'I signed that orders book twice': Hegseth meets the Lincoln's sailors on the way home
Trevor Ault flew aboard by Osprey for the last leg of a ten-month deployment, where nearly 60 fathers are waiting to meet their newborns.
Good Morning America
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 71,124 views a day, 20 times a normal first day on this channel (3,600).
Aboard USS Abraham Lincoln as it returns to San Diego
Pete Hegseth did not dodge it. Standing before the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln on the flight deck, the Secretary of Defense told them he knew he was "the only thing standing between you and home," then added that he was also "the one who signed that orders book twice to extend you."
That moment opens Good Morning America's Short from aboard the carrier, which ABC News bills as returning from a record-setting deployment. Correspondent Trevor Ault flies out on an Osprey and lands on the ship itself, then crouches to show what thousands of launches have done to the deck's surface. The report counts 265 days in a row without a port visit, and it does not skip the reports of low morale. "We've been holding on for dear life just to get through this deployment," says MacKayla Morris of the flight deck crew. William Aduloju takes a quieter pride: "at least I know I launched every bird off of this deck."
Captain Dan Keeler speaks of big highs and real lows, and Ault closes at night beside the carrier's island with the detail that stays: nearly 60 fathers on board will meet their babies for the first time when the ship docks.
In 14 hours the Short passed 54,000 views, far beyond everything else GMA posted that Thursday, Nick Saban and Zoo Atlanta's new pandas included. The comments, usually a trickle under these clips, ran past a hundred, many of them about the length of the deployment, the food supply and the decision to keep the crew at sea.
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- Channel
- Good Morning America
- Subscribers
- 5,510,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 6,219,537
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,173,053 (on a normal day: 969,429)
- Video published
- October 8, 2026
- Video views so far
- 54,006 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 71,124
The numbers
A homecoming Short that pulled far ahead of the morning show's usual first day, with a comment section to match.
💡 Test your knowledge
The 1986 film Top Gun is set at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, then based at which San Diego naval air station?
The Navy's Fighter Weapons School, nicknamed Topgun, was based at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego when the film was made.