Hegseth’s hectic military

Summary

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Today, Explained – "Hegseth’s Hectic Military"

Aired: October 2, 2025
Host: Noel King
Guests: Dan Lamoth (Washington Post), Kerry Howley (New York Magazine)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the controversial reign of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, his relationship with former President Trump, and the “hectic” reshaping of US military culture. Through analysis from Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Dan Lamoth and New York Magazine’s Kerry Howley, the hosts unpack a dramatic military gathering at Quantico, Hegseth’s combative leadership style, recent scandals, and what these changes mean for America’s armed forces and civil-military norms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Quantico Gathering: Lethality, Wokeness, and Shaving

• Background: Secretary Hegseth summoned ~800 senior officers for a forceful reset—emphasizing discipline, physical standards, and a purge of DEI initiatives.
• Explicit Orders:
  • “We’re gonna cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards.” (Pete Hegseth, 00:12)
  • “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.” (Pete Hegseth, 00:17)
• ‘Back to Basics’ Mentality: Hegseth’s agenda frames the military as having drifted from its warrior ethos due to inclusivity and social change.
  • “We became the WOKE department.” (Hegseth, 07:46)
  • “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses.” (Hegseth, 08:43)
• Turning Back the Clock: Asks why standards changed since 1990, questioning if they’d been weakened for non-combat priorities (Hegseth, 07:59).

2. Trump’s Unscripted Speech and Calls for Military in Cities

• Impromptu, Rambling Remarks: Trump was invited after the Washington Post broke the story about the generals’ call-up. His speech touched on personal pet peeves as much as policy.
  • “Be cool when you walk down, but don't bop down the stairs...” (Trump, 00:30)
  • “I love the word tariff. You know, we’re becoming rich as hell.” (Trump, 02:42)
• Deployment Threats: Trump bluntly suggested using the military in “war from within” against American cities perceived as crime-ridden.
  • “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military... because we're going into Chicago very soon.” (Trump, 04:02)
• Breach of Norms: Such suggestions break from post-Reconstruction American norms keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement, and have rattled insiders.

3. Military & Insider Reaction

• Seen as Typical, but Uncomfortable: Military brass, while used to Trump’s style, dislike the blurring of civil-military boundaries.
  • “They’re gritting their teeth, a lot of them... It's an extremely sensitive time.” (Dan Lamoth, 05:15)
• Intolerance of Dissent:
  • “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.” (Hegseth, 06:02)
  • Encouraged those unhappy with the new direction to leave rather than resist—a “my way or get out” tone.

4. Hegseth’s Personal and Political Backdrop

• Television to Power: Hegseth, once a Fox News personality, is seen as a Secretary who “looks the part” to Trump.
  • “Trump encountered Hegseth in his previous life as a Fox and Friends weekend co-host.” (Howley, 15:51)
• Consistent Messaging: He has long advanced a “warrior” ideal and criticized perceived softness or progressive change in the military.
• Controversies and Scandal:
  • Signalgate: Leak investigations and crisis over a group chat revealing classified discussions.
  • “This is a very leaky department... people are concerned but don’t feel they can run those concerns up the ladder.” (Howley, 18:22)
  • Publicly accused close aides and friends of leaking, creating paranoia and a shrinking inner circle.
• Image/Brand Focus: More preoccupied with optics and social media than strategic vision.
  • “His preoccupation continues to be... crafting a visual moment, social media, the way the department looks to the broader public.” (Howley, 17:02)
  • Reported impulse control issues and a history of personal scandal (substance abuse, affairs, financial irregularities).

