Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took time away from overseeing unjustified air strikes against alleged drug boats to revisit another of his battlefronts: the war on beards. "Whether you're an airborne ranger or a chair-borne ranger, a brand-new private or a four-star general in the Pentagon—you need to beat height and weight standards and pass the PT [physical training] test twice a year,” Hegseth said at the Northeast Indiana Defense Summit on Wednesday. “I also said we don't need to be in [a] military of beardos anymore.”  x x YouTube Video Hegseth wasn’t finished pushing his latest thinly veiled bit of racism.  “Do you know how many troops claim to be Nordic pagan?” he continued. “Suddenly, it's become like this real religious—fake religious—affiliation inside the Pentagon where troops claim to be Nordic pagan so they can grow a beard, and no one challenges them on it because no one's upheld standards for a long time. Now a quarter of the platoon’s sporting beards because they're now suddenly Nordic pagans. We're not doing that stuff anymore.” Read more