Whoopi Goldberg Tried to Lecture Pete Hegseth About West Point History and Got It Completely Backwards

Whoopi Goldberg told America in March that Pete Hegseth was sending soldiers into Iran to die without a plan.

That same week, the White House credited Hegseth with destroying Iran's ballistic missile program.

Last Monday she tried again – and walked straight into the same wall.

Hegseth's West Point Speech on Woke Military and DEI

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stood in the pouring rain at West Point on May 23 and delivered the commencement address to 998 new Army officers.

He went after the DEI bureaucracy that had infected the academy's classrooms.

"They hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls," Hegseth told the graduates.

"The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can't throw your pronouns at the enemy."

He told them they were not an army of woke – they were an army of warriors.

Then he dropped the number that made the entire argument for him.

For the second straight year, the Army smashed its recruiting goal – finishing four months ahead of schedule – after years of Biden-era shortfalls when pronoun training took priority over combat readiness.

Whoopi Goldberg Questions Hegseth's Military History on The View

The View played the clip on Monday.

Goldberg went straight to the history books – or tried to.

"Does he not know his history?" she asked. "Does he not know there was a time when women couldn't get into that school?"

The question she chose to ask about Pete Hegseth reveals exactly what she doesn't know about Pete Hegseth.

West Point admitted women in 1976.

Pete Hegseth was born in 1980.

Goldberg was born in 1955.

She's the one who lived through the era she described.

He is the history she was trying to lecture him about.

He's also the one who deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, earned two Bronze Stars, and now runs the entire Department of Defense.

Whoopi Goldberg Has Been Wrong About Hegseth Three Times

This is the third time in six months that Goldberg has gone on national television, stated something confidently wrong about Hegseth and the military, and ended up worse off than when she started.

In December, she told The View audience that Hegseth was setting up American service members to face war crimes charges over drug boat strikes.

There were no war crimes charges.

In April, she told the audience Trump was planning a military draft to fight Iran.

There was no draft.

Her own co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin corrected her on air.

Goldberg repeated the claim anyway.

In March – the week she said Hegseth was sending people to die without a plan – Hegseth had just overseen the operation that sank the Iranian Navy.

The White House reported that Iranian retaliatory attacks dropped 90 percent on his watch and that Iran's ballistic missile capabilities had been eliminated.

Three claims about Hegseth and the military.

Three strikes.

Pete Hegseth Bronze Stars vs The View Panel With Zero Days in Uniform

Joy Behar offered Goldberg a qualifier during Monday's segment: "He's not stupid."

That opened the door.

"Well," Goldberg replied. "Is he just… dumb?"

The man she aimed that at commissioned through Princeton ROTC in 2003, served three combat deployments, retired as a Major, and now oversees 1.3 million active-duty service members.

Behar, Goldberg, and Sara Haines – who called Hegseth "willfully ignorant, probably combined with just regular ignorant" – have a combined total of zero days in uniform between them.

The 61,500 Americans who signed enlistment papers this year disagree with The View's assessment of what the military has become under Hegseth.

Those recruits didn't come back to the Army because of pronoun training.

They came back because Hegseth ended it.

Sources:

• Kiara Moore, "Whoopi Goldberg responds to Pete Hegseth's military comments," Washington Examiner, May 26, 2026.
• "Hegseth praises West Point cadets as 'not an army of woke' in commencement speech," Washington Examiner, May 23, 2026.
• Pete Hegseth, "Commencement Address to the West Point Class of 2026," RealClearPolitics, May 23, 2026.
• "U.S. Army Crushes 2026 Recruiting Goal Months Ahead Of Schedule," Big League Politics, May 24, 2026.
• "Whoopi Goldberg Says Pete Hegseth Set Soldiers Up To Face War Crimes Charges," Daily Wire, December 2, 2025.
• "Whoopi Goldberg claims Trump planning military draft amid Iran war," Washington Times, April 21, 2026.
• "'The View' host Whoopi Goldberg says Trump sending Americans to die in Iran," Fox News, March 9, 2026.