Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a senior recruiting meeting at the Pentagon on Thursday that many Americans are “too dumb” or “too fat” to serve in the military, even as he celebrated recent positive recruiting numbers.
“I know the basics of recruiting are not easy,” Hegseth said. “We have too many young people who are too fat or too dumb – not dumb, which is wrong. You know, we’re just not educating them properly, or they have criminal records, or ADHD, or all these other things.”
Despite this statement, Hegseth went on to say that Trump administration policies, including recent “Warrior Dividend” bonus checks for the military, are driving a surge in recruitment but show that young Americans want to join a “fighting entity rather than a woke institution.”
Hegseth has been very health-conscious during his tenure as secretary of state, competing against Surgeon General Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a pull-up challenge and lambasting “fat generals” in a September speech in which he instituted a broad range of new physical fitness tests.
Whatever the impact of the Trump administration’s policies, the hiring surge began before Trump took office.
Pete Hegseth said in an interview with military recruiters on Thursday that many young Americans are too “stupid,” “fat,” and have criminal records to serve in the military (Defense Department)
Since 2022, the Army has missed about 25% of its recruiting goals, but all services have met their goals by the end of fiscal 2024.
Observers attribute the change to a variety of factors, including the waning pandemic and recruiters returning to school, as well as programs like the Army’s Future Soldier Preparation Course, which helps marginalized recruits improve their test and physical fitness scores to qualify for service.
This momentum has continued since Trump took office.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that military enlistment has reached its highest level in the past 15 years, with each military department once again hitting its recruiting goals for the 2025 fiscal year, which ends in September.
The military branches have rebounded from pandemic-era recruiting slumps in recent years, a trend that predated the Trump administration (Getty)
The Border Patrol is seeing similarly encouraging signs and is training a record number of new recruits.
The Trump administration has given unprecedented funding and huge hiring bonuses to immigration agencies such as the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fuel its deportation operations, even as the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly struggling to meet its goal of recruiting 10,000 people early next year because new hires don’t meet physical fitness requirements.
