Political Tribune

Donald Trump, GOP, Opinion, Politics

Pete Hegseth’s Latest Workout Video Gets Brutally Mocked As Peak ‘Masculinity Theater’

The "Secretary of War" was mocked for his recently posted workout.

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Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon chief who calls himself the “Secretary of War,” certainly likes to project a certain type of no-apologies masculinity. But the latest display of that, a workout video, is being brutally mocked online.

The Defense Department posted a series of videos of Hegseth working out at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, along with “warriors,” his term for soldiers.

“One video featured numerous shots of Hegseth and other men running, jumping and lifting amid a chorus of grunts and was quickly followed by another video of Hegseth giving a locker room-style speech about how the president has “got [their] backs” and is ready to “unleash” and “untie” their hands,” was how the HuffPost described one of the videos.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Hegseth (or other members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet) release videos of this nature — it’s just the latest example of the MAGA-coded “masculinity theater” that’s becoming associated with Trump’s second term.”

HuffPost went on to describe the videos, and others like them, as “masculinity theater.”

“We see it with Pete Hegseth. We see it with Robert Kennedy [Jr.]. It’s the same kind of display of this militant masculinity of a representative American man who is white, dominant, powerful … physically fit and attractive,” author Soraya Chemaly is quoted as saying in the story.

“They are really explicit displays of individual physical strength, but at the same time, they’re symbolic: These men represent the government. They represent the nation.”

The videos also came in for some mockery online.

Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library. 

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Stephen Silver

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Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy.

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