Pete Hegseth served as a National Guardsman in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, earning two Bronze stars. But after President Biden was elected, Hegseth left the military, complaining he was ordered to stand down from his duty guarding Biden’s inauguration because top brass dubbed him a “white nationalist” and an “extremist.”
“The military I loved, I fought for, I revered… spit me out,” Fox News co-host Hegseth wrote in a recent book. “I separated from an Army that didn’t want me anymore. The feeling was mutual — I didn’t want this Army anymore either.”
The man that didn’t want “this Army” may soon control it.
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Hegseth as secretary of Defense, a move that would put a combat veteran who has complained about “woke” forces — and called for the firing of top generals — in charge of the Pentagon.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Trump said Tuesday as he announced the nomination on TruthSocial. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — our military will be great again, and America will never back down.”
A 44-year-old Princeton graduate and staunch Trump supporter, Hegseth has since 2017 been a co-host of the weekend edition of morning program “Fox & Friends,” on which Trump has appeared. He joined the network as a contributor in 2014.
Trump’s nomination of a TV host with no senior military or government experience has provoked incredulity among some veterans and defense experts. The Defense Department, with a budget of more than $800 billion, includes some 1.3 million active-duty troops and an additional 1.4 million in the National Guard, Reserves and civilian employees.
If his nomination is approved by Congress, Hegseth is certain to bring sweeping changes to the military. He is also likely to put it in the public crosshairs of the culture wars as it confronts global crises including wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“There is reason for concern that this is not a person who is a serious enough policymaker, serious enough policy implementer, to do a successful job,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
“Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history,” Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, said on X. “And the most overtly political. Brace yourself, America.”
“Wow,” former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, posted on X. “Trump picking Pete Hegseth is the most hilariously predictably stupid thing.”
Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, who was ousted in 2019, said his former boss likely picked Hegseth because he saw him as compliant.
“I do think this is a loyalty choice — really, the better word we should be using is fealty choice,” Bolton said in a CNN interview.
Bolton said Hegseth had an “admirable” and “super” military record. But the question, he said, was what Hegseth would do if Trump ordered him to instruct the military to perform illegal acts.
“Give him a chance up to the point when Trump starts ordering the military to do illegal, immoral, unconstitutional things,” Bolton said. “That’s where the real test of Pete Hegseth’s character will come…. What will Pete Hegseth do the first time Trump tells him to put the 82nd Airborne onto the streets of Portland, Oregon?”
Hegseth has already advocated purging the military of top officials, such as Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Charles Q. Brown — or anyone who has advocated for diversity and inclusion programs.
“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast when asked how he would reform the military. “Any general that was involved, any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI/woke s— has got to go.”
Over the last few years, many conservatives have criticized the military under the Biden administration. Soon after taking office, Biden rescinded a Trump-era executive order restricting diversity training on systemic racism in federal government, including the military.
Within months, two Republican combat veterans in Congress — Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas — launched an online “whistleblower form” that encouraged military personnel to report examples of “woke ideology” in the military. GOP lawmakers also held a House Armed Services Committee hearing and grilled senior military leaders, including Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, about his decision to add Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” to soldiers’ reading list.
On television and podcasts, Hegseth has repeatedly railed against military leaders. “The so-called elites directing the military today… believe power is bad, merit is unfair, ideology is more important that industriousness, white people are yesterday, and safety! is better than risk-taking,” Hegseth writes in his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”
“Do we really want only the woke ‘diverse’ recruits that the Biden administration is curating to be the ones with the guns and guidons?” he asks.
Hegseth writes in the book that he was removed from his duty guarding Biden’s inauguration because soldiers scrolled through his social media and spotted a tattoo on his chest of a Jerusalem or Deus vult cross, a historic Christian symbol that in recent years has been appropriated by the far-right.
Hegseth maintains the image — which was waved on flags by some who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — is a religious symbol that “represents Christ’s sacrifices and the mission to spread his gospel to the four corners of the world.” He got the tattoo, he said, after he saw it on a church while walking in Jerusalem.
In his statement announcing Hegseth as his Defense secretary pick, the president-elect said the book “reveals the leftwing betrayal of our Warriors, and how we must return out Military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence.”
Hegseth, who has questioned whether women should be allowed to serve in combat, rails in the book against “diverse recruits, pumped full of vaccines and even more poisonous ideologies.” When a real conflict breaks out, he writes, “red-blooded American men will have to save their elite candy-asses.”
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, whose chamber will vote on the nomination, called the nomination “interesting.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Hegseth would be “reform-minded in the areas that need reform.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.