Donald Trump will attend a speech given by his Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth this week to the nation’s top brass, who are flying in from all over the world to hear the former Fox host talk critically about the military’s mentality.
The Washington Post reported that a White House planning document was issued Saturday advising officials of the president’s updated schedule, which will now include an excursion to Quantico for Hegseth’s address.
According to the Post, the move will add a significant cost to the top of an already climbing price tag surrounding the meeting itself, which involved high-ranking officers flying in from as far as Europe and the Indo-Pacific, along with support staff. The cost was already estimated in the millions.
“We have confirmation from the White House that POTUS is now attending the speech on Tuesday,” reads the document obtained by the Post. Trump had been asked by a reporter last week if he’d attend during an Oval Office event; the president demurred at the time.
Hegseth’s address will reportedly be centered around restoring a “warrior ethos” in the military.
In practice, his tenure as secretary has been defined as a focus on the hard-nosed aesthetic of the U.S. armed forces, with flashy promotions and other changes to the service, such as cancelling DEI efforts and renaming the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” becoming his top focus.
The White House and DoD have also gleefully publicized the destruction of several Venezuelan ships alleged by the U.S. government to be transporting narcotics, which some experts say are violations of international law.
Vice President JD Vance questioned reporters for covering the story of Hegseth summoning hundreds of brass to Virginia, an act which confused members of Congress and was described by active-duty and civilian defense officials alike as a waste of time and money.
“Why is that such a big deal?” Vance asked reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.”
But the speech could have broader implications than merely annoying generals and admirals, while racking up fees for the government. It could also potentially lead to some of those high-ranking officers being essentially stranded away from their command posts in the event of a government shutdown, when non-essential government functions are largely shuttered. A shutdown is set to begin at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday morning, if a funding extension is not passed through Congress before then. Republicans, despite controlling both chambers of Congress, do not have the votes to pass any funding extensions without Democrats getting on board.
Multiple currently-serving officials, speaking anonymously, trashed the effort as an expensive distraction in comments to reporters this past week, withholding their names to protect themselves from Trump’s retribution.
“Spending millions of dollars to jerk the entire military’s leadership to a short speech seems wasteful unless it’s an emergency,” one former defense auditing official told the Post last week.
As secretary, Hegseth has led the charge in bringing MAGA’s aesthetic vision to a reality in the U.S. armed forces. His efforts have often clashed with existing department policy and the advice of more senior officers.
He ordered a 20 percent reduction in the number of four-star generals and admirals earlier this year, and last month, reportedly fired a lieutenant general after the agency he led determined that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in May weren’t as effective as President Donald Trump has claimed publicly.
Top attorneys for the military branches have also been fired by Hegseth, under the assertion that they were not “well-suited” to their roles.
In January, Hegseth gave another speech about restoring the “warrior ethos” to the military after he was sworn in. During an address to U.S. troops stationed in Qatar, he insinuated that a “warrior ethos” essentially boiled down to a traditional conservative view of masculinity: “No more political correctness, gender pronouns, DEI, CRT, or climate change. We’re in the business of warfighting.”
