Pete Hegseth’s West Point commencement address was a diatribe of hateful garbage

In the realm of things that just don’t seem real, I graduated from college 40 years ago this May. Even typing that out stung. I don’t remember much about that day because I believe I was drunk. And I definitely don’t remember who our commencement speaker was.

Maybe that’s why, every year around this time, I like to read commencement addresses delivered across the country. No matter how old I get, they take me back to all the wonderment of a limitless and hopeful future.

Then I came across Pete Hegseth’s speech at West Point over Memorial Day weekend. And I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hegseth offered nothing in the way of wonderment or hope.

It was abjectly offensive to any Black cadet, Latina officer, gay man or woman in the audience. Not to mention trans people. If you were among the ethnicities and backgrounds Hegseth marginalized, then even if you outscored half your class on every physical fitness test, leadership evaluation, and tactical exercise, you still don’t belong.

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If you are Asian American, or the child of immigrants who believed in this country so deeply they sent you here, apparently you wasted your time, because there is no room for you in Hegseth’s narrow-minded and exclusionary military.

Oh, and if you are “fat,” you also are a blight to the military in Hegseth’s evil eye.

His speech was not only an affront to the cadets forced to sit there and listen to his garbage, but it was also an offense to what makes the United States so great: its melting pot and diversity.

“Diversity is not our strength,” Hegseth sinisterly declared. “Unity is our strength.”

What pithy Pete doesn’t realize is that unity comes from a collective of backgrounds forging ahead for the common good. The moment you start treating diversity as a curse, you invite disunity.

And you don’t have to be from a marginalized community to understand the implications of what Hegseth said. Yes, hypermasculinity abounds in the military, but my guess is that many of the well-educated cadets receiving their degrees had to wonder the same thing I did: “How do my classmates feel about this?”

Roughly 36 percent of the graduating class are people of color. And I’m sure that for many of them, navigating an institution that isn't always welcoming hasn’t been easy, especially over the last two years under a Hegseth Defense Department.

Listening to Hegseth’s garbage, I realized he wasn’t giving a commencement address at all. It sounded more like the warm-up act at a MAGA rally, except his audience was captive. The graduates aren’t allowed to defy orders and walk out in protest.

So they had to sit there while he vomited hate.

Hegseth declared that “the battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy,” and mocked the call to service by saying it isn’t “send ‘he,’ not send ‘she,’ not send ‘they/them.’” He probably thought he sounded cool, macho, and funny.

He went on to accuse previous military leaders of trying to turn West Point into “woke Princeton.” Hegseth is a Princeton graduate who never attended West Point. I’ve lost all respect for the admissions officers at Princeton.

He railed against what he called “an obsession with race and gender” and the “watering down of discipline.” The implication was unmistakable: the diverse men and women seated before him represented a lowering of standards. Their presence was evidence of weakness. They were less than.

Related: Pete Hegseth is a waste of time, and Trump is a disgraceful “Sleepy Don” at meeting for military leaders

Is that any way to proverbially rally the troops? Any way to provide hope and wonderment?

Commencement addresses are supposed to serve as a bridge between the hard years behind you and the wide-open life ahead. It’s the moment when a speaker looks out at terrified young people - at least I was terrified - and says, "You are ready, the world needs you, go do kick-ass things.”

The best speeches are personal. They challenge graduates to think beyond themselves, to lead with empathy alongside strength, and to understand that their success is tied to the success of the people around them.

Hugh Jackman gave a great one at Ball State. He spoke about vulnerability, failure, and the courage it takes to be imperfect in public. Queen Latifah, speaking at North Carolina A&T, celebrated the structural barriers her audience had overcome just to earn their seats, and urged them to lift others up.

Even General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, used his commencement address at the Naval Academy one day earlier to speak about humility, accountability, and the importance of continuing to learn throughout a career.

These are the themes of commencement. These are the qualities of actual leadership.

Back to the graduates forced to sit there and listen to Hegseth. They are officers now, bound by a chain of command that runs straight up to the jerk standing at the podium on their graduation day.

That’s what really sucks for them. If you’re Black, gay, Asian American, Hispanic, or a woman, how does hearing Hegseth talk about you that way make you feel about the career path you’ve chosen?

And what about the parents, family members, and friends who wept with pride seeing their child, sibling, or best friend in uniform, only to hear that the military’s “obsession with race” had been a mistake?

Hegseth’s words were hurtful, arrogant, and egomaniacally self-centered. Who does he think he is to deliver a speech that left so many decent Americans in that audience feeling diminished?

The graduates of West Point’s Class of 2026 deserved better. Even the ones who looked like Pete Hegseth deserved better. Instead, they got a complete jackass with no sense of decorum, humanity, empathy, or vulnerability.

Too bad Hugh Jackman can’t be our defense secretary.

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