AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth broke out his impressions of President Donald Trump and the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday — though he admitted his Graham impression “always devolves into a Trump accent.”
The moment came during the renaming ceremony for Joint Base Lindsey Graham — formerly Joint Base Charleston — in South Carolina on Monday after Graham’s July passing. According to a statement from his office, his death at the age of 71 was due to a “brief and sudden illness.”
Recalling a moment he once shared with Graham, Hegseth told the crowd, “I’ll never forget it. In his accent, he sat there, and he said, ‘Gentlemen—’”
Hegseth then paused before admitting, “I can’t do a Lindsey Graham accent. It always devolves into a Trump accent.” The defense secretary proceeded on with his purported Graham quote — though in his own voice.
Hegseth got a chance to show off his Trump impression at another point during the ceremony, though, quipping to the audience of troops, “When it comes to the president’s directive, he said, ‘Pete, deliver peace through strength, put America first, and apply common sense.’ And we try to do that across our formations as much as humanly possible. I often ask him — I say, ‘Hey, Mr. President, I’m gonna go see your troops, this time out in South Carolina.’ I always ask him, ‘What do you want me to — what do you want me to tell ’em?’”
“And his answer is always the same,” Hegseth continued, now in Trump’s voice, “He goes, ‘Pete, tell ’em I love ’em.’”
Now, this isn’t the first time the defense secretary has attempted to impersonate his boss’s voice. In May, while campaigning for Kentucky GOP then-congressional candidate Ed Gallrein — who since defeated Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the state’s Republican primary — Hegseth did another Trump voice, this time recalling conversations where the president told him he would need to be “tough as sh*t” to thrive in his role.
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