The View Hosts Express Confusion Over Pete Hegseth’s Focus on ‘Fitness’ in Military: ‘Why Is He Obsessed?’
The View hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin expressed confusion on Tuesday over why Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is so “obsessed” with physical “fitness” in the military.
On Tuesday’s edition of The View, the hosts reacted to Hegseth’s address to top military brass in Quantico, Virginia, where President Donald Trump also spoke. Hegseth announced a review of military standards across the board and declared multiple times that “woke garbage” has no place in today’s military.
Behar accused Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, of pushing a “retro” view of the country’s armed forces.
“Right before we went on the air, the newly-renamed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke to U.S. military leaders from around the world to lay out his very retro vision for our armed forces,” Behar said.
She then cut to some of Hegseth’s comments to the generals, which included calling out the military for getting too laid back in their physical fitness standards. Troops are required to pass a physical fitness test (the standards of which vary by age group) at least once every fiscal year. Hegseth said he sees far too much “fat” in the military ranks though.
“It’s tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”
“Um, why is he obsessed with fat?” Behar asked.
“Yeah, and fitness?” Hostin added.
The hosts then cut to Trump’s address to the generals, which touched on everything from the possibility of him receiving a Nobel Peace Prize to the “gorgeous paper” he uses in the White House.
After going through Trump’s comments, Hostin blasted Hegseth for holding the meeting at all, arguing it was bad optics for the military, and painting them in a negative light.
“I’m actually really befuddled by why he did that. The optics were terrible, meaning all of our top military brass are all in one place and we spent $6 million to get them there?” she said. “That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It also didn’t make a lot of sense to me that he was saying that he was going to toughen physical standards and review the anti-hazing policy by sort of implementing a hazing policy.”
Hostin added that she was confused how calling soldiers “fat” was supposed to be an “uplifting message for our military.”
“Maybe he was referring to Col. Sanders,” Behar joked.
“It was really a bizarre thing,” Hostin said.
Watch above via ABC.
