How Trump is winning at his Department of War | Opinion
In any other Republican presidency, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s announcement ending lowered standards that allowed women into combat specialties would have caused a firestorm. Heck, renaming the Department of Defense would have caused the same.
There’d be weeks of headlines, congressional hearings, lawsuits , protests and demands for the research that says high physical standards are absolutely necessary for warfare. When it comes to reversing a “progressive” change to the military, the proposal would die a death of a thousand cuts.
But this week, the move is far from the front pages. At the same hastily-called meeting of the Department of War’s top brass from around the world where Hegseth nailed his ten theses to the Pentagon door, President Donald Trump talked about using America’s gun violence epidemic as an opportunity to train U.S. troops fighting the “enemy within.”
Out went debate about War Department policies on women, racial and religious minorities, and transgender troops that would reverse a 30-year ratchet ever leftward for the American military and in went outrage at Trump’s latest flirtation with what many see as incipient fascism.
We’re not even going to have a debate about the most significant series of personnel policy changes for the military in the 21st century. That’s Trump’s genius.
If you think about it, there’s a certain justice in that. We didn’t ever sit around and have a national debate about reshaping the military in the image of diversity, equity and inclusion consultants from the hothouses of left-wing academia either.
No, the changes to policies as diverse as facial hair, training and physical standards, racial and religious sensitivity, gender reassignment surgery and women’s role in the military were slowly put in place one order, one regulation, one budget item at a time, each passing by with little national debate until they were a revolution. There hasn’t been a big national debate since Bill Clinton opened more of the military to women back in 1994.
Reversing Democratic changes to military
Each cultural change built on the last. Each mandatory annual diversity training distracted from the war fighting focus just a little bit. Each piece of new diversity paperwork pushed training for lethality a little further to the periphery, until soldiers, airmen and Marines — especially those in non-combat specialties — could be forgiven for thinking their main job was getting along with one another, not making our enemies sorry they didn’t get along with us.
And for Democrats, the results were delicious. What’s more fun than taking a Republican-leaning constituency like the military and subjecting them to endless training in Democratic Party dogma on race, religion, sex and gender with career-ending consequences for those who dare speak up in disagreement?
With a little crazy talk, Trump has allowed Hegseth to get on with the business of a military revolution of his own. Just like the Democratic orthodoxy they are sweeping away, both made clear to the assembled generals and admirals that they’d be better off resigning than fighting the change.
I’ve been talking to Trump supporters in Washington, D.C., this week, in Trumpy think tanks, lobbying shops and inside the administration, people I know and thought would resist Trump’s worst and most destructive instincts about why they were shredding hardwon reputations in order to advance Trump’s cause.
Good God, I say to them, Trump doesn’t want the American military free from foreign wars so there can be peace — he wants them free to fight a war here at home. How can you live with that?
The answer I am hearing is that they want to win. They want to win on the conservative priorities they care about, things previous Republican administrations were too timid to take on. They’ll take the chaos and destruction in return for the conservative policy wins they couldn’t achieve without the cover of Trump’s outrages. When Trump is gone, they say, we’ll rebuild something more in our image amid the rubble.
And besides, for all the freak-out over Trump’s words threatening to invade America’s cities, the Kent State warnings haven’t come true so far.
Trump sent National Guard troops into Los Angeles. He even sent the Marines. Nothing disastrous happened and then they left.
Trump sent National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., weeks ago and the worst didn’t happen. We can debate how much good they’ve done, but Trump looks like he is doing something when local officials had resigned themselves to a steady drumbeat of violence that left many in Washington feeling unsafe.
Now troops are poised to hit Portland and Memphis, and Trump supporters expect the same anti-climax. This isn’t fascism, they say — it’s leadership.
And while Trump’s audacity takes national attention, Pete Hegseth has free rein to reform the military back into the conservative institution it was for so long.
This story was originally published October 2, 2025 at 6:03 AM with the headline "How Trump is winning at his Department of War | Opinion."
