Sept. 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke before a gathering of top military brass in Quantico, Va., brought in from around the world Tuesday.
Trump, after lamenting that the room was so quiet when he walked in, told the meeting of top military leaders, “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future, but you just feel nice and loose, OK?”
Hegseth told the military officers that they had gone soft and that reforms would overhaul the Department of Defense inspector general and equal opportunity programs.
“I call it the ‘no more walking on eggshells’ policy,” he said. “We are liberating commanders and NCOs. We are liberating you.”
“We are overhauling an inspector general process — the IG that has been weaponized,” he said. “We’re doing the same with the equal opportunity and military equal opportunity policies. No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting, no more legal limbo. No more side-tracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.”
Hegseth told them to quit, if they disagreed. “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, you should do the honorable thing and resign.”
Trump said his administration plans to make more announcements soon to “fully embrace the identity of the Department of War.”
“I love the name. I think it’s so great. I think it stops wars,” Trump said. “The Department of War is going to stop wars.”
Trump also characterized his sending troops to U.S. cities as a war at home.
“This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Trump said. “That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can’t let these people in.”
He brought up nuclear power and said he sent a nuclear submarine to Russia earlier this year.
“We were a little bit threatened by Russia recently, and I sent a submarine, nuclear submarine, the most lethal weapon ever made,” Trump said. “Number one, you can’t detect it. There’s no way. We’re 25 years ahead of Russia and China in submarines.”
Modern nuclear submarines are difficult to detect, but are not undetectable.
“Frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else,” Trump said. “We have better, we have newer, but it’s something we don’t ever want to even have to think about.”
He called the word “nuclear” the second “n-word.” “I call it the n-word. There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them.”
He reiterated his call for making Canada a 51st state. He said Canada called him and said it wanted to be part of Trump’s plans for a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield.
“They want to be part of it, to which I said, ‘Why don’t you just join our country? You become 51, become the 51st state, and you get it for free,” he said. “So I don’t know if that made a big impact, but it does make a lot of sense … because they’re having a hard time up there in Canada now, because, as you know, with tariffs, everyone’s coming into our country.”
He also talked again about former President Joe Biden‘s autopen use, though he has used an autopen himself.