Army Heroes’ Humiliating Nickname for Pete Hegseth Is Leaked

In his effort to transform himself from a misogynistic loser-boozer into the man running the world’s most powerful military, Pete Hegseth wrote the 2024 book The War on Warriors.

The 46-year-old “Secretary of War” is now waging his own war on America’s most distinguished warriors as he seeks to create a cult-within-a-cult at the Pentagon.

Generals who want to remain in Hegseth’s military must be blindly loyal not only to President Donald Trump, but also to a preening fake tough guy who was sidelined in the National Guard. Hegseth’s nickname in the Pentagon is “No Tab Pete”—because while in uniform he had none of the patches such as “Ranger” and “Sapper’ that signify special combat skills.

And, as he fires one senior military leader after another who actually is what he pretends to be, the former Fox News co-host makes clear the full irony of his book’s subtitle.

“BEHIND THE BETRAYAL OF THE MEN WHO KEEP US FREE”

The disgraceful dimensions of Hegseth’s betrayal were manifest last Thursday at the retirement ceremony for Gen. Christopher Donahue, which was held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, inside the compound of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, known to the public as Delta Force but to those who serve simply as Delta, or the Unit. This secret, determinedly low-profile commando outfit has been called “SEAL Team Six without the book deal.” That compares to a defense secretary who had a book deal but scant actual combat experience to write about.

Donahue, who has a Ranger tab, is 57 and could have continued for another nine years as a general, a general of rare talent. He served in Delta in 2002 and commanded the Unit from 2013 to 2015, when it largely destroyed ISIS in just nine months. He had led the 82nd Airborne Division. A famous photo was taken at 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 30, 2021, as Donahue, rifle in hand, became the last person to board the last military airplane out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, one minute before the agreed deadline for the Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan.

That was four days, five hours, and 37 minutes after a lone ISIS suicide bomber killed 13 American service members—who were not under Donahue’s command—along with at least 170 Afghans at the airport. Donahue has been credited with helping to prevent the withdrawal from being even bloodier and more chaotic, but Hegseth is all about the script, not the reality. He reportedly continued to associate Donahue with the incident.

Most recently, Donahue had commanded Army operations in Europe and Africa. He had been a driving force in efforts by the American military to adjust to the new battlefield reality arising from Ukraine’s surprising success in holding off the Russian invasion.

In war games held in Germany from April 9 to May 10, 2026, some 3,500 U.S. troops from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, faced between 1,500 and 3,000 Ukrainians of the 412th Nemesis Regiment of the Unmanned Systems Forces.

The Americans were equipped with M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and M109 Paladin self-propelled 155mm howitzers, among other vehicles. The Ukrainian unit lived up to its “Nemesis” nickname with just drones.

So much of the American force was “killed,” so quickly, that it had to be “respawned,” or the game would have been over before it had even really begun. Some of the Ukrainians were shifted to train the Americans.

Drones had already been declared a priority by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who had been pushing the “Army Transformation Initiative,” which involved sending experimental drones to active units for testing in the field.

But George had run afoul of Trump, and therefore Hegseth, when he disciplined the aircrews of two Apache helicopters that appeared in an online video hovering in apparent tribute outside the home of MAGA fixture Kid Rock. Hegseth pointedly conveyed his displeasure on his personal X account.

“No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.”

George was at a meeting in the Pentagon on April 2, when he got a 15-second phone call from Hegseth informing him that he’d been fired. Word quickly reached Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, who had served in Iraq, and is a buddy and Yale Law School classmate of Vice President JD Vance and was working closely with George on modernization in this age of drones.

Driscoll later testified before the budget subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations that he had been with his family in North Carolina for his kids’ spring break when he got the news. He had responded as a true warrior.

“I drove straight to General George’s house,” Driscoll said. “We walked right in, and we all gave him a hug. There is no person that has more respect for General George and his 42 years of service. His Purple Heart, his wife, Patty, their grandkids, their kids. I adore them. And he was an amazing transformational leader.”

Driscoll also testified about what he and George had learned from the Ukrainians about warfighting.

“They have fundamentally altered how humans engage in conflict,” Driscoll said. “They have done an absolutely amazing job of innovating. And I am publicly on record saying we are learning a lot from them, and we are changing a lot of the lessons that they have taught us.”

Driscoll and George were among the actual warriors who gathered on Delta’s holy ground last Thursday as Donahue formally retired. An Army official who was there told the Daily Beast that everybody’s focus was on honoring this hero among heroes, who has been called a “once-in-a-generation general.” There was scant talk of No Tab Pete until the dinner following the company.

“Then, when the bourbon began to flow…” the official said.

The official left the gathering with the impression that Driscoll had reached his limit with Hegseth. “Driscoll’s going to resign this week,” was the sentiment, the official told the Daily Beast.

That very day, Driscoll went to the White House. And, as reported by the Washington Post, he submitted his resignation to President Trump, thereby becoming the latest of more than 20 senior military leaders who have departed during Hegseth’s 20 months as secretary. Driscoll reportedly warned Trump about the damage No Tab Pete is doing to the Army and, therefore, the nation.

Driscoll departs as a warrior so genuine he was unafraid to testify that he’d hugged a general who had been unjustly fired.

“I, too, loved General George,” Driscoll told the congressional subcommittee.

An increasing number of people have come to feel much the same about 39-year-old Driscoll since his failed run for Congress in North Carolina in 2020. His boyish charm is maturing toward wisdom and he just may come back as a centrist Republican candidate for president.

Hegseth made himself an increasingly ridiculous figure in his cult-within-a-cult. He stood trim and clean-shaven before a mandatory gathering of 800 of the top brass and proclaimed the importance of grooming and waistlines.

“No more beardos, no more fat generals,” he declared.

Soldiers are now required to be checked twice a year to ensure their “waist-to-height ratio” is less than 0.55.

“The implementation of this assessment measures a soldier’s waistline at the navel (belly button) and divides that measurement by their height in inches, which produces the ratio for record,” the new protocol states.

In June, the Department of Defense posted on X a video of Hegseth bench-pressing outdoors at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility where he was posted as a national guardsman from 2004 to 2005. Somebody off-camera can be heard shouting, “All the way up! All the way down!” He keeps doing neither.

“America’s @SECWAR Crushed 44 reps on the bench after the morning run,” the DOD cheered nonetheless.

On Aug. 24, Hegseth delivered a speech at an Oshkosh Corporation facility that makes tactical vehicles such as the ones Ukrainians wiped out in the war game in Germany.

“Many moons ago, I was a platoon leader in Iraq, fighting an enemy, a cowardly enemy that fought amongst women and children and hid IEDs with stand-off (weapons) because they knew they couldn’t fight American warriors toe to toe,” he told the gathering.

As the secretary of defense, Hegseth said in March that our war of choice against the Iranian regime “was never meant to be a fair fight and it is not a fair fight.“

“We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” he added.

The problem is the regime does not stay down.

And nobody seeks to go toe to toe with anybody in an age of drones, where our best generals have been removed from the field in the middle of a conflict by the guy who wrote The War On Warriors.