In June 2026, as France held events marking the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, a claim (archived) circulated online that residents in a village that hosted a commemorative ceremony said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wasn't welcome to attend.
One Facebook user who spread the claim about the reason for Hegseth's absence at a ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer wrote:
BREAKING: French Villagers just called Pete Hegseth "persona non grata" and demanded he stay home from D-Day ceremonies
Pete Hegseth made the trip to Normandy, France for the D-Day anniversary — but residents of Langrune-sur-Mer made clear he was not welcome. Locals and civic groups in the small coastal town publicly declared him unwanted before he even landed, releasing a pointed statement demanding his visit be canceled outright.
The claim circulated on X (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived), as well. Snopes readers also contacted us about the claim.
It was true that Langrune en Commun, a residents' association in Langrune-sur-Mer, issued a statement (archived) on June 2 asking Hegseth to cancel a visit to the village for a planned D-Day ceremony on June 6.
The statement said Hegseth embraced values "contrary to democracy, human rights and peace," criticized the symbolism of his tattoos and argued that his visit to Langrune-sur-Mer should be canceled out of respect for the people "who died on our beaches in the name of democracy."
BMF TV, a French news channel, reported that Hegseth was "persona non grata" in Normandy due to the statement, a phrase meaning unacceptable or unwelcome that some social media users when sharing the claim.
Hegseth spoke at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer on June 6 but France 24 reported he did not attend the international commemorative ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer later that day.
It was unclear why Hegseth did not attend the ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer. Snopes contacted the village mayor and the Pentagon to ask if they knew why Hegseth decided not to attend and await replies to our queries.
Jean Quétier, the chair of the French D-Day Commemoration Committee that arranged the ceremony, told Snopes via email it invited U.S. officials to the Langrune-sur-Mer ceremony through the U.S. Embassy in France. Quétier wrote:
Pete Hegseth was announced as the representative for the United States, along with the British Secretary of Defense. For reasons unknown to me, Mr. Pete Hegseth indicated that he would not be present but that the third-ranking official in his department would represent the United States. The latter was indeed present and spoke.
Langrune-sur-Mer Mayor Franck Jouy declined to comment on Hegseth's planned visit to BMF TV.
Because Hegseth did appear at the Normandy American Cemetery on June 6, we found no evidence French authorities turned his plane around or outright banned him from attending D-Day ceremonies in the country, as some readers wrote in asking about.
While speaking in Colleville-sur-Mer, Hegseth appeared to suggest the flow of migrants into European countries threatened the victory over Nazi Germany that Allied forces eventually helped secure through the D-Day landings and Operation Overlord. Speaking of the beach landings on June 6, 1944, Hegseth said (at 1:20:20):
Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?
Hegseth's comments appeared to echo a Trump administration national-security strategy from November 2025 that warned that Europe faced the "prospect of civilizational erasure" due to its nations' migration and free-speech policies (Page 25).
The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, were the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. More than 5,000 ships and 150,000 Allied soldiers landed on five beaches in Normandy to begin Operation Overlord and liberate Nazi-occupied Western Europe. The operation eventually led to the fall of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
Snopes has previously investigated a series of rumors about D-Day.
DeepL.com provided translations from French into English.