5. Aftermath of Scandal: Paranoia, Retrenchment, and Loyalty to Trump

• After Signalgate, Hegseth's attitude shifts: from ambition and curiosity to paranoia and control.
  • “Instead of relying on... this kind of deep bench... he’s surrounding himself with more of his personal entourage.” (Howley, 22:20)
  • His wife and brother assume informal roles in the Pentagon’s public affairs and legal management.
• Shift in Governance:
  • Department reportedly ceases creative problem-solving, becomes a mechanism for implementing Trump’s will.
  • “He started parroting some of these more isolationist points of view... willing to shift his ideology depending on who he might be talking to.” (Howley, 24:10)
• Flexible Ideology & Trump Loyalty:
  • “He is here because Donald Trump trusts that when Donald Trump calls on Pete Hegseth to do something questionable, he is a guy who’s going to follow orders.” (Howley, 24:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Military Purity & Standards:
  • “If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.” (Hegseth, 09:01)
• On Facing Internal Dissent:
  • “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.” (Hegseth, 06:02)
• On Trump’s Approach:
  • “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military because we're going into Chicago very soon.” (Trump, 04:02)
• On Paranoia After Scandal:
  • “His trusted circle became much smaller... his wife was frequently in the office giving orders… his brother came on as personal lawyer.” (Howley, 22:20)
• On Hegseth’s Role:
  • “He is here because Donald Trump trusts that when Donald Trump calls on Pete Hegseth to do something questionable, he is a guy who’s going to follow orders.” (Howley, 24:52)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:12] Hegseth outlines military appearance and discipline standards
• [02:17] Dan Lamoth analyzes Trump’s unscripted speech at Quantico
• [04:00] Trump suggests military force in US cities
• [06:02] Hegseth’s ultimatum: “resign if you disagree”
• [07:46] Hegseth decries “wokeness”
• [09:01] Women’s role in combat, return to traditional standards
• [15:11] Kerry Howley on Hegseth’s TV persona and trajectory
• [18:56] The fallout and paranoia after “Signalgate”
• [22:20] Personal entourage takes control; institutional trust collapses
• [24:52] Howley: “Loyalty to Trump trumps all else”

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Tone & Language

The episode carries a tone of urgent skepticism, with references to “chaos,” “paranoia,” and “rollback” in military culture. The hosts and their guests use clear, direct language, often quoting or paraphrasing memorable soundbites from Hegseth and Trump to highlight their styles and concerns.

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Conclusion

This "Today, Explained" episode pulls back the curtain on the Hegseth era at the Pentagon—characterized by a push for old-school discipline, resistance to social change, internal chaos, and unyielding loyalty to Trump. Both guests warn that a mix of image obsession, ideological flexibility, and political paranoia at the top of America’s military could have unpredictable consequences both for service members and for civil-military relations in the future.

Transcript

[Noel King]

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, you will know, summoned around 800 military brass to Quantico this week for a lecture about lethality, about wokeness, about war fighting, about shaving.

[Pete Hegseth]

We're gonna cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards.

[Noel King]

What about shaving?

[Pete Hegseth]

No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.

[Noel King]

President Trump, meanwhile, continuing to live every week like it's Shark Week, talked about all of it.

[Donald Trump]

Be cool when you walk down, but don' don't bop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I've never seen. Da da da da da da ba ba ba.

[Noel King]

And threatened yet again to deploy the military to American cities. Months ago, a texting scandal threatened Pete Hegseth's future. In the aftermath, he's closer than ever to President Trump. That's ahead on today Explained.

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[Kerry Howley]

This is today, explained Noel.

[Noel King]

King here with Dan Lamoth, who covers the Pentagon and the military for the Washington Post and who broke the story of this big meeting. Dan, what do you think we learned from Secretary Hegseth and President Trump's speeches?

[Dan Lamoth]

President Trump came in, didn't really speak from a planned set of talking points.

[Donald Trump]

Our firemen are incredible. They're up in one of these ladders that goes way up to the sky. Actually, I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature.

[Dan Lamoth]

It was a meandering speech that he could have given any number of other places.

[Donald Trump]

Would you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. So give it. They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing. Tariff is my favorite word. I love the word tariff. You know, we're becoming rich as hell.

[Dan Lamoth]

He was sort of invited only after the Washington Post first reported this news last week that this order had been delivered for generals to show up. It kind of changed the conversation a bit. You know, once it's a presidential event, you know, the media pool grows, the attention grows.

[Donald Trump]

I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very. Don't laugh, don't laugh. You're not allowed to do that. You know what, just have a good time.

