commentary

The defense secretary broke the 34th president's globe — and provided an inadvertent metaphor

Published October 24, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, left, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Illustration by Salon / Getty Images / Kevin Dietsch / Bettmann)

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was not buff, at least to our knowledge. He didn’t exercise in public or show off his abs, and there is no record of him ever leading his troops in calisthenics or challenging his peers to a pull-up contest. As far as we know, he didn’t even have any tattoos.

Eisenhower may not have been a “beardo” or a “weirdo,” in the recent words of Pete Hegseth, but were he alive today he would in all likelihood call the defense secretary a wimp and possibly even a radical.…