The hosts of ABC’s The View seemed baffled on Tuesday after the Secretary of War met with several hundred of the U.S. military’s top brass, decried woke DEI policies, and announced that height, weight, and physical fitness standards would once again be enforced across the ranks.
Joy Behar referred to the changed standards as a “very retro vision for our armed forces,” and wondered why Pete Hegseth was "obsessed with fat?”
Joy Behar scoffs at Pete Hegseth's "retro vision for our armed forces" and questions "why is he obsessed with fat [service members]?"
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 30, 2025
Sunny Hostin chimes in to scoff Hegseth's obsession with "fitness" for the military. pic.twitter.com/V9GJ7XYH3a
Cohost, Alyssa Farah Griffin, argued that the changes were entirely unnecessary as the United States military is already in great shape. According to current data, nearly two-thirds of active duty personnel in the military are considered overweight, with nearly a quarter considered "obese."
“I’m very lost on the fact that it seems like it’s become a Republican Party position out of nowhere that the U.S. Military is weak. We’re the greatest fighting force in the history of mankind,” she said.
What is the harm in improving the greatest fighting force in all of mankind, some might wonder?
Other cohosts complained about the meeting itself, whining about the cost it took for the majority of U.S. commanders to fly from all over the world to meet in Quantico, Virginia.
Others, like Sunny Hostin, complained that Hegseth's message was not "uplifting" for the military.
"He said he was going to 'return to the highest male standard for combat positions' because the troops were fat. I don't understand how that was supposed to be an uplifting message for our military..." she said.
"Maybe he was referring to Colonel Sanders." Joy Behar quipped.
"It was really a bizarre thing, he started talking about woke DEI policies, by the way there are no gender quotas in the military, by the way, he fired more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women, he fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staf,f Charles Brown Jr. who is African American. He fired the first woman to command the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti," Sunny Hostin continued. "I don't understand the sort of hypocrisy of firing these people, having all these people meet together, and then denigrating them."
NEW: The View's Sunny Hostin says it "really is a bizarre thing" that Pete Hegseth wants to toughen physical standards in the military.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 30, 2025
"I don't understand how that was supposed to be an uplifting message..."
He's the Secretary of War, not a PE coach. pic.twitter.com/s1d7WdMO8U
Behar added that “If you guys think we can survive another 3 1/2 years of this, I think you’re delusional … every day this guy is undoing something in this country that we value.” Many are still unclear about how improving physical fitness standards and enforcing them uniformly will harm our armed forces.