[Dan Lamoth]

And if you want to applaud.

[Noel King]

You'Re right that it was a little disorganized, a little rambling. But at the end of the day, the headlines were the president more or less said the military should be deployed in some US cities.

[Donald Trump]

And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within.

[Noel King]

That's a, that's a very big thing to say. What did you hear from Trump's comments on, you know, the radical left Democrats have destroyed San Francisco and Chicago and we're going to straighten them out.

[Dan Lamoth]

There were new lines in there and.

[Donald Trump]

I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military because we're going into Chicago very soon.

[Dan Lamoth]

That's a big city that was striking. That's going to alarm a lot of people for all the obvious reasons. But this is a message roughly that he has delivered before. He has as recently as a few days ago talked about sending the military to Oregon, giving them the full force authority to do what they thought was fit.

[Kerry Howley]

Truth social.

[Dan Lamoth]

I am directing Secretary of War Pete Hagseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by antifa or other domestic terrorists. That is not kind of in fitting with long standing norms. That's going to freak out a lot of people in those cities for obvious reasons.

[Noel King]

So the President's words may have seemed really striking to civilians, but I wonder if they were striking to your sources inside the military or if the response was this is how President Trump has been talking for a while.

[Dan Lamoth]

I think it was the latter. I mean, I don't think they like it. I think a lot of people that want to see particularly the active duty military not involved in domestic missions unless absolutely required and there's a handful of cases in history and it's supposed to be a rare thing so to see him kind of push this in that direction yet again. Yeah, they're gritting their teeth, a lot of them, and people are choosing their words carefully. I think the idea right now is it's an extremely sensitive time. It's a time when they're searching for leakers. There's anyone who has anything that counters the narrative is probably going to get screamed down. So I think we're in that moment to some degree. One of the things Secretary Hegseth said.

[Pete Hegseth]

Is, but if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service.

[Dan Lamoth]

And those are the sorts of messages my way or get out that I think is going to concern people who otherwise would be happy to serve with a lot of the change going on right now.

[Noel King]

All right, let's talk about what Pete Hegseth said. It was not a short speech. It was about what he thinks the military should be.

[Donald Trump]

What?

[Noel King]

What did you hear?

[Dan Lamoth]

I heard a theme and message that's very consistent with a book that he wrote prior to taking this position that he has touted, continued to tout.

[Pete Hegseth]

You might say we're ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.

[Dan Lamoth]

That's him.

[Noel King]

That's his book.

[Dan Lamoth]

Right. Pete Hegseth comes into this job with a very seemingly well defined set of goals and principles. Some people like them, some people don't. And he comes into this job with a kind of showbiz background and not unlike the president, is willing to kind of go there and dress it up and make things big if he thinks the message is going to get to more people that way. It's a message of basically, the military needs to get back to basics. The military needs to stop focusing on social experimentation. The military has done too much for basically politics as. As he would define that. That's, you know, sort of the idea of being more inclusive.

[Pete Hegseth]

And we lost our way. We became the WOKE department.

[Dan Lamoth]

And I think turning back the clock.

[Pete Hegseth]

In some ways, but not anymore.

[Dan Lamoth]

He referenced a 1990 test.

[Pete Hegseth]

What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat, or was the change due to a softening, weakening or gender based pursuit of other priorities?

[Dan Lamoth]

For one, the military has over time become more inclusive. And that's not just recent times. That's dating back to right post World War II and even before. Like, this is not a new thing that the military over time shifts to become more inclusive. But I think what we're Seeing now is a rollback of recent things. Things like the inclusion of transgender service members.

[Pete Hegseth]

No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses.

[Dan Lamoth]

Things like the inclusion of women in a lot of combat units that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they were not allowed to even participate in, even if they met a physical standard.

[Pete Hegseth]

If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.

[Dan Lamoth]

We're waiting to see what the specifics end up being. Are these going to be standards that they meet? And if not, what happens to people who are already in these jobs? You know, do they do something else in the military? Are they drummed out? I have no answers for that at the moment.

