Free Republic

Pete Hegseth’s Saturday begins with personal training. The Secretary of War, @SecWar on your socials, is very fond of working out with the troops – something most defense secretaries have done without someone dutifully filming the experience for Instagram. Then he heads off to the Reagan National Defense Forum, the annual gathering of war hawks, policy nerds and defense contractors in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth, the veteran of the Global War on Terror, is there to fulfill his mission of denouncing the neocons. “Out with idealistic utopianism, in with hard-nosed realism,” he declares, insisting the United States will no longer...

On Monday, President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced a new series of what they called "Trump Class" battleships, a new initiative to revamp and restore the maritime industry and shore up America's maritime dominance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also in the Oval Office and offered remarks. Navy's new class of Large Surface Combatants: THE BATTLESHIP.The most lethal surface combatant ever constructed. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7AH5G4IJj5— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 22, 2025The president was flanked by images of the first Golden Fleet battleship, "The U.S.S. Defiant." Trump opened his remarks...

This mom reflects what most Americans think.

Secretary of Wars statements on reforms regards the chaplaincy in the DOW. https://www.facebook.com/reel/921466543875201/?mibextid=ZZyLBr

The criticisms against Sec. of War Pete Hegseth are “entirely political,” and anyone could have said the same things about “the Obama and Biden administration—and much more egregiously.” Hegseth has turned the U.S. military around in ways no one thought was possible, like getting the military back to meeting all of its recruiting quotas, explains Hanson during today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” Recruitment under the Biden administration fell “some 40 to 50,000 recruits,” and former Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin’s Pentagon used excuses like “people are out of shape, in gangs, using drugs, etc.”

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has pledged to toss “New Age notions” in America’s Chaplain Corps and make the military body “great again.” “In recent decades, its role has been degraded in an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism,” Hegseth said of the Chaplain Corps in video message released Tuesday night. “Chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers,” Hegseth said, adding “faith and virtue were traded for self-help and self-care.” Across all branches of the U.S. military, there are estimated to be 3,000 to 4,000 military chaplains. The Chaplain Corps was established in 1775...

Two U.S. soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed during an attack Saturday near the city of Palmyra, Syria, according to the Pentagon. Three additional U.S. soldiers were wounded in the assault, the Pentagon added. President Trump in a social-media post called it “an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria.” He warned “there will be very serious retaliation,” adding that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al Qaeda and Islamist rebel commander, “is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”

To order the killing of people shipwrecked is clearly illegal according to military justice, according to our own military laws. If our pilots have to eject from a plane, we show that we don’t shoot people. We don’t shoot pilots that are descending by parachute. If we blow up a boat and there are survivors we don’t shoot those people. We don’t sidle up in a boat and take a nine millimeter pistol out, put it to their head and shoot them. Nobody would do that.” “But just because the missiles come from a long distance doesn’t make it any...

Pete Hegseth “runs around on a stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. … That’s not the message that needs to come from the Secretary of Defense,” complained Sen. Mark Kelly last week. The message, especially coming from a former Navy captain, is so bizarre it borders on satire. Nations have had organized armies since recorded history started around 3000 B.C. And, in the words of the late, great Rush Limbaugh, the whole point of having a military is to kill people and break things, even if that military is exclusively employed for defensive purposes. Surely even...

Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley told lawmakers today that there was no “kill them all” order on an alleged drug boat in September. According to the Associated Press, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Bradley “was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.” Cotton also said the video of the strike showed the two survivors “trying to flip their boat back over and continue their mission.” The Democrats, on the other hand, tried to portray the alleged drug runners as “shipwrecked sailors.” From Fox News: Still, [Rep. Jim] Himes said the...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should testify before Congress “under oath” about the orders to strike suspected Venezuelan drug boa “I think he should testify under oath about the orders that were given, and I think that the video of the distressed, shipwrecked or incapacitated people on those boats being bombed, that video should be shown to every American,” Paul said

Pete Hegseth is facing a calculated smear campaign because he threatens the entrenched establishment reshaping America’s military into something weaker and more political. I have had enough. I can no longer sit still while the Deep State does its very best to smear Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and have him removed from his post via lies, rumors, propaganda, and innuendo. It feels exactly like version 2.0 of the “Trump/Russia Collusion” disinformation campaign, and it needs to be called out for what it is. Enough. I am here to defend the best Secretary of War/Defense since Caspar Weinberger. What we...

Democrats and the media have been trying to whip up a story about the Trump administration taking out drug boats. They thought they had something with a story from the Washington Post that claimed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered a second strike on a drug boat when there were survivors in the water. I reported how Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) made troubling comments about the military "may help save us from this president and his lame people like Hegseth" because their "commitment is to the Constitution and obviously not to Trump." He was saying that in response to questions...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Tuesday for his role in the controversy surrounding the strike on a suspected Venezuelan narcoterrorist cartel boat on Sept. 2. “Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this, and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen. And then the next day, from the podium at the White House are saying it did happen,” Paul said while speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. “So, either he was lying to us … or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.” Paul also...

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that he only learned of a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat to finish off two survivors “a couple of hours later.” Hegseth disavowed responsibility amid a congressional outcry over the Sept. 2 follow-up attack on the wrecked vessel.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September following a bombshell Washington Post report that claimed he ordered the military to “kill everybody.” Leavitt told reporters at the White House press briefing that Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out the second strike, which reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel after an initial strike. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting...

The week-old media frenzy over the sinking of a drug-running speedboat by the U.S. military in international waters on September 2 showed the first signs of winding down today. The issue was driven by a Washington Post account that was as much a paint-by-numbers narrative and a Rorschach test for your feelings on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as it was investigative reporting; see Washington Post Accuses Pete Hegseth of 'Illegal Order' to Kill Drug Runners, but Is It Real? – RedState. The article claimed that Hegseth instructed military commanders to kill "[t]wo survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck."...

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the United States has “only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” a blunt call to escalate direct action against cartel operatives. Hegseth reinforced the message in a separate post, vowing that the campaign against transnational drug cartels has entered a new phase. Together, the remarks underscore a growing push inside the national security establishment to treat cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and confront them with military force.In a Friday night post on social media, Secretary Hegseth bluntly and boldly stated, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”The secretary doubled down two minutes...

On Oct 25, Xue Jian, Consul General of China in Osaka, used “beheading” language toward U.S. @SecWar Pete Hegseth. This must be translated and reported to the U.S. government. A China diplomat threatening to behead a U.S. official should be widely exposed!

The Japanese government on Monday demanded explanations from China after Xue Jian, the Chinese consul general in Osaka, threatened to “cut” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s “dirty neck.” Xue, in a now deleted social media post on X (formerly Twitter), reportedly threatened Takaichi over remarks recently issued by the prime minister regarding Taiwan. According to the Tokyo Weekender, the Chinese diplomat’s message read, “We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?” The now-deleted social media post included a link to a news article covering comments made...