Hundreds of America’s top military leaders gathered yesterday at Quantico, having been called in from postings around the world with less than a week’s notice, to endure two hours of bloviating sound and fury signifying…nothing good. From railing against “fat” admirals and “beardos,” to stating that America will no longer abide by “politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” Secretary of Defense Hegseth and President Trump were petty, cruel, and volatile in the way of cosplay pagan gods, or boys fighting their own toy soldiers, or the kinds of bosses whose eagerness to mandate a full-time return to the office post-2020 belied how little they understood about what their employees even do. (If those bosses, once everyone was back in the ol’ conference room, got excited about using American cities and citizens as “training grounds for our military” and also rambled for an unfathomable amount of time about being able to walk up stairs.)
This security-risk pageant cost as much as $6 million. As the government ticked toward a midnight shutdown, Hegseth and Trump spent the morning preventing an auditorium of federal employees from doing their jobs.
At issue in today’s quiz is understatement.
Which of the below is a real headline about the meeting, courtesy of CBS News?
Trump, Hegseth address top military officials at large meeting, preview new policies
Trump, Hegseth rally troops at rare meeting, rail against “woke” standards
Trump, Hegseth scold troops at unusual meeting, announce changes to “woke” standards
Answer here.
When it comes to heralding the Trump administration’s abuses of power, some media outlets have seemed determined to ration their adjectives. There are only so many times you can use unprecedented before it loses some shock value, we get it—but in these unprecedented times, it’s incumbent on the press to stay precise and get creative. To characterize any of Trump’s fascist stunts and power grabs as simply not quite business as usual, as this headline does, is to put them somewhere on a spectrum of normalization. Jan. 6, 2021, was an unusual rally, one could say; so was Nuremberg.
Better headlines got across the scope of Trump and Hegseth’s destructive ambition while reminding us about what they should actually have been paying attention to: Trump and Hegseth argue for reshaping the military as government faces midnight shutdown. Others used language reflecting the day’s vulgar assaults on military procedure and the dignity of service: Hegseth dragged hundreds of generals to DC to tell them no more fat troops or ‘beardos’; Hegseth Summoned Military Leaders to Say “FAFO” in Disturbing Speech. Some got the job done by saying what most attendees were no doubt thinking: Trump, Hegseth Host Multimillion-Dollar Meeting Of Top Staff That Could Have Been An Email.
Have you come across understated headlines on this administration’s march to tyranny? Or want to shout who’s getting it right? As always, let us know in the comments.
Trump crashed Hegseth's party. Trump's need to be loved is so great that it seems that he made a last-minute decision to go to the Hegseth's meeting. His prepared speech seemed hastily written and he was less familiar with his prepared remarks than usual. Being greeted with silence set him off. He is not very bright, not very educated, and is incapable of critical thinking. Most dangerously, he is immoral.
The NYTimes this morning: Subtitle: "The president leveraged the meeting as his chance to trumpet his domestic and foreign policy moves." SMH! Another article in the Times did say that Trump's "speech" was "a rambling and sometimes incoherent speech". But really. "leveraged"? "trumpet"? Give me a break.