This Is Laughable Truth About Trump's 'Tough Guy'

0:00This is a positioning speech to the MAGA base. Will the MAGA base like this? Am I saying things that will resonate with the MAGA bros? He's running for president, but he's also struggling not to be fired by the sitting current president. So he wants to hold on to his job, and then he wants the bigger job, which sort of defines every lackey in the world. He's a suck up. He's willing to do this. I'm positioned as a tough guy, but what I really am is a doormat, as a weak guy, willing to accept all manner of humiliation before Donald Trump.

0:46Michael. Joanna. We are still in our hotel rooms. We are still away and traveling. I'm in San Francisco. You're in London. That would put us about 6 ,000 miles apart. We're eight hours apart, eight hours apart, which is a feat of technical whatever. Don't forget, come and see us on October the 20th, Teregram Ballroom, LA. We're looking forward to seeing you. Ticketmaster has the tickets, if you would like to put one. They're going very fast. I'm not sure how many there are left. or beast.pub slash ith live. Michael? Or go to Ticketmasters and just put in inside Trump's head. So Michael, when we talked on Thursday, we said that we were going to double down as Donald Trump loves to do himself on Pete Hegseth, because there are so many rumors around that he may well be fired after the midterms if things go badly.

1:53Well, let me put on top of that, I mean, I think the reason to double down on Pete Hegseth is that he is now the guy at the center of the many crises of the Trump administration. He's at the center of the worst. I mean, the one thing that it would appear will compromise both houses of Congress and put Trump into a I mean, be the effective end of the of of what Trump might accomplish during his time as the president. And even more importantly, in he is Hegseth is at the center of a war that we shouldn't have begun, that we can't that we basically have lost and cannot get out of. He is the, if not the, yeah, I would say he is now the pivotal problem, one of the pivotal problems in the Trump administration.

2:54He's the point person for an enormous part of the world's pain right now. And one can't help wondering, Michael, what was it, do you think, about the urge to take a risk on Iran? Because everybody had advised them not to do this. They were ahead with the Maduro extrication from Venezuela. What do you think it was that made both Hegseth and Trump think that they could get away with Iran? There's an important distinction to be made here. It is not that Hegseth is the author of this war or even really a key decision maker in going to war. Hegseth has only one function, which is to rubber stamp what Donald Trump says, sometimes to anticipate what Donald Trump would like, always to be the person who is the ass kiss here.

4:08Right, the handmaiden to the commander in chief. So Higgs' real job, the job as the Secretary of Defense, would be to offer the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, all of the reasons we shouldn't go to war, all of the reasons that it might be an unwinnable war or a difficult war to win or a costly war. and and clearly he didn't do that in any way he's not even in a position to do that Donald Trump would not construe the job of the secretary of defense to do that he's the guy waiting there what do you want to do he's the guy he's the guy how you know um jump how high and that's what he that's what he did so um so this and let's understand that the background to this is is he is unfit for this job inexperienced for this job not to mention all the personal baggage he um uh he brings to this this job but he is he is and that's the nature of the of the crisis here the person who is the secretary of defense one of the most complex leadership jobs in the United States, probably in the world.

5:33I mean, I believe that the Defense Department may be the biggest employer in the United States. I think it may be the biggest employer in the world. A complex management task that some of the most senior managers in in American business have been unable to deal with, actually. So here we have Hager's, the co-host of a weekend television show. And that's what he brings to this job. Well, he brings a lot to the job. We saw him huffing and puffing because he's obsessed with physical fitness. In San Diego last week, he was working out with the troops and, of course, in the very city that Donald Trump had said, well, you know, what a price to pay.

6:28Maybe that's the price to pay if Iran takes L.A. and San Diego out. So you have made the point that despite the fact that Hexeth is possibly the least equipped, least experienced, least appropriate person to lead the American military, he nevertheless has the presidency also in his sights. And last week, he gave his second state of the force speeches, where it was very clear that he was laying out his platform, A, to attract the MAGA base post-Trump, But B, to lay out his platform for presidency beyond his current job. And I guess it doesn't matter if he survives his current job or not, he's still going to run, right?

