Former President Barack Obama on Saturday asked an Ohio rally crowd how much time the nation’s defense secretary “spends looking at himself in the mirror in the morning,” moments after saying the war with Iran had killed and wounded Americans while the Pentagon’s leader was focused on troops’ “jawlines and testosterone levels.”
Obama spoke at Cleveland’s Public Auditorium in support of Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, and Sherrod Brown, the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, in remarks streamed on Obama’s X account and carried on C-SPAN’s event page. He did not name Pete Hegseth, whose department now calls him secretary of war, referring to him only as “the defense secretary.”
The remark followed Obama’s assessment of the conflict that began when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. “So seven months later, how’s that war going? Our allies and our bases have been attacked. Americans have been killed. Hundreds of Americans have been wounded. We have run down our stock of missiles. And Iran now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
The Pentagon raised its official count of U.S. troops who died during operations against Iran to 21 earlier this month, The Washington Post reported. Obama’s figure of hundreds wounded and his description of Iran’s leverage over the strait were his own characterizations.
“Meanwhile, you got the defense secretary who’s squarely focused,” Obama continued. “He’s very focused on important matters like the jawlines and testosterone levels of our troops and live streaming executions because that’s how he thinks you cultivate that manly warrior spirit.”
“How much time do you think this defense secretary spends looking at himself in the mirror in the morning?” he asked. “I mean, you know he’s working his hair because that’s how warriors look. These are not serious people.”
The jab drew on Hegseth’s own emphasis on how troops look. In a Sept. 30, 2025, address to hundreds of generals and admirals at Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said, “It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” and announced new grooming rules, according to the department’s official transcript.
“No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards,” Hegseth said in that speech. “If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.” He added that “the era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos,” and said it was “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”
Obama’s other references point to more recent Pentagon actions: a program, detailed in Defense Health Agency guidance in September, to screen male service members 30 and older for low testosterone, and Hegseth’s statement that the scheduled firing-squad execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed, a plan President Donald Trump called off in an Oct. 15 Truth Social post.
Obama returned to the theme later Saturday at a rally in Detroit, again describing the defense secretary as focused on “the jawline and testosterone levels of our troops” and questioning how much time he spends in front of the mirror, according to C-SPAN’s Detroit coverage.
Hegseth has defended his standards as a readiness measure, describing them in the Quantico speech as part of restoring a “warrior ethos” and comparing lax grooming enforcement to the “broken windows theory in policing.”
The casualty count, the testosterone screening and the grooming rules are matters of public record, and Hegseth has spoken openly about appearance standards. Obama’s suggestions about how long Hegseth spends at the mirror and on his hair, and his view that administration officials “are not serious people,” are his own characterizations. Neither Hegseth, the Pentagon nor the White House had responded to Obama’s remarks on their official X accounts as of early Sunday.