[Noel King]

In some ways, Secretary Hegseth talks a lot like the president. There was a golden age once upon a time. Now we are in a state of decay, and we've got to get back to the way it was.

[Dan Lamoth]

Yeah, no, I think in a lot of ways, you're right. I think add into that, you know, him, you know, having some level of service. You know, he had two deployments, one to Iraq, one to Afghanistan, and some time in the National Guard. He had a pretty rough deployment in terms of what happened to his unit. There was a big war crimes case in that unit. He saw his brigade commander, who was an inspiring figure for a lot of people in that unit and controversial figure for a lot of others, get a career ending, letter of reprimand at the tail end of that investigation. That's the sort of thing that I think kind of plays a role in forming his worldview. Now, prior to him taking this job, we saw him openly advocate for people who had been accused of war crimes. When he was on Fox News, he played an integral role in President Trump pardoning a handful of people during the first Trump administration when he was still at Fox. So this is consistent with kind of his worldview and message for years now.

[Noel King]

Pete Hegseth is a really interesting character, right? He has been consistent in his messaging, as you've pointed out. He's also dealt with a lot of scandal, including Signalgate. But President Trump has stood by him throughout. Is Hegseth doing this, this meeting and his other reshaping of the military? Is he doing it for him? Is he doing it for Trump? What do you think is the key to Hegseth as Secretary of Defense?

[Dan Lamoth]

I think he comes in governing from a very specific worldview, a worldview that the military is stretched too thin, focused on the wrong things, and too warm and fuzzy. For a lot of people. I think that the fear that I hear from a lot of my sources is even a lot of the people who agree with that as an overall kind of faces are worried about the specifics. They're worried about kind of a overcorrection here, the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. And I think that is kind of where it's going to come down. In coming weeks, I have conversations with folks who have, you know, pretty impressive backgrounds, people who have served in very tough circumstances. They're pretty hard people, you know, just like physically hard, mentally hard. They are people who are ready for a lot and have dealt with a lot of on balance, some of those folks are open minded to the idea that things maybe need to be reined in a bit from the Biden years. But how you do that matters too. And I think there is a great concern that they're going to go too far.

[Noel King]

Dan Lamoth of the Washington Post Coming up, a reporter who spent time with some of the men who were ousted during Signalgate on how the Secretary of Defense changed post scandal Support for today's show comes from Built Rewards. Built Rewards says nobody likes paying rent. But what about if you got rewards every time you paid your rent? That is what Bilt Rewards is all about. By paying rent through Bilt, you earn points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines. A future rent payment. Your next Lyft ride so much more. But it doesn't stop there. BILT is about making your entire neighborhood more rewarding. According to Bilt, you can dine out at your favorite local restaurants, earn additional points, get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. Enjoy exclusive experiences just for BILT members. Every month, Bilt turns a monthly expense rent into an opportunity to earn rewards. Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood, wherever you call home by going to joinbuilt.com explained. That's J O I N B I L T.com explained. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you.

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[Pete Hegseth]

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[Donald Trump]

The golden age of America begins right.

[Noel King]

Now on Today Explained.

[Kerry Howley]

My name is Kerry Howley and I'm a feature writer at New York Magazine.

[Noel King]

And you wrote a great piece called. What was the headline? It was a great headline.

[Kerry Howley]

I believe it was called Playing Secretary.

[Noel King]

Yes. Pete Haggs said this. Playing Secretary, that was it. You spent a lot of time talking to people who know the Secretary of Defense and you painted a picture of a guy who is chaotic. Is that fair?

[Kerry Howley]

I think that's an accurate description, yeah.

[Noel King]

Why is a guy who is chaotic in this job in the first place?

[Kerry Howley]

I think Pete Hegseth is in this job because he looks to Donald Trump like the kind of guy who should be in this job.

[Donald Trump]

I look at you, you're just incredible people. Central casting, I might add.

[Kerry Howley]

Trump encountered Hegseth in his previous life as a Fox and Friends weekend co host.

[Noel King]

Pete, I'll start with you.

[Pete Hegseth]

What do you think? Well, Boy Scouts has been cratering itself for quite some time. You see this. See, this is an institution the left didn't control. They didn't want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.

