Pete Hegseth’s taxpayer-funded, high-testosterone locker room military fantasy is bulging with hypocrisy

When it comes to being the manliest of men, nothing gets Pete “Pipes” Hegseth juiced up and roid-raged more than plenty of pumpers for his “Popeye” pipes. For “Pipes,” nothing says “lightweight, baby!” like low-T gym bros clocking in below 264 to 300 ng/d. Yeah, man. Pipes has a gym crush on yoked dudes with big guns. For real. I’m not gonna lie to you.

Okay, enough of the bro talk from me, and most definitely enough from the juvenile delinquent gym bunny who happens to be the Secretary of Defense.

If you haven’t heard, particularly if you’re a gym rat, Hegseth just announced mandatory annual testosterone screening for every service member 30 and older, dubbing it, and I swear to God I’m not making this up, “The High-T Department of War."

Related: The Pentagon said transgender hormone care costs too much. Now Pete Hegseth wants testosterone boosts

Forget brains. Forget decorum. Forget teamwork. The only thing Hegseth requires from his troops is brawn, baby, brawn.

Right now, as we speak, the living former Secretaries of Defense, including General James Mattis and General Lloyd Austin, and, from their graves, General George Marshall, General Alexander Haig, and General James Forrestal, are all screaming, "WTF!"

The egocentric video has Hegseth talking about troops operating at their "absolute best," the kind of phrase that means nothing and yet somehow translates to: “Yo! I made another TikTok about toxic masculinity using taxpayer resources, and I’ll use those resources to buy more ‘T’ for my bros."

We’ll get to the absurdity of that expenditure in a minute, but first, a quick trip through the Playgirlesque beef buffet Hegseth is sculpting under his so-called War Department and "warrior ethos."

Let's start with one of his favorite numbers: 26. I know what you’re thinking, 26-year-old twinks, but no. That’s the new body fat percentage the Pentagon now allows a man to carry before he’s disqualified from looking "sharp, not sloppy," in Hegseth’s own words.

Our burly bravest also have to maintain a waist-to-height ratio under 0.55, which, for the average 5-foot-9 man, works out to a 37-inch waist.

We have not seen these types of numbers in the military since pilots painted 1940s pin-up Betty Grable on their planes during World War II, with her classic hourglass figure measurements of 36-23-35

Will pilots in today’s military be forced, by Hegseth, to paint an underwear-clad Connor Storie on their jets?

Don’t laugh, because in what looked suspiciously like a Playgirl centerfold audition, active duty troops had to pass a body composition screening just to stand behind Donald Trump at Dana White’s UFC card on the White House South Lawn on June 14.

Hegseth essentially held auditions for a backdrop of camera-ready hotties.

The hypocrisy of all this is bulging. For more than a year, the Trump administration has argued in federal court that hormone therapy for transgender troops was an unnecessary expense, citing roughly $52 million spent department-wide over nine years on the entirety of transition-related care, not testosterone alone, as justification for purging trans service members.

Related: Trump administration admits to judge it doesn’t know how many troops are trans—or why it’s banning them

It was supposedly too complicated, too costly, and not core to the mission. Then Hegseth turns around and hands out testosterone to cisgender men who might feel a little tired, or, pray tell, a little wimpy.

Vermont Rep. Becca Balint had a spot-on comparison of Hegseth’s whole aesthetic to Tom of Finland, and his stylized, hyper-masculine illustrations of gay men. "The weird part," she said, "is that they pretend that's not what it's about."

She's right. And it's not just Hegseth. This is a Cabinet that has turned the federal government into a steamy Equinox locker room, with RFK Jr. riding an exercise bike shirtless in blue jeans. He and Hegseth then staged a nationally covered pull-up contest at the Pentagon gym they called, unironically, the "Pete and Bobby Challenge." Mmhmm.

Hegseth posted a video of himself bench-pressing 315 pounds, spotted by his teenage son, captioned like a highlight reel while people online asked the reasonable question of why an 80-pound kid was spotting a barbell his dad could drop on him. Then, in January, came every military porn lover's dream. Hegseth did an hour-long workout alongside trainees and invited television cameras inside to capture it. The footage lingered on bodyweight drills, kettlebell swings, and "Pipes" Pete surrounded by a cast of exceptionally fit young troops.

It was verifiable Playgirl behind-the-scenes footage. There's even a science angle to Hegseth’s mad-about-the-boys edicts. A widely cited Caltech study found that a single dose of testosterone impaired cognitive reflection, the ability to question your gut and catch your own mistakes before acting.

I don't think Hegseth wants American troops getting their testosterone checked because he's worried about bone density. I think he's building the aesthetic he wants the military to have and using a federal health mandate to do it, the same month he's arguing in court that trans hormone prescription is an unaffordable luxury.

And there’s another reason, me thinks. Somewhere down the line there's a Playgirl-esque glossy calendar coming. Surely, Hegseth’s on the cover, and is the centerfold.

And, behind him, a phalanx of oiled-up, waist ratio compliant recruits, all toned, tight, T’d up, and tatted.

Now that’s what you call "The High-T Department of War."

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