California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) knocked President Trump’s weight Tuesday after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared he no longer wanted to see “fat generals” in the military.
“I guess the Commander in Chief needs to go!” Newsom said in a post on the social platform X, responding to a clip of Hegseth’s speech at Quantico, Va.
The post included an unflattering photo of the president from a campaign stop last October at McDonald’s.
A subsequent post from the governor’s press office account took another jab at the president’s weight, this time including an AI-generated photo of Trump holding two McDonald’s Big Mac cheeseburgers as drones deliver bags of fast food to the president, who is uncharacteristically wearing a gray t-shirt.
“IT’S COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE TO SEE A FAT COMMANDER IN CHIEF IN THE HALLS OF THE WHITE HOUSE!” the post read.
The Hill has reached out to the White House for a response.
The digs come after Hegseth’s highly unorthodox speech on Tuesday, when he told the U.S. military’s senior-most officers he no longer wants to see “fat generals and admirals” or overweight troops and emphasized the need to stick to strict fitness standards.
“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country and the world.”
“It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are,” he continued.
Hegseth gathered the officers at a military base in Quantico to reinforce his vision for the Defense Department, earlier announcing that the U.S. military will require those in combat jobs to meet the “highest male standard only” of their service’s physical fitness test.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape, or in a combat unit with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons, platform, or task, or under a leader who was the first but not the best,” the secretary said. “Standards must be uniform, gender-neutral, and high.”
Hegseth has repeatedly emphasized that U.S. troops meet new fitness requirements as part of a broader effort to return to what he says is the military’s “warrior ethos.” Trump earlier this month also signed an executive order rebranding the Defense Department the “Department of War.”