TV News LIES

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth probably hoped their speeches on Tuesday before every top U.S. general and admiral would really rally the troops to new heights.

But at least one retired military leader wasn’t so gung-ho about the comments made by the president and the secretary of defense during the gathering, calling them “insulting” and “offensive.”

During the meeting, Hegseth announced his plans for a revamped military that would “remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.”

He also declared there would be no more fat soldiers.

After he spoke, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling appeared on MSNBC to rip Hegseth’s new plans and his attacks against the military’s DEI programs.

TVNL Comment:  No more fat soldiers?  How about fat presidents?

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U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed what he called "fat generals" and diversity initiatives, crediting them for decades of decay in the armed forces at a rare meeting with hundreds of top military commanders in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, told the attending commanders he would crack down on physical fitness and grooming standards, as well as disposing of "woke" policies. The defense secretary and his boss, President Donald Trump, told attendees they have the option to resign if they don't support the agenda.

"It's unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading all around the world," Hegseth said during his speech. "It's a bad look, and it's not who we are!"

TVNL Comment: How about a mental acuity test twice a year for those at the very top?

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Protests against the National Guard roiled DC on Sept. 6 as Chicagoans waited to see where President Donald Trump, who rattled his saber on social media, would send troops next aiming to fight crime.

But it’s not clear where troops might head next, after Trump suggested he could also send them to New Orleans. Governors traditionally decided when to deploy troops short of an insurrection, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has opposed the move in Chicago while Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry welcomed the possibility.

Trump told reporters Sept. 5 he has decided where to send troops next but he didn’t reveal the location. Here’s what to know about what’s happening with the National Guard:

Trump's comments on deploying the National Guard to Chicago have been mixed. He said Sept. 2 he would send troops to the Illinois city, after a violent Labor Day weekend, before cautioning that he only wanted deployments where governors welcomed them.

But Trump paraphrased a line on social media Sept. 6 from the movie “Apocalypse Now” to threaten continued deportations of undocumented immigrants in Chicago.  Trump also signed an executive order Sept. 5 changing the name of the Defense Department to the War Department, the name it had from the founding of the country through World War II.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump said, converting a line about napalm in the Vietnam War to refer to deportations. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

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Vice President JD Vance threw his full support behind President Donald Trump’s deadly military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean this week, saying that he did not even care if people call it a war crime.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance wrote Saturday on X.

Political commentator Brian Krassenstein responded to say that “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Various experts on international law and the laws of war have also said the strike could be considered a war crime.

“I don’t give a shit what you call it,” the vice president replied.

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An active-duty soldier opened fire at Fort Stewart military base in south-east Georgia on Wednesday, wounding five other soldiers before being taken into custody.

All victims are in stable condition and expected to recover. Three of the soldiers required surgery, and two were transferred to Memorial Health University medical center in Savannah, the top-level trauma center for coastal Georgia.

Brig Gen John Lubas, commander of the third infantry division and Fort Stewart-Hunter army airfield, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the alleged shooter was 28-year-old Sgt Quornelius Radford, who was assigned to Fort Stewart.

“The shooting occurred at the soldier’s place of work,” Lubas said. “It did involve his co-workers. We’re still not certain about the motivations, but again, he’s been interviewed by army investigators, and we believe we’ll gain more information here shortly.”

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Most of defense department’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors.

A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was descrhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/pentagon-military-spendingibed as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.

Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.

That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.

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