayed that way in the job, unlike them. No wonder they hate him so much. Let's welcome. Listen ad-free with a Fox News News news. Podcasts plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.