By John Harwood
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Pete Hegseth’s recent announcement of testosterone screening for U.S. troops channeled Colin Jost’s cartoonish depiction of the Defense Secretary on ‘Saturday Night Live.’
But the pathological version of masculinity Jost mocks extends far beyond Hegseth. It permeates the entire MAGA movement, from Donald Trump on down.
And as events this summer have shown, it’s ugly, not funny.
As Hegseth unveiled his testosterone program, the New York Times reported that he blocked promotions for five senior Navy officers who are women or people of color, including the first American woman to command a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Around the same time, some MAGA luminaries defended the ostentatiously violent misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother as victims of “lawfare” after U.S. Marshals in Miami arrested them on British charges including rape and sex trafficking. The Tates had cultivated connections with the First Family, and gained permission to travel from Romania to Florida soon after Trump’s 2025 return to the White House.
Days earlier, a federal judge ordered Trump to finally pay E. Jean Carroll $5.8 million in damages she won after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse. Trump has ridiculed Carroll – as he has ridiculed and demeaned others among more than two dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
The MAGA commentariat finds much of this amusing. Fox host Jesse Watters, for example, reveled in the sexual aggression that he imagines Pentagon testosterone shots will trigger.
“Women on base, you better be careful,” Watters chortled on air. “These guys are gonna be wild animals.”
Hegseth’s syringes could just as well give “these guys” breast tissue and shrunken testicles, according to the Mayo Clinic catalogue of side effects. But Hegseth isn’t genuinely toughening his “war-fighters.” He’s performing a low-brow sensibility that appeals to frustrated men.
Republicans have leaned disproportionately on male voters since the Reagan era, when the so-called “gender gap” emerged from perceived characteristics of the two parties. Nurturing “mommy party” Democrats back healthcare, education, and welfare programs; stern “daddy party” Republicans demand law-and-order, fiscal discipline, and military strength.
For decades now, blue-collar men have watched women outperform them educationally, move ahead in a digital economy that rewards brains over brawn, and claim greater independence financially and socially. There “manosphere” that provides them refuge has become central to GOP strategy.
As with racial appeals to white resentment, Trump-era Republican outreach to male anxieties has grown increasingly crude. That explains memes depicting the overweight president as a sculpted muscleman, the UFC fight on the White House lawn, and social media celebrations of deadly military strikes as if in a video game.
Trump gleefully impugns female politicians and journalists who challenge him, including CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Acolytes such as JD Vance, who blithely derided Democrats as “childless cat ladies,” echo his casual misogyny.
“I want to talk about these college-educated, downwardly mobile women,” Watters declared recently on Fox. “You’re going to get bitter because you’re single… Men don’t care if you have a PhD.”
“Peak toxic masculinity,” came the social media response from Sarah Matthews, a first-term Trump aide turned sharp critic. Her post included a TV clip from author Scott Galloway on the emptiness of MAGA’s message to a single 30-something woman.
“The reality is she’s fine,” Galloway said. “When women don’t have a relationship, they pour that energy into their friends and their work. When a man doesn’t have a relationship, he pours it into conspiracy theories, porn, and misogyny.”
To state the obvious, abusive male behavior is not a partisan issue. What divides today’s Republicans and Democrats is their reaction to it.
Allegations of sexual misconduct forced Democrat Graham Platner from the Maine Senate race, and Eric Swalwell out of Congress and the California governor’s race. Republican Reps. Max Miller and Cory Mills remain in the House despite reports that they violently abused women. (Platner, Swalwell, Mills, and Miller have all denied the allegations.)
Some Jan. 6 insurrectionists Trump pardoned last year, NPR has reported, faced prior charges of rape and sexual abuse.
Among the deportation agents Trump has empowered is David Brouillette, who recently gunned down a Colombian immigrant in Maine; Brouillette once left his ex-wife a voicemail saying women in her family “should have your fucking throats cut,” the ex-wife told the Associated Press. In January, after Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good with a shot to the head in Minnesota, he muttered “fucking bitch.” Neither ICE officer has been charged.
Republican senators confirmed Hegseth as Defense Secretary despite a woman’s allegation of sexual assault; though Hegseth denied it, he paid her $50,000 to settle the case. Hegseth’s own mother has excoriated his behavior.
“You are an abuser of women,” she wrote in an email during his second divorce. “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years)…”
Hegseth ascribes his criticism of women in the military to high standards, not oafish sexism. Likely story.
In February, the self-styled “Secretary of War” invited Christian nationalist minister Doug Wilson to conduct a service at the Pentagon. Wilson favors repeal of women’s constitutional right to vote.
John Harwood is the former chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and White House correspondent for CNN. He has interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden. Sign up for ‘The Stakes with John Harwood’ to get all of his columns in your inbox.