Vice President JD Vance joined Navy SEALs for an intense 90-minute beach workout Monday featuring running, rope climbing, and log carrying exercises that left the veep feeling like he “got hit by a freight train.”
The Marine veteran acknowledged that the SEALs went easy on him during their training at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado in California and expressed gratitude to the Armed Forces.
“Just finished PT with the Navy SEALs for 90 minutes,” Vance posted on his personal X account.
“They took it easy on me and I still feel like I got hit by a freight train. So grateful to all of our warriors who keep us safe and keep the highest standards anywhere in the world!”
SEALS are the Navy’s elite special operations forces. Coronado is where the SEALs hold their notoriously brutal Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, infamous for its “Hell Week,” which only an estimated 20% of candidates pass.
Vance’s return to military training echoes similar efforts by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who periodically posts footage on social media of himself working out with the troops.
Hegseth signed a policy in August restricting most service members from having beards, later declaring, “no more beardos.” The war secretary has also called on all members of the military to be “fit, not fat.”
The veep, who praised Hegseth for trying to implement “very high standards,” was the only person pictured with a beard during the training exercises.
“When I was a young United States Marine, I did not have a beard. I am now the vice president. So I get to do what I want to do,” Vance told reporters back in October about Hegseth’s policy.
Faces of many of the SEALs who exercised with Vance were also blurred out.
The training also comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) efforts.
Vance served in the Marines from 2003 to 2007 and deployed to Iraq in 2005. The veep has often cited his time in the Marines as being formative of his America First foreign policy views.