7:14Just to point out that litany of things that one might say would handicap him, his unfitness and inappropriateness and go down the list. None of those things apparently at this point in history preclude you from being president. In fact, in Donald Trump land, in Trump land here, it might actually qualify you to be president. If healthier looking hair and skin have been on your mind, this might be your sign to stop putting it off. I received the iRestore Elite and Illumina face mask and what I love is how easily they fit into your routine. The Elite is comfortable enough to wear while working or watching TV and it uses 300 lasers and 200 LEDs to help regrow thicker, healthier hair.

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8:52Just head to iRestore.com and use code BEAST. That's BEAST at iRestore.com. And please support our show and tell them we sent you. Give your skin and hair the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident and refreshed. Much has been made. This speech has been poured over by the media, by analysts. There's no beardos, no weirdos, no trannies. We know all that. There was one part which I think sort of sums up Hegseth and comes, I think, from his background in the military. And it's really at the cultural divide of what's going on in the military right now and also the cultural divide of actually what's going on in America.

9:37And I'm going to read the particular paragraph that I think really sums up the speech in which he divided the speech into six new initiatives. And we can come back to that at a later date. But this is the paragraph that I thought encapsulated what Pete Hegseth is running on and his own experience in the military. The power is back in the hands of commanders and NCOs, not lawyers and HR reps. very important. And we'll come on to why. Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass, that awful colloquial speech. That's not discrimination. That's leadership.

10:18We have ended the poisonous culture of risk aversion. Oh, really? If only they'd decided to avert the risk of going into Iran. And empowered leaders at every single level to simply enforce standards. The only focus, as you know, in your formations should be training, readiness, accountability, availability, discipline, and lethality. And when you pursue those things, you don't have to walk on eggshells. No more social engineering, no more weaponized IG policies. The complainers, the ideologues, and the poor performers are no longer in the driver's You see, no more silly PowerPoint trainings or drag queen shows, no more diversity quotas, no more gender pronouns, no more identity months.

11:09I mean, you talked about how Donald Trump during the first administration, the minute he saw a PowerPoint presented by one of the joint chiefs, he was at the door. Right. He couldn't stand it. And I will tell you, so that's the line. And all of this goes into it. To assemble these speeches is an assembly of the things that Donald Trump has said because you think, well, we'll say those and we'll repeat that back to him. And that will get a positive response from Donald Trump. So this speech is a has two audiences. It has an audience of one. And we know who that is. But then we also have we're also speaking to a MAGA base.

11:49So this is not really about the military. It's not really about running, running the Pentagon. It's not really about the war. This is a positioning speech to the MAGA base. Will the MAGA base like this? Am I saying things that will resonate with the MAGA bros, in essence? So it is completely a campaign speech. Nothing here means anything except a positioning statement. Right. And I will just shout out one other thing. He's very sucky-uppy to Donald Trump in this speech. Simply put, thanks to the courageous and common sense leadership of our commander in chief, Donald A. Trump, the state of our force is today stronger than it's ever been in our nation's history.

12:44So at the same time, realize he's running for president, but he's also struggling not to be fired by the sitting current president. So he wants to hold on to his job and then he wants the bigger job. So, I mean, which is which sort of defines every every lackey in the world. But I'm particularly struck by this speech because I talked to a very senior member of the American military a few months ago about Pete Hexeth. And he said that, you know, the senior... Can you tell us who? No, I can't tell you who. I absolutely can't tell you who. Can we guess? No, you can't guess. But what was fascinating was the depth of...

13:29Is he in uniform? Is he in uniform? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Stop already. Stop already. I don't do this to you when you say that you've been talking to people in the White House. But the point of the conversation really was to, he was trying to explain to me the complexities in the military and the division of culture and really Pete Hegseth's own experience in Iraq when he was working for a character called Michael Steele, who people might remember because he was actually at the center of the the Somalia incident, which later became the focus of the movie Black Hawk Down, in which 18 American soldiers were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Somalia.