[Kerry Howley]

In which Hagseth would sometimes talk about military matters.

[Pete Hegseth]

Our Abrams tanks that we're sending to Ukraine are getting blown up at a record rate by Russian drones. Well, maybe the guys in the Pentagon don't really know what they're doing, cuz they've been focused on other things.

[Kerry Howley]

And I think, you know, it's pretty universally acknowledged that Trump thought that's the way a Secretary of Defense should look. And I think it was very. I know it was very surprising to people in Hegseth's immediate orbit that he was chosen for this appointment. And I can only imagine it was also surprising to Pete Hegseth.

[Noel King]

There was still a chance that Pete Hegseth would do a very good job at this job. From what you've seen covering him over the past couple of months, how unorthodox is he in terms of his leadership of the Department of Defense.

[Kerry Howley]

I would say that he has fixations that are unusual for this position. This is a guy who came from television, and his preoccupation continues to be maybe crafting a visual moment, social media, the way the department looks to the broader public, the kind of branding for the Department of Defense. And he spends a lot of time crafting that image.

[Pete Hegseth]

When I can get down, do push ups and deadlifts with the troops and just hear from them what's working, what isn't. How do you see your mission set? I love that. So there was a.

[Kerry Howley]

Who has a long history of issues with impulse control. So there are the very well documented substance abuse issues.

[Dan Lamoth]

The New Yorker reported this week that.

[Pete Hegseth]

As recently as the spring of 2023, Hegseth ordered three gin and tonics at.

[Noel King]

A weekday breakfast meeting with an acquaintance in Manhattan.

[Pete Hegseth]

I'm a different man than I was years ago, and that's a redemption story.

[Kerry Howley]

There are sexual assault allegations. There are affairs. There have been accusations of financial mismanagement.

[Dan Lamoth]

A variety of sources, including your own.

[Noel King]

Writings, implicate you with disregarding the laws of war.

[Kerry Howley]

Financial mismanagement, and I believe both organizations that he led prior to his job as the secretary of defense, where he leads, you know, one of the most complicated, largest human organizations in the world. There have been kind of constant personnel issues, high profile resignations, leak investigations. This is a very leaky department. And what that tells you is that people are concerned but don't feel that they can run those concerns up the ladder in an official capacity. And so are talking through the press. There's, of course, Signalgate.

[Pete Hegseth]

The Atlantic magazine's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, says he was added to a group chat of top US Officials in including the defense secretary and national security adviser who discussed specific information about airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen hours before they were launched.

[Dan Lamoth]

And, you know, this morning we decided to publish these texts so people can see for themselves what was going on in the signal chat.

[Kerry Howley]

There was a second signal gate. US Defense Secretary Pete said share details of attacks on Houthi rebels in a second signal chat group.

[Pete Hegseth]

The signal group chat included his wife, brother, and personal attorney.

[Kerry Howley]

Hegseth didn't do himself any favors by kind of failing to acknowledge that anything had gone wrong. And there was this kind of panicked aggression that I think emerged in further interviews.

[Pete Hegseth]

This is why we're fighting the fake news media. This is why we're fighting slash and burn Democrats. This is why we're fighting hoaxters.

[Donald Trump]

Hoaxers.

[Noel King]

This group.

[Pete Hegseth]

No, no, no. This Group right here full of hoaxters that peddle anonymous sources from leakers with axes to grind. And then you put it all together as if it's some news story. And when we know it, we know exactly what it is. So I'm really proud of what we're doing for the president, fighting hard across the board, and I'm going to go roll some Easter eggs with my kids.

[Kerry Howley]

So there seemed to be, like, a problem even with crisis communications. Like, it wasn't clear to this department how to handle the crisis itself. I mean, this was very stressful to Hegseth. It was like a real focus of the administration. Where are the leaks? We must find the leakers. And that created a situation where different political factions who are kind of jockeying within his office, could try to portray people they didn't like as the leakers. So you had Pete Hagseth publicly blaming two close friends and a third top aide of leaking, of betraying him.

