OCTOBER 2025 – National security expert Tom Nichols in The Atlantic gave a quick and eloquent review of the Trump/Hegseth command performance in Quantico, Va., before 800 of America’s military leadership yesterday. Nichols, retired from the US Naval War College, is now a writer for The Atlantic and contributes to a regular newsletter for it. We should add that the 64-year-old Mr. Nichols has on his Wiki page that he likes to play video games in his spare time. In Nichols’s piece – not dissimilar to Max Boot’s quick take on the June military parade, also a Rosebud winner – there’s plenty of historical context: The US military has dealt with erratic civilian leadership in the past, but Trump and Hegseth are taking that to new levels.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/09/trump-hegseth-speech-incoherent/684421/
Another trenchant take came from The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, which one might expect from the profession’s premier and best connected journalist covering national security issues.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/30/trump-hegseth-speeches-generals-backward/