Hegseth’s Hypocritic Oath
- defendingladyliber
- Oct 5
- 11 min read
Our military deserves the best most capable leaders.
On September 30, 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered words of wisdom to our nation’s top military leaders(1):
“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.”
I could not agree more. In this letter, I will say with my words what is obvious right in front of us: Hegseth is dangerously incompetent and risks undermining our nation’s military strength and the lives of our military personnel.
Imagine you are on the hiring committee for a new CEO of a very large, complex and critically important organization. You interview three candidates:
Candidate 1 | Candidate 2 | Candidate 3 |
|---|---|---|
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Now imagine the organization is the newly-renamed Department of War with an annual budget of nearly one trillion dollars (approximately 20% of all the taxes we collectively pay annually), manages approximately 3 million employees/contractors, and has a mission so critical that, if it fails, it will result in the deaths of countless Americans (2-5).
Which of these candidates would you select for this extremely important position?
Understandably, Trump excluded Candidate 1. The only rational and wise selection then is Candidate 2. Unfortunately, all of the qualified people who fit the profile of Candidate 2, of which there are many in our nation of 340 million people, were purposefully ignored by Trump. Instead, he selected someone who matches Candidate 3: Pete Hegseth.
To invoke the crude acronym that Hegseth used in his speech, Trump, by selecting Hegseth as Secretary of War, is “FA” with the security and stability of our nation and, sadly, it is the American public who are “FO” the consequences.
To be clear, Hegseth deserves respect and appreciation for honorably serving our country in the Minnesota National Guard and Army National Guard, earning two bronze stars. However, his record as a soldier does not in-and-of-itself make him qualified to serve as U.S. Secretary of War, any more than being a part-time NFL punter would make one competent to be head coach of an NFL team.
Here is a brief history of Hegseth’s resume I compiled, highlighting his lack of experience (6-9):
2003 Graduated from Princeton with Bachelor of Arts degree in politics
2003 Worked at Bear Sterns as an equity market analyst
2003-2006 Served in Minnesota Army National
2004: Served tour as a platoon leader guarding prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
2005: Served a tour as a civilian liaison officer in Iraq
2006 Worked at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
2007-2010 Served as executive director for Vets for Freedom
2009-2014 Served in the Minnesota Army National Guard
2009: Served a tour as a counter-instrugency instructor in Afghanistan
2012 Formed the MN political action committee
2014 Unsuccessfully ran in the Minnesota U.S. Senate Republican primary
2013-2016 Served as president of Concerned Veterans for America
2017-2024 Co-hosted the television program Fox & Friends Weekend
2024- U.S. Secretary of War
Even if Hegseth had performed exemplarily in all of his positions prior to becoming the U.S. Secretary of War, he still would not be anywhere near qualified enough for that position. More alarming is that Hegseth has a long record of negligence and malfeasance in his prior leadership positions.
In 2010, he was allegedly forced out of Vets for Freedom due to fiscal mismanagement (6). Similar allegations cropped up with his management of the MN political action committee where reportedly one-third of funds were spent on parties (6). In 2016, he was allegedly forced to resign as president for Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) for inappropriate sexual behavior, frequent intoxication at work events, and mismanagement of the organization’s funds (6)(10). He also settled a sexual assault allegation in 2020. His extremely unprofessional behavior was described a member of CVA who witnessed it first-hand, as reported by The New Yorker (6):
A separate letter obtained by The New Yorker, which was e-mailed by a different staffer on November, 2015, to Pak, Hegseth’s successor, expresses the upset that Hegseth’s behavior caused. “The organization is owed the truth,” the staffer wrote before he described two incidents that, he said, “change my perception of Mr. Pete Hegseth,” especially “as the face of C.V.A.” He went on to recount what took place in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. On May 29, 2015, the staffer said, Hegseth and someone travelling with the group’s Defend Freedom Tour closed down the bar at the Sheraton Suites Hotel. The duo yelled “Kill All Muslims” multiple times, in what the staffer described as “a drunk and a violent manner.” Hegseth’s “despicable behavior,” he wrote, “embarrassed the entire organization.” He went on, “I personally was ashamed and . . . others were as well.” The staffer’s letter cited a second incident in which, he wrote, Hegseth “passed out” in the back of a party bus, then urinated in front of a hotel where C.V.A.’s team was staying. “I tell you this because it’s the truth,” the letter concluded. “And I sincerely care about the mission of C.VA and the future of my kids and the country.”