[Pete Hegseth]

I offered them to take a polygraph. I offered them to take my phone. I told them I did not leak anything. I did not leak anything classified or unclassified to the media. I've not had a single conversation with the media that wasn't on the record, sanctioned by Public Affairs.

[Noel King]

And then how do things change after the fallout from Signalgate? What happens at the Defense Department then?

[Kerry Howley]

So what sources told me was that in the early days of this administration, of this tenure, Hagseth came in with kind of ambition. He was curious, he was interested, even though he didn't have the deep experience of his predecessors. There was kind of an openness to learn. And then after Signalgate, the attitude was more one of the paranoia, fear. I mean, the interviews he did regarding these leaks feel panicked.

[Pete Hegseth]

I'm here because President Trump asked me to bring war fighting back to the Pentagon every single day. That is our focus. And if people don't like it, they can come after me. No worries. I'm standing right here. The war fighters are behind us. Our enemies know they're on notice. Our allies know we're behind them.

[Donald Trump]

And.

[Pete Hegseth]

And that, in this dangerous world for the American people, is what it's all about.

[Kerry Howley]

Someone who kind of doesn't know who to trust or where to turn. Someone who, you know, has trouble making decisions in stressful situations. His trusted circle became much smaller. So you saw, kind of oddly, his wife was frequently in the office giving orders to the public relations arm of the department. His brother came on his personal lawy. And so instead of relying on, like, this kind of deep bench of people, who have been there for a very long time. He's surrounding himself with more of his kind of personal entourage.

[Noel King]

It sounds like he may be looking for people who won't betray him.

[Kerry Howley]

Yes. And the fear, really, I would say it infected the way the ambitions that everyone had for the department. So instead of trying to solve some of the problems that Hegseth mentioned and during his confirmation things, he might have been ambitious about reforming earlier, as someone described it to me, the department stopped being creative and it started being just a mechanism for implementing executive orders. In other words, he was just kind of waiting for Trump to tell him what to do. Hegseth is not an ideological character. This is something that sources close to him emphasized. He used to have a more interventionist mindset. He wrote several books about how we should have been in Iraq longer. And as soon as he came into this administration, he started parroting some of these more isolationist points of view. He's someone who's willing to shift his ideology depending on who he might be talking to. And I think that's particularly useful to someone who might want Hegseth to follow questionable orders. This isn't somebody who's going to have a red line because he's not someone who has strong ideas about what the military ought to be doing. So if Hegseth's square jaw is ultimately what got him this job, I think what's keeping him in the job is his demonstrated loyalty to the strongman at the top. I think he is here because Donald Trump trusts that when Donald Trump calls on Pete Hegseth to do something questionable, he is a guy who's going to follow orders.

[Noel King]

Kerry Howley is a features writer for New York Magazine. Arianna Espuru and Devin Schwartz produced today's show. Amn Elsadi edited, Patrick Boyd and Adrienne Lilly are our engineers and Laura Bullard checked the the facts. The rest of our team Avishai Artsy, Hadi Mwagdi, Miles Bryant, Peter Balin on Rosen, Denise Guerra, Danielle Hewitt and Kelly Wessinger. Our deputy EP is Jolie Myers and our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. Sean Ramas firm is our founding father. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. I'm Noel King. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC and the show is a part of the Vox Media podcast network. For more award winning podcasts you can visit podcast.voxmedia.com it's spooky season folks and we are running a spooky season sale. Not really, but both things are happening at once. Would you like to become a Vox member VOX members get all kinds of cool perks. Ad free versions of this show, unlimited reading on the website, a members only newsletter, exclusive access to Sean so much more. You'll also be supporting our work. We can't do this without you. You guys know that. Key point. Sign up now and you'll save $20 on an annual membership that is more than 30% off an annual membership. Go to vox.commembers to join.

[Donald Trump]

Foreign.

[Pete Hegseth]

Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it.

[Dan Lamoth]

Cue the emu music.

[Noel King]

Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth, customize and save waste.

[Pete Hegseth]

That may have been too much feeling.

[Dan Lamoth]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts.