Hegseth Quantico Fiasco Included 70-Minute Ramble from Self-Absorbed Trump

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told military leaders Tuesday that “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.”

He then yielded the stage to the third heaviest commander-in-chief in history, Donald Trump, who demonstrated his unfitness for command with an embarrassing stream-of-consciousness rant that was more about himself than about the troops for whom he is responsible.

Trump rambled for an hour and ten minutes. Trump’s self-absorbed incoherence is exemplified by the five minutes in which he segued from discussing war in America’s inner cities, the Space Force and recruitment goals to briefing the military leaders who had flown in from around the world on paper quality and autopens:

(01:29:14)
In our inner cities, which we’re going to be talking about because it’s a big part of war now, it’s a big part of war. But the firemen go up in ladders and you have people shooting at them while they’re up in ladders. I don’t even know if anybody heard that but, and I said, don’t talk about it much, but I think you have to. Our firemen are incredible. They’re up in one of these ladders that goes way up to the sky, rescuing people, and you have animals shooting at them. Shooting bullets of firemen that are way up in death territory. You fall off that ladder, it’s over, it’s over. They don’t even have to inspect you when you hit the ground. And you have people shooting bullets at them in some of these inner cities. We’re not going to let that happen. So, I always mention the firemen because that’s actually a big

(01:30:00):

Big problem we have. They’re unbelievable. Like you, they’re unbelievable people. For the first time on record in 2025, the Navy, Air Force and Space Force all met or surpassed their recruiting goals three months early. That never happened before. And the Army did even better. Congratulations, Army. They met everything. And these were the highest standards because we’re making it larger. So these were much higher standards than you had four years ago, three years ago during the Sleepy Joe Biden era. And the Army did it four months early. And you remember a year and a half ago they said the big stories that were way behind with the Army, Air Force, the Navy, the Marines were way behind, Coast Guard and even Space Force. I love Space Force because that was my creation. When you create something, I love it. And the people we put in there were good.

(01:30:58)
I got that right. We put in great people initially and we’ve really dominated. We really dominate in that sphere now. We were way behind China and Russia and now we dominate. Space Force turned out to be a very important thing. I said from the beginning when Biden came into office, he wanted to terminate it. He said, “And this thing called Space Force, so we could get rid of that.” And he got hammered by the people in this room for even suggesting it because it’s very important, one of the most important. And as time goes by, it’ll get more and more important. But we’re now at 106% of our recruiting targets for the year, and that’s the best in far more than a generation. And for the Marines, morale is so strong that the Marine Corps will meet its 2026 retention targets before the end of October, which never happens. And that’s the earliest it’s ever happened in the history of our country.

(01:31:56)
And it makes you feel good. I felt guilty. I’d go make a speech in front of never people like you, you are the leaders, but people, soldiers. And I felt embarrassed because there’d be stories about we couldn’t fill up our Army, Navy, Air Force. We couldn’t fill them up. And it was headlines, his headlines. It was during Biden’s four years, the autopen. I call him the autopen. How would you like to have your things signed by an autopen? When I have a general and I have to sign for a general because we have beautiful paper, they’re gorgeous paper, I said, “There’re a little more gold on it. They deserve it.” I want the A paper, not the D paper. We used to sign on piece of garbage. I said, “This man’s going to be a general, right? I don’t want to use this. I want to use the big beautiful firm paper.”

(01:32:52)
I want to use the real gold writing when you talk about the position and they’re beautiful, but how would you like to have that where some kid sitting in the back office is having it signed with an autopen? I thought about it and I thought about you people first, admirals, generals. And I said, “Somebody works his whole life. He gets into maybe the academies or wherever, but however you got there and you go through years of work and now you become an admiral or a general or whatever. And when you do, the President of the United States signs your commission as you know. And that commission is beautifully displayed and I signed it. Actually, I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature. But I signed it very proudly.

(01:33:43)
I always think to myself, “How can you have an autopen sign this? It’s just so disrespectful to me. It’s just totally disrespectful.” It turned out that almost everything he did was signed by autopen except for what he gave his son, Hunter, a pardon. He signed that one. And that’s actually the worst signature I’ve ever seen. That was so bad. The autopen looks much better. But as leaders, our commitment to every patriot who put on the uniform is to ensure that American military remains the most lethal and dominant on the planet, not merely for a few years, but for the decades and generations to come, for centuries. We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us, and so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us. And we’ve had it recently [Donald Trump, remarks in front of military leaders at Quantico, 2025.09.30, transcribed by Rev].

Inability to maintain a train of thought—that’s not a high crime or misdemeanor, but surely it could be sued as grounds for activating the 25th Amendment.