Published May 26, 2026, 11:49 a.m. ET
The hosts of The View brutally roasted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after the Trump official delivered a controversial speech at the West Point commencement ceremony this past weekend denouncing “woke” culture and “the DEI craze.”
The View shared a clip of Hegseth telling graduates, “You are not an army of one. You are certainly not an army of woke.” At another point in his speech, he told graduates, “You can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy.”
“We saw woke and weak leaders try to make West Point look like woke Princeton,” he continued, referring to his own alma mater. “They embraced the DEI craze and tried to introduce diversity and inclusion studies. They hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls, but no more.”
Whoopi Goldberg asked her co-hosts if they believe Hegseth is “just dumb” or if he “doesn’t know his history.”
While Joy Behar noted Hegseth is certainly “not stupid,” Sara Haines speculated, he could be “willfully ignorant, probably combined with just regular ignorant.”
“He seems to be at war with pronouns instead of Iran,” Behar quipped.
Alyssa Farah Griffin also slammed Hegseth’s speechwriting skills. The former White House staffer joked that his speeches are beginning to sound the same as he continues to take aim at “woke” leftist ideals.
“Hegseth, I don’t expect anything from. When I hear him speak, it feels like ChatGPT. He threw in ‘woke,’ ‘military,’ ‘fat generals’ and it’s the same speech,” she joked, causing Haines to begin cackling.

Sunny Hostin interjected to remind viewers Hegseth recently quoted a bible verse mentioned in Pulp Fiction, only to be quickly reminded that it is not a real bible verse.
Griffin continued, “I’ve worked with a lot of senior leadership in the military and I imagine that they were sitting there for this speech and others, and they’re biting their tongues and biding their time because they know he’s a political appointee who is not gonna be around forever.”
She predicted Hegseth’s political career with the military will be short-lived in a brutal takedown of the former Fox anchor.
Military officials “know their job and their virtues and their values and what they do in service of this country will go on beyond him,” Griffin said.
The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.



















