Random Thoughts

[Angrboda]

Mr. Hegseth said he had visited the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, near El Paso during a trip to the southern border this past week, noting that as the most senior enlisted soldiers in the service, sergeants major are responsible for maintaining standards among their troops.

“It starts with the basic stuff, right?” Mr. Hegseth said. “It’s grooming standards and uniform standards and training standards, fitness standards, all of that matters.”

As a civilian, he is often seen wearing an American flag pocket square in his suit coat, as he was during his Senate confirmation hearing last month, and sporting a full-color American flag belt buckle, as he did when Vice President JD Vance swore him into office as defense secretary and again onstage at the Pentagon on Friday.

Wearing the American flag as an article of clothing is prohibited by the U.S. Flag Code, which establishes proper and improper ways of respecting the national ensign. The Defense Department’s own website reiterates that in a 2019 article posted during the first Trump administration.

Mr. Hegseth acknowledged his role as the standard-bearer for more than a million active-duty troops and hundreds of thousands of civilian employees at the Defense Department.

“I spent a lot of my career in the military, which is not as much as so many of you, trying to run away from the flagpole as quick as possible,” he said, using a military euphemism for troops avoiding their leaders. “Now, it appears I am the flagpole.”

He promised the audience that he would be “more transparent with the American people and with you.”

As soon as the question-and-answer portion of the event began, the Pentagon cut the video feed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/po...-hall.html