14:17And that left a deep, profound impression on Michael Steele, who then ended up running a large unit called the Rakasans in Iraq, which Pete Hegseth was then attached to. And then Hegseth himself ran a smaller command. So Pete Hegseth is running Charlie Company, and there's an incident where they're out on an operation and five unarmed Iraqis are shot and killed. I'm not trying to imply he was there. But then what unfolds is three of the soldiers who are involved try to cover up the incident. And of course, it becomes one of those things where the cover up is as bad as the crime and lawyers get involved.

15:11And there are whole court cases over it. And the soldiers themselves end up going to prison over it. And it centers around the command of this character, Michael Steele, and the fact that he had no interest in culturally understanding Iraq. He wasn't interested in learning the language. He was there only, as he said, to give the enemy the maximum opportunity to give his life for his country. Obviously, an ironic quote, meaning that they were there to kill as many Iraqis as they could, and that his experience in Somalia had really sort of toughened him to the point where he wanted his men to be as lethal as possible.

16:02And there was a very interesting piece that appeared in The New Yorker, actually 17 years ago, which quotes Hegseth in it. So this is way before Hegseth has gone on Fox television. It's way before Hexeth ends up amazingly running the American military. And it's a very detailed piece about this specific incidence. But it goes into Michael Steele in great detail. And this is a senior officer talking about the company. We were not doing Arab cultural awareness. We were not doing Arabic with Iraqi dialect language training. Instead, Steele instituted a harsh regimen of physical condition. He led the brigade on eight mile runs.

16:48And it goes into the extraordinary lengths to which he pushed his men physically to make sure that they were the most lethal force imaginable. And that is very much at the heart of the culture that Pete Hegseth was involved in when he was in Iraq. And, of course, we then saw that sort of we saw that spill over into the two veterans affairs organizations that he ran, where he was accused of inappropriate financial shenanigans, where he was in, you know, he was accused of being intoxicated on the job. Let me just clarify. So he was a protege of this Michael Steele. Yeah. And the feeling was, I think, that the military were handcuffed by HR rules and by cultural rules.

17:38And there was this very much a division in the military between the men that felt like this is war, they're insurgents, we have to meet them where they are. And we're just going to shoot as many of them as we can. And others who said you're only going to win by hearts and minds and reconstructing their country. And so, and if I'm, correct me if I'm mistaken, that Michael Steele then had problems with the brass that he became, was he kicked out of the, I can't remember this point. Well, his career effectively ended after this incident, which was called Operation Murray. Right. So that was ended by the higher officer level, the general level, the top brass at the Pentagon, which is one of the reasons that Hegseth is now firing almost every member of the top brass that he can fire and has made the Pentagon hierarchy, the military hierarchy, his enemy, essentially.

18:45Which actually is part when he in his first interviews or discussions with Donald Trump about this job that Trump, too, had enormous resentments about the generals in the Pentagon. who he felt who he felt did not take him seriously during the first administration, who were yesing him and then ignoring him, who were subjecting him actually to endless PowerPoints, which he couldn't sit in a room long enough to actually understand what was going on. So that was sort of their way of of dealing with Donald Trump bore him to death. And so he and Hegsif, in the way that this meeting has been, I think they had several meetings before he got the nod to be the Secretary of Defense.

19:43But how these meetings played out was each of them saying how much the problem was the Pentagon itself, the top brass in the Pentagon, that we should get rid of all of these guys, which apparently Hegseth has gone on to do. Well, and Hegseth talks in his State of the Force speech that he gave 10 days ago about central casting, that what Donald Trump wants is central casting. You know, he's looking at movies. You've referred to him watching movies about the military in the 50s. You know, A Few Good Men where, you know, people look like Hollywood actors and turn up. We know that he loves those big Chinese parades where the Chinese soldiers are actually all identical height and they're chosen for their identical height when they appear in those parades and that that's what the president wants.

