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Pete Hegseth’s Crisis of Masculinity

The secretary of war’s obsession with testosterone reveals the anxieties he harbors about himself and the military he leads.

On Wednesday at 11:07 p.m. ET, the president went on Truth Social to share an important piece of information with Americans. It wasn’t an update on the sinking U.S. economy, the failing forever war with Iran, a remembrance of the Americans recently killed in that conflict, rising gasoline prices, the more than 800 lawsuits against his administration, a cyclosporiasis outbreak, surging cases of measles, the problems with his Qatari-gifted Air Force One, or comment on any of the swirling crises that typify the day-to-day of Donald Trump’s America.

Instead, it was a re-tread of an Instagram post with a clip from an appearance of UFC CEO Dana White — who brought bloodsport to the White House lawn in June — on “The Pat McAfee Show.” It wasn’t, however, a clip from this week or this month or even about last month’s UFC Freedom 250 event. In fact, it wasn’t even from this year.

The headline on the post tells the story: “HOLY CRAP: Dana White says it best: TRUMP is the ‘ultimate American badass of all time.’” 

White did actually say that — but he said it back in July 2024. This desperation for two-year-old adulation would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. But the so-called leader of the free world isn’t the only one obsessed with being seen as an American badass. Trump’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, is on a mission to make America’s fighting men (and women) more macho by any means necessary. Unsurprisingly, it’s fast becoming a problem for all Americans.

– Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch

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Self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth has a problem with low testosterone. It’s left him suffering from what you might call an acute crisis of masculinity. And I’m pretty sure that he caught it from Teddy Roosevelt.

Bear with me. I’ll explain.

Last week, the Trump administration’s preening, strutting, wanna-be he-man announced a new mandatory annual screening for troops age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency. Troops under 30 can volunteer to be screened, and anyone with low hormone levels will have the option to receive testosterone replacement therapy.

“It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capability,” said Hegseth, by ensuring “you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight” on the “brutal and unrelenting” modern battlefield. Like all Hegseth initiatives, he linked it to “lethality” — now the animating feature of his life. He called topping off troops’ testosterone levels a “sacred duty.” 

Anyone who has observed Hegseth for more than 15 seconds in the last 15 years could tell you the man is riddled with deep insecurities. His quest to fully transition the Defense Department to what he calls “The High-T Department of War” is just the latest manifestation of nagging anxieties about himself and the wheel-spinning, never-winning military he leads. 

Poor Pete’s woes have been piling up since he headed off to college at Princeton, if not before. Hegseth acts like he was drafted against his will by the Ivy League and escaped it by joining the Army National Guard as an infantry officer in 2003. He fondly recalls guarding “Islamic assholes” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, alongside “hard-working, God-fearing, America-loving middle-class men” whom he contrasts with “millionaires at Princeton,” a school he derides whenever he can.

Stuffed in Hegseth’s Army-issue green duffle bag when he arrived at Gitmo was a sheet of plain white copy paper inside a black plastic frame with a quote from his hero, former President Teddy Roosevelt. This long love affair with TR has continued over the decades. Pete wrote a ridiculous 2016 book, “In the Arena,” based on the “timeless truths of Teddy Roosevelt’s iconic ‘Man in the Arena’ speech” from 1910. And he still references that speech to this day and routinely works Teddy into his public remarks whenever he can.

Last year, Hegseth wanted the Pentagon to cut ties with the Boy Scouts of America because, he believed, “the organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt” had strayed from their mission to “cultivate masculine values.” (He later bullied the Scouts into submission.) And just last month, he talked up TR to U.S. troops in Cuba — where Roosevelt fought during the Spanish-American War — using his hero as proof of America’s right to intervene “in the affairs of Latin American nations.”

No one more exemplified the anxieties of privileged men of his time than Teddy Roosevelt, who grew up in the swirl of post-Civil War America in which urbanization, industrialization, a new emphasis on “brainwork,” and new technologies led........

© The Intercept