For all his faults, Hegseth delivered words of prudence during his speech that we should all pay heed to:
"No plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and right culture…Our war fighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders…We cannot go another day without directly addressing the plank in our own eye, without addressing the problems in our own commands and in our own formations.”
Secretary Hegseth is absolutely right. No plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately succeed while he is Secretary. He is not a capable military leader by any reasonable standard. He is a plank in the eye of our nation's military.
But, again his words ring true:
“The new War Department golden rule is this: do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child's unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops or alongside people who can't meet basic standards, or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in, in a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and warfighting? The answer is not just no, it's hell no.”
Does Hegseth meet the standards to be U.S. Secretary of War? Was he promoted to his position based solely on merit?
The answer is not just no, it’s hell no!
The standards for the position were bent so low that Trump filled it with a guy whose most extensive professional experience was co-hosting a morning political program. It is as if we have entered a scene from the movie Idiocracy, only with real-life consequences.
In comparison to Hegseth, our most recent U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, served in the military full-time for over 40 years; earned the rank of 4-star general; graduated from West Point; and had extensive leadership experience in the military, including commander of CENTCOM, arguably the most important military command (11).
Hegseth’s lack of competence was laid bare in his Senate confirmation hearing. Senator Mitch McConnell, one of the few Republicans who risked the ire of Trump, did exactly as Hegseth suggested and pointed out the obvious: Hegseth is not qualified to be U.S. Secretary of War.
As reported by Fox News (5):
McConnell said "dust on boots" in reference to Hegseth's military service "fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job."
"Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests," the senator said. "Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been."
McConnell stressed that Hegseth, in his testimony before the Armed Services Committee, "did not reckon with this reality" that the U.S. "faces coordinated aggression from adversaries bent on shattering the order underpinning American security and prosperity."
…
The senator also said Hegseth's testimony lacked "substantial observations on how to defend Taiwan or the Philippines against a Chinese attack, or even whether he believes the United States should do so." McConnell said Hegseth failed "to articulate in any detail a strategic vision for dealing with the gravest long-term threat emanating" from China.
The concerns of McConnell proved prescient. Months after assuming the role as Secretary, Hegseth carelessly used an unapproved app to send details about a pending airstrike to civilians, including his wife, his brother-in-law, and a journalist. When the journalist made the mistake public, Hegseth did not accept responsibility or pledge to prevent it from happening again, as any effective, principle-based leader would do. Instead, he tried to sidestep the issue by personally attacking the journalist.
More broadly, Hegseth’s lack of leadership skills has caused disarray in the Department of War. As one senior defense official noted, “There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” (12)
In March, he negligently suspended military aid to a key U.S. ally fighting against one of our most dangerous adversaries, without even consulting the Commander in Chief. Thankfully, the White House quickly intervened and reserved the decision. (13)
In September, rather than focusing his efforts on the U.S. military’s greatest risks, such as China and cyberwarfare, Hegseth decided it was prudent to spend his time and the department’s focus on surveilling and persecuting military personnel for negative posts about Charlie Kirk’s killing (14).
These actions are in direct contradiction to his sagelike words in his recent speech:
“Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best and most capable leaders.”
For which he is not one of them. The Secretary's speech on the 30th of September would have been more aptly named “Hegseth’s Hypocritic Oath”, a perversion of the Hippocratic Oath, where one pledges a pursuit of hypocrisy versus a pursuit to do no harm. To which he made good by stating:
“I've made it my mission to uproot the obvious distractions that made us less capable and less lethal.”
Mere minutes later, he created an obvious distraction by making the weight management of our nation's military leaders part of his mission by stating:
“...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.”