20:37But I just want to go back to this piece that was in The New Yorker 17 years ago by someone called Rafi Kachadorian. And the reason I'm focused on Steele is just that he turns out to be the mentor, really, for Hegseth and Hegseth's attitude to the military now. Steele told his men that he wanted to whip somebody's ass. This is when he's in Iraq. and when he heard soldiers talk about taking known enemy fighters as prisoners, and this is him being quoted, they say, well, you know, they're shooting at you. What we need to do is we need to go over and we need to kick their feet out from under them and flex cuff them and bring them back and put them in a room and give them some water because they're probably dehydrated and not thinking, well, we'll give them some food because they've probably not eaten well.

21:27We need to put our arm around them and then give them an open mouth kiss, Tell them that we love them. Some soldiers laughed again. And after we've befriended them, then they're going to tell us all this intelligent. Man, that is bullshit, he continued. If you go out and someone presents a lethal threat to you, you shoot him. Do not feel bad and think you should have brought him back because I didn't want to talk to him. Steele told his men to think of themselves as apex predators. Again, the language that Hexeth used, if you mess with me, I will eat you. I'm talking about the moment of truth when you're about to kill the other son of a bitch.

22:07I do not want you to choke. All I'm hearing is blah, blah here. This is no, nobody is saying anything of, of, um, um, um, Michael Steele is not saying anything of substance here. He is basically saying, you know, it's all, it's all performative. It's all opposed. Um, we have no ideas here. Well, what I think he's saying is that we're not going to be nice to these guys. We're not going to embrace them. And I think you see that in the language of Pete Hegseth. I know, but that's not an idea. You're not saying anything that we're not going to be nice to them. We're going to shoot them. Well, yeah, that's what you do in war.

22:49This is a rhetorical posture. That's all this is. Exactly. And that's all that Pete Hegseth is doing here too. That's all that's that's all that's all Pete Hegseth is doing. Exactly. Exactly. But in that that becomes they. I mean, that becomes the issue here in which you put someone into this job who is not there to do the job, but who is there to, you know, promote himself freely. And this particular job is really demands that somebody do it. I mean, this is to to to be the civilian authority in the United States military, which is a, you know, I mean, a, you know, a constitutional privilege.

23:42Let's let's call it that. You know, the the the military does not run the military. A civilian runs the military. And you ought to be acting like that. I mean, you ought to be acting like the guy who runs a very, very complex organization, a guy who knows how to run a very, very complex organization. And if you've abdicate that responsibility to be, you know, a propagandist, I suppose, or to be launching your own campaign, we're going to be in trouble. And we are obviously in trouble. So we have gone into a war in which we've run out of bullets. I mean, we've run out of munitions. We've run out.

24:30Can there be a greater failure on the part of the senior most manager of the United States military? We've run out of the bullets. We've removed the last aircraft carrier from the South China Seas, leaving Taiwan vulnerable. And having had one achievement with Venezuela, and I think sort of giddy from that experience, going into Iran, which the five previous presidents all decided not to do. And yet Donald Trump is determined. And I mean, he says that Pete Hegseth sort of persuaded him, which I think is partly him, again, blaming Hegseth. But Hegseth looks extremely vulnerable at this point. Well, let's get to that and to some speculation about what's going to happen to him.

25:25But also let's look at the transformation of Pete Hegsitt because he's had this job. Jobs in high places do a couple of things. I mean, they position you really for even higher jobs. So we have Hegseth who has no is unfit. He's inexperienced. He comes with all of these other problems, the alcoholism, the women problems. But because he has been given this job and because he was confirmed by the Senate, and we ought to look to everyone who in fact voted for Pete Hegseth, full well knowing he was unfit for this job. Tom Tillis, the outgoing senator from North Carolina, said it was the worst decision he'd ever made in his life to confirm Hegseth.

26:21So he's given this job, he's promoted into this position, which means he is, you know, reality is reshaped. He can run for president, which he will certainly be doing, using this job to do that. because he has the platform in which to say, I am a tough guy. And that very well could make him someone who is attractive to the Trump base, which certainly is capable of getting someone elected. Well, and one of the reasons Trump liked him was because he looked the part, because he's sort of squat. I mean, everything about him seems square, doesn't it? He's got a square face. He's got a square shoulder, square body.

