SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that for “Kegseth,” respecting the military “apparently means firing experienced generals mid-war while sailors are stranded at sea,” quoting a CBS News post on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Quantico speech.
Newsom posted the line on X on Oct. 2. The quoted CBS post from Sept. 30 said Hegseth would announce a 20 percent cut to generals and admirals. “Kegseth” and “stranded at sea” are Newsom’s wording. Hegseth’s speech did not name Newsom.
For Kegseth, “respect the military” apparently means firing experienced generals mid-war while sailors are stranded at sea.
Hegseth spoke Sept. 30 at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The as-delivered text is on the Department of War site. He said generals who “clung to the ‘Woke Department’ or seem to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here.” A DVIDS recording of the remarks is public domain. The audience was E-6s and O-3s, not the generals he addressed at the same base a year earlier.
He said “the number-crunchers say we fired 10% of the generals and admirals across the force, and that number sounds about right.” He said he had directed an additional 10 percent cut in general-officer slots. “So, yes, 20% reduction across the board. Now the media calls that a ‘purge.’ I call it accountability and long overdue. And frankly, the bare minimum.” The department has not posted a name-by-name list matching the 10 percent figure.
A May 5, 2025, memorandum directed a minimum 20 percent reduction of four-star positions in the active component, a minimum 20 percent reduction of general officers in the National Guard, and an additional minimum 10 percent reduction in general and flag officers tied to a Unified Command Plan realignment. The Sept. 30 speech is Hegseth’s later accounting of firings plus slot cuts. Those are two different 20 percent figures.
Title 10, section 526, caps active-duty general and flag officers by service and lets the secretary exclude up to 232 joint-duty positions. The department has said the active-duty count was 851 in July, against a combined ceiling of 857. Congress sets the ceiling. Going below it does not require a new statute.
A same-day release said Hegseth also announced an Autonomous Warfare Command as a four-star functional combatant command by Oct. 1, 2027, and Project Meridian, a 120-day study co-directed by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich. The release does not restate the flag-officer cut.
The Iran conflict began Feb. 28. That is the “mid-war” fact in Newsom’s sentence. In the Quantico text, Hegseth said U.S. forces had “destroyed Iran’s Navy, destroyed Iran’s Air Force,” and that “from Midnight Hammer to Epic Fury, Iran will never, ever have a nuclear weapon.” He did not say the general-officer cuts were a response to the war.
The same speech named the carrier Newsom’s post leaves unnamed. Hegseth said retention included “over 80% of the force on the USS Abraham Lincoln, on their historic mission.” He did not say the crew was stranded.
“Sailors are stranded at sea” is Newsom’s characterization. The San Diego-based Lincoln left home port Nov. 21, 2025. Naval Base Guam said the ship and the destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. arrived Sept. 19 for a logistics stop, the strike group’s first return to U.S. soil in nine months, with on-base liberty, after a Sept. 2–6 port visit in Thailand. In a Sept. 22 letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao wrote that the USS George Washington had relieved the Lincoln in the Middle East and that the Lincoln had departed that theater. Schedule details after that, he wrote, remain classified.
Cao also wrote that since the deployment began there had been eight suicide attempts across the strike group, including the carrier, air wing, staffs, escorts, and embarked squadrons, and that one sailor who tried to go overboard in March was stopped by shipmates and returned to home port. Sen. Gillibrand’s office posted that language Sept. 25. The Navy has not described the crew as stranded. Newsom is the Democratic governor of California. California does not vote for governor in November. The midterm election is Nov. 3.