Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been annoying military members and veterans since he first stepped into his Trump-appointed role months ago, but his growling rebuke from the guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier appears to be the final straw.
Veteran Mike Nelson served 23 years with U.S. forces, including in Iraq. And Nelson told the I Paper that the Hegseth group shout-down was a “continuation” of how Hegseth has presented himself, which he summarized as a content-maker cosplaying as a soldier.
“He’s largely about content generation rather than anything substantive,” said Nelson, arguing that the secretary had “always used the troops or the backdrop as something to produce his own individual image.”
It does not matter that Hegseth was not the person unleashing the girly laughter that launched the guard’s scream. Hegseth knew where he was, said the former special operations officer, who is now a fellow at the National Security Institute. “[T]he tone he was setting probably encouraged that kind of behavior.”
Hegseth later awarded a medal to the soldier who shouted at him, posting on social media that “We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, Specialist.”
But, the incident “left a sour taste among many active or retired soldiers already frustrated by the military policy of Trump’s White House,” according to the I Paper.
One Army source in the U.K. told the paper that this latest embarrassing incident “does not surprise me at all,” and the source described Hegseth as a “TV personality cosplaying as a defense secretary.”
“I don’t think he’s as popular with the force and with the veterans as he likes to portray that he is,” said Nelson, but he added that undoubtedly “a large portion … will probably find ways to excuse the behavior.”
“I do think he’s shallow and self-interested,” added Nelson, ‘but I think we should be able to get to a place where we admit that his entourage were being boisterous and disrespectful, and that for those who like the Secretary, that may not be an indictment of him as a whole, and for those who dislike the Secretary, it shouldn’t be made into a larger matter.”
Regarding the latest incident, Nelson suggested it was possible that someone could have a “slip in decorum, make a mistake and forget where they are at the moment”.
Another military source, speaking anonymously, hammered Hegseth, saying “on top of his “purges of senior officers and intolerable treatment of those serving on US warships in the Middle East, the lack of respect and deference shown in Arlington is astounding.”
“I have visited the tomb of the unknown warrior. It is a special place with numerous signs warning of the conduct expected of visitors,” said the source. “Tens of thousands of people attend each year and pay their respects properly, so to see the [US] Secretary of Defense act with such brazen disregard for everything it represents is staggering.”