27:16He wears his pants too short, which I find odd. I'm surprised that Donald Trump likes that. But he is, we've talked about this before, he seems like an American boy doll with his little kerchief and his matching socks and his stars and stripes everywhere. I'm surprised he doesn't have stars and stripes contact lenses. But let's let's go back to, you know, he is he is in this job during the first administration. There was always a kind of within within the White House. It was amusing to many people how much the people at Fox wanted access to Donald Trump and how much they were and what they were willing to do to get it.

28:01Sean Hannity particularly, but no one as much as Pete Hegseth. So Pete Hegseth became a kind of joke within the first White House. I mean, that's where I picked up that they would call him Hager's because it was... I thought we'd come up with the name Hager's. No, well, I came up with it just because in the White House, that's what they would call him. and I actually was always interested then that it had not gotten a wider, received a wider appeal, but I hope it does now because... If you were living in England, he would automatically be called Heggers because that's what the English do. They just throw an E-R-S at the end of everybody's name.

28:50You would be Wolfers. But at this, you know, it is, again, the central credential here is the Trump credential. He's a suck up. He's willing to do this. So the tough guy, and we should see this, you know, I'm positioned as a tough guy, but what I really am is a doormat, is a weak guy. I mean, is a guy who is willing to accept all manner of humiliation before Donald Trump. Perfect man to run for president of the United States, Michael. Do you think that he will do you do you think that? Well, I suppose it depends what happens with other candidates, right, as to whether or not he actually stands a chance.

29:39yeah no i you can't tell in this this is all of you know who who whoever is winnowed out is the is the crapshoot so the more interesting thing is who is um who goes into the top of the funnel um and um and and hegseth has certainly put himself there but understand that leap of how incredible that is, the man who goes from the co-host of a weekend television show. In other words, a kind of a second raider in his chosen profession to be on television. But a man who has failed at running two veterans organizations. I mean, the least you would think If you have come out of a difficult war, and I think he did see difficult times in Iraq, if you have come out of that to then have the audacity to run two veterans organizations badly and then to get elevated to run the military, it's madness.

30:47I mean, yes. Well, let's understand the sequence here. Yeah, the veterans organizations, but that's not really germane to his career interests. His career interest is he hopes to be Sean Hannity. That's what he wanted to be. He didn't want to be secretary of defense. He didn't want to run veterans organizations. And by the way, he campaigned to be the to run the the veterans department during the first administration and didn't get that job. But the job he really wanted and was far, far from getting is a primetime anchor job on Fox News. So this is to be the secretary of defense. He took that job and went after that job as he went after the veteran affairs job was because his career in television wasn't going where he wanted it to go.

31:45And now his career might well take him. Certainly, he's running for president of the United States. But I suppose it's just a world in which if Donald Trump can get elected, perhaps Pete Hegseth could get elected. It's also what he has to do at this point. First thing, he has to try to protect his current job. But even if he can't protect this current job or can't continue to hold this current job, he kind of steps over that by then declaring his run for president, raising an enormous amount of money. I'm sure that he actually has a money base that he's put together as he has been running the Department of Defense.

32:33And he, you know, he's in business. He's put himself into business as a person of high political standing in the Republican Party. So talking about people who had television careers, Tucker Carlson, do you think that Tucker Carlson is going to run for president? He was very successful in television, then gets fired as a result of the Fox Dominion case. Does Tucker run against him? Is Tucker in the mix, do you think? Well, Tucker is in the mix. I mean, you know, who is ultimately in the mix is, well, it's a question of who is in the mix at the beginning, who is in the mix and at the after the beginning, in the middle and then at the at the end.

