Wait what? Pete Hegseth just called youngsters too ‘fat’ and ‘dumb’
In the past couple of weeks, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been at the centre of a significant controversy regarding his department’s actions against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which were allegedly conducted under his orders. While this issue remains unresolved, and there have been calls for the video to be released that could either confirm or deny Hegseth’s involvement in the double strike incident, it appears that he has found himself in a new controversy, primarily due to his statements rather than his actions.
On December 18, 2025, Pete Hegseth gave a speech at the Recruiting Excellence Forum at the Pentagon, where he discussed the current challenges facing military recruitment. He congratulated the attendees for overcoming significant hurdles to be where they were and expressed gratitude for their hard work during recruitment efforts. However, despite his intentions to encourage the audience, his words were far from uplifting, as he struggled with his English, repeated himself multiple times, and took several long pauses, ultimately failing to convey a coherent message. What could have been a quick “good job” remark turned into a five-minute speech due to the demands of the situation. His good intentions backfired, making him sound like a child just beginning to learn how to use words together to form sentences. To give you a clearer picture of what I mean, here are the clumsy first few minutes of Hegseth’s speech, which he delivered to the recruits in the audience:
“..first and foremost, this is to say thank you and to recognise excellence, which is what we want to donhere uh, in every service. The best of the best, incentivise everybody to work hard and then reward that. So, you’re here. I know you got a day of activities and other things that’ll that are going on, which will have probably put you in the pole position to win again next year. Uh, keep going, and you know, as the president has stated, and he pays very close attention to, uh, these have been historic recruiting numbers.”
Hegseth then continued with his speech, acknowledging that he understood it wasn’t easy for his team to engage in the recruiting process, as many of the “young people” were “too fat” or “too dumb,” before quickly correcting himself and saying, “not dumb that’s wrong you know we’re just we’re just not educating them properly or they’ve got criminal records or PT (SD) or ADHD all these other things there’s a lot of things contributing to what someone uh may or may not qualify to get into the military.” Are you kidding me? Who says something like that? Ugh!
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