In other words, looking good is now a core competency for military leadership. Let’s dub this the ‘Hegseth Standard’: Looking good is required, while competence at your core job responsibilities is optional. Personally, I would rather have a morbidly obese yet supremely competent Secretary of War, than the physically fit yet incompetent Hegseth.
Although fitness standards are essential to combat arms positions, it is an irrelevant standard to apply to military leadership who have zero likelihood of being in combat mission. Not to mention, Hegseth was either careless or brazen to apply a new standard that his own boss so clearly does not meet. One must wonder, does Hegseth turn his head in disgust when he sees our portly Command in Chief lumbering down the halls of the Pentagon?
Hegseth further shows his zeal for the Hypocritic Oath by having the audacity to righteously state that:
“Every parent deserves to know that their son or their daughter that joins our ranks is entering exactly the kind of unit that the secretary of war would want his son to join. Think of it as the Golden Rule test. Jesus said do unto others that which you would have done unto yourself. It's the ultimate simplifying test of truth.”
How could one argue with the wisdom of the Golden Rule? That is, unless you are a parent of a child who happens to fall into one of the segments of the U.S. population that our Commander in Chief continues to debase and dehumanize. In that case, I believe Hegseth will damn his God in favor of his Sith Lord, and be the first to cast a stone at your child for not fitting in with “the kind of unit that the secretary of war would want his son to join.”
Case in point, Hegseth’s Department of War forcibly discharged nearly 1,000 American military personnel simply for being themselves despite the merits of their performance. (I wrote about this in detail in Duty, Honor, Country). While I strayed from the religious path long ago, I recall one of its core teachings: Jesus loves and accepts all. Period.
Hegseth draws upon the Roman Empire for inspiration in his speech. I will do so as well and remind the Secretary of the wisdom of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest leaders and military minds in history:
“Remind yourself that the task at hand is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.” (12)
Hegseth concludes his speech by putting his leadership acumen in full focus:
“Finally, as President Trump rightly pointed out when he changed the department name, the United States has not won a major theater war since the name was changed to the Department of Defense in 1947. One conflict stands out in stark contrast, the Gulf War. Why? Well, there's a number of reasons, but it was a limited mission with overwhelming force and a clear end state.”
To point out the obvious, the inference that the name of the department had any direct effect on U.S. performance in post-WWII conflicts is hopelessly ignorant. Not to mention the Allied Commander of the Gulf War was General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf, a widely respected general who was far from svelte. Would Hegseth have purged him from the ranks of our military and deprived our nation of his expertise simply for not fitting into skinny jeans?
Granted, these are arguably small infractions of Hegseth’s logic. The major infraction has much more grave consequences for our military and the lives of our soldiers and personnel. Hegseth posits that U.S. military missions are only successful if they include overwhelming force and a clear end state. To which, many would respond, “Hear, hear!”
Yet after being in their positions for the better part of a year, neither he nor the President have laid out a clear end state for the two armed conflicts we are involved in (Ukraine-Russia War and Israel-Gaza-Iran conflict) and have been reluctant to provide our allies with the overwhelming force to win them. His likely words resonate with many within and outside of the military. Unfortunately, although his words hold wisdom, his actions only reinforce that he lacks the requisite expertise to do anything more than utter them.
Hegseth is a photogenic, eloquent speaker who aligns with the vision of the Commander in Chief. For that, there is arguably a place for him at the Pentagon, just not as its leader. He rightly praises the need for military leaders to be the most capable and competent among us, who meet the highest standards, and are in their positions based on merit alone.
If he believes the principles that he passionately delivered, he should acknowledge that his presence as the U.S. The Secretary of War directly undermines them. My words may sound harsh, but as Hegseth himself said:
“...first and foremost we must restore a ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards…Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit.” (1)
Hegseth should do the honorable thing and put his country above himself. He should resign immediately and exchange his suit and power tie for a pair of olive drab spandex shorts, a FAFO sweatshirt, and a cone megaphone, assuming the role for which he is competent: Trump’s Chief Military Cheerleader.