33:30So Tucker would be in all of these guys. I mean, we're saying Hegseth is running for president, which he is. Are there things that might stymie him early on and convince him not to run for president? Yeah. I mean, I mean, this is when when somebody comes along and you get a call and you say, you know, we got this on you. We found out you better not run for president or somebody comes along and who who has a better chance and starts talking about, you know, other options, the other options that might be available to you. you know, I don't know, the secretary, the vice presidency, just just assume there are lots of things that might stop you from running for president or stop you from continuing to run for president.

34:22But he has. And also you might be stopped for running for president because because you get no traction in the polls whatsoever or you can't you can't begin to attract the kind of money that you need to run for president. So at this point, everybody is feeling those variables out. Probably foremost, can you raise the money to do this? And then you go, you take the second step. And is Tucker doing that? Yeah, Tucker is doing that at this point, for sure. So we'll have a lineup of people, because obviously, Sean Duffy, Transportation secretary looks like he also wants to run for president. He was a reality television star too.

35:10So I was just thinking about the people who've been in television who are going to be running. I wonder, I can't help thinking that Pete Hegseth probably has terrible night terrors. I bet he is a man who does not want to go to sleep at night for fear of what his dreams bring.

35:30um yeah i i'm not i mean that that to me suggests that he is more self-aware than i suspect he is i don't know if you have to be particularly self-aware if your dreams do the work for you well i'm i i i guess you have to um you have to have some inner life does he have an inner life Does you think Donald Trump has dreams at night? I don't know. I mean, maybe you're more optimistic about the human condition than I am. I think these guys just don't give a shit, and they're just wholly hollow people, opportunists, and it's just who's the next body you have to climb over. I suspect Pete Hegseth's alcoholism reflects some kind of deep inner anxieties about what he saw and how he shows up in the world.

36:34And the note from his mother, you know, never forget the note from his mother saying he was an abuser of women. That's not a note any son wants to get from his mother. yeah no no um but um but he didn't will thin the face of it so on top of everything else it would appear that he hasn't he is as shameless well i was going to say as shameless as his boss but that would be impossible but it would seem too that he is he himself is pretty shameless well i'm not i'm not disputing i'm not disputing that anyway we will see uh we will see if anybody else hangs out their shingle before the midterms. Do we think he'll get fired?

37:17Do we think he'll be eased out? Do we want to make any bets on that? I guess it depends how badly Donald Trump loses the midterms. And as we know, he's not officially on the ballot, but he's told all the Republicans to put him on the ballot. So it will be the loss. He will have to own the loss. And as you say, he's a blamer, he will have to blame someone. Does Hexeth get the blame? Very possibly. Or it works the other way, that he doesn't acknowledge that in any way he is at fault, or the people around him are at fault. He just, he blames, you know, who does he blame? I would blame Congress. I mean, Congress is really good.

38:05That's who will be elected or who will not be elected. So if they are not elected, he blames them, not himself, his administration or his people. The only thing about firing Hegseth is that both Republicans and Democrats have called for his impeachment. So to actually have Republicans calling for your impeachment when you are the Republican Secretary of Defense doesn't bode well for your future. Yeah, but you know, this, I mean, the one thing about Donald Trump is that he, well, there are many things about Donald Trump, but I was going to say the one positive thing is that he stands up for his people.

38:55But then I I realized, well, that's not true at all. But a thing about Donald Trump is that he will not, does not, will not bow to anyone else's authority. So if people tell him Hegseth has to go, Hegseth won't go. If he decides Hegseth has to go, well, then Hegseth is, of course, cooked. But Kegseth is protected by the fact that he is so unfit for this job that many people saying he has to go. Therefore, he's protected because Donald Trump won't fire him. World According to the Logic of Donald Trump, as interpreted by four times Trump author Michael Wolff, we will be back on Tuesday back inside Donald Trump's head.

39:54The world will have turned since then. We'll be that much closer to the midterms. And we will be back in New York. In New York. We will be back in New York. We'll be back in New York in the same studio, which I'm very much looking forward to. Have a great holiday weekend if you're in the States. And if you've been joining us, thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast. Share it with a friend. And do you think Pete Hegseth should be fired? What do you think? Let us know in the comments. And big thank you to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Bussaro and Neil Rosenhaus.

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