TV News LIES

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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In Forrest Gump, the title character, played by Tom Hanks, receives the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B Johnson.

In real life, it appears Hanks will no longer receive another military honor.

The alumni association of the US Military Academy, or West Point, announced in May that it would award Hanks, a two-time Oscar winner, with its 2025 Sylvanus Thayer award, which is given to an “outstanding citizen of the United States whose service and accomplishments in the national interest exemplify personal devotion to the ideals expressed in West Point’s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country’”.

Now, the West Point Association of Graduates has canceled the ceremony to honor the actor just weeks before it was to take place, the Washington Post reported.

In an email to faculty, retired Col Mark Bieger stated that the decision would allow the academy to “continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army”.

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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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Veterans who helped the US’s Afghan allies find refuge in the US say they are outraged that a fellow veteran and advocate now faces federal conspiracy charges for his role in a protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Some call the arrest of former US army sergeant Bajun Mavalwalla II “shameful” and “un-American”. Mavalwalla is part of a community of American military veterans who, in the wake of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban in 2021, worked to rescue Afghans who supported the US military operations in their home country.

“He is one of us – and his arrest sends a message that peaceful dissent is being criminalized,” Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, an umbrella group bringing together military veterans, national security leaders, intelligence workers and refugee rights groups, wrote to his membership after the Guardian revealed Mavalwalla’s arrest on Tuesday.

“We want to say this loud and clear. We will not be intimidated,” VanDiver, a navy veteran, wrote.

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Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US Department of Defense to rebrand itself as the “department of war”, the White House said, as part of an attempt to formalize the name change without an act of Congress.

The order will designate “department of war” as a “secondary title”, an administration official said, as a way to get around the need for congressional approval to formally rename a federal agency.

But the order will instruct the rest of the executive branch to use the “department of war” name in internal and external communications, and allows the defense secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials to use “secretary of war” as official titles.

The order – seemingly in recognition of the limitation of the executive action alone – also directs Hegseth to recommend potential legislative moves the administration could take to permanently rename the defense department.

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A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California based on “an ongoing risk” that the president will act unlawfully.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco wrote Sept. 2 that Congress was clear in the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that lawmakers prohibited using the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement.

But he ruled there was no rebellion when Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles in June, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that immigration law was enforced. Breyer cited plans by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to expand the guard deployment to Oakland and San Francisco, and in other states across the country.

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The Trump administration has fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, in the latest in a series of moves to purge the U.S. intelligence community and install Trump loyalists in top positions, lawmakers said Aug. 22.

Kruse’s departure was first reported by The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources who didn’t immediately specify a reason for the dismissal other than “loss of confidence.” The Post later reported that two other military leaders were pushed out after Kruse: Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, the chief of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw the Naval Special Warfare Command.

Kruse’s firing follows a preliminary assessment from the DIA in June that concluded that U.S. military strikes against three of Iran’s main nuclear sites did not demolish them as President Trump had claimed, but only resulted in setting the Iranian nuclear program back by several months. That prompted a strong pushback from the Trump Administration and subsequent intelligence findings by the Defense Department and CIA that the damage was more significant.

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