At a meeting held in the tea room of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion/hotel where it was decided on November 11, 2024, that Pete Hegseth would be the next U.S. secretary of defense, the then president-elect offered two arguments he considered decisive. “Nobody has performed better on camera than that guy” was one. “He’s always treated me very well,” was the other.
Loyalty and telegenic appeal are two virtues the Republican president prizes. And at that meeting — the details of which await the reader of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, written by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times and revealing the inner workings of the current White House — Trump praised Hegseth’s campaign in defense of three veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan accused of war crimes. For the future president, those efforts proved why his administration needed a candidate at the Pentagon who was “willing to stick up for the tough guys.”
Last Wednesday, that man — a former Fox News morning host and a military veteran — went a step further in his plan to reshape the U.S. military around his vision of masculinity by announcing he will require soldiers over 30 to undergo annual testosterone testing; testing will be optional for those younger than that.
Concern about low levels of the male hormone among military personnel predates Hegseth and has been addressed by Congress from a medical standpoint: low testosterone can be a symptom of stress, and can cause loss of muscle mass and sexual desire, obesity, or erectile dysfunction, or be associated with more serious conditions such as diabetes, osteoporosis, or depression. The difference this time is that the secretary of defense made the announcement with the highest possible profile, in a solemn social media video that seemed scripted by the writers of Saturday Night Live, the comedy show in which his character, played by Colin Jost, is as recurring as it is successful.
With his self-confidence and fraternity-member manner, Hegseth often gives the impression that he does not mind being fodder for parody. He was mocked when, to demonstrate his committed adherence to Christian nationalism — the belief that the United States’ destiny is inexorably linked to the teachings of the Bible — he recited at a Pentagon religious service a passage he believed came from the Old Testament but that was actually a fictional monologue spoken by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. Or when he used press briefings on the progress of the offensive in Iran to speak voluptuously about the “pure destruction” he sought to unleash on the enemy and about the “violence” of war, which he called, in this case, “holy.”
A “feminized” military
His obsession with masculinity goes back further. In his 2024 memoir, The War on Warriors, he warns of the dangers of a “feminized” military; he refers to “Pentagon pussies” as the principal enemy because they prevent soldiers from acting with the full “lethality” at their disposal, and lays out the theory that would underpin his diversity-hostile program at the head of the Department of Defense (which he likes to call the Department of War, though he lacks the necessary congressional approval to do so).
“In their zeal to fight racism, generals provoke racial conflict,” Hegseth writes in the book. “By pushing gender equality, they weaken unit readiness. By trying to eradicate ‘extremism,’ they expel patriotic rank-and-file soldiers (like myself). By sheltering trans soldiers, commanders are forced to walk on eggshells instead of forming warriors. Killers.”
In the 15 months since he took office, he has had ample time to apply those ideas. After surviving a Senate confirmation that nearly collapsed amid accusations of sexual assault that he denies and coworker testimony about his fondness for alcohol, Hegseth has purged a significant number of senior officers and hindered military careers, especially those of women and Black men.
Last week, his week of testosterone, a new episode in that systematic campaign went largely unnoticed amid news that the secretary of defense blocked five officers — all women or people of nonwhite race — from being promoted to admiral. The decision means that, for the first time in over a decade, no woman will be promoted to admiral in the United States.
Although his animus also extends to certain men who do not fit his vision of what a soldier should be. The secretary has outlawed bellies, long hair, and facial hair, and declared war on trans service members. The latter has led many to point out the irony that the optional testosterone-replacement treatments he offers to troops found to have low levels closely resemble gender-affirming treatments used by trans men in the military.
A convert to Christianity, Hegseth is not only the secretary of defense who has done the most to politicize the institution; he has also infused it with an extreme evangelism. He has the Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest and “Deus Vult,” the crusaders’ battle cry in their holy wars against Muslims, tattooed on his right biceps. He has also instituted the practice of monthly prayer breakfasts at the Pentagon headquarters. And he has brought his pastor, a man named Doug Wilson — who argues that women should not have the right to vote and that suffrage should be decided at the family level (patriarchal, of course) — out of the margins.
With all those outbursts, and given the clearly limited success of the U.S. war in Iran, the question in Washington has often been when Trump would decide to remove him from the Cabinet, since after a year of relative calm in the White House the first purges have already begun (mainly targeting women: from Pam Bondi, attorney general, to Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard).
But Hegseth appears to still enjoy the boss’s favor, someone for whom what sufficed the day he chose him for the post seems to still be sufficient. For the president of the United States, an irresistible combination of loyalty, telegenic appeal and, now more than ever, testosterone.
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