(Leo Shane’s article from the ARMY TIMES on 13 November 2024.)
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| The Axe-thrower with Jerusalem Cross tattoo. |
Trump picks Fox commentator Pete Hegseth as his
next Defense Secretary: President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate
Army veteran and conservative commentator Pete Hegseth (born in 1980: just 44
years old) as his next Secretary of Defense, saying the appointment will help
strengthen America’s military.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on
notice — Our military will be great again, and America will never back down,”
Trump wrote in a statement Tuesday evening. “Nobody fights harder for the
troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘peace
through strength’ policy.”
Hegseth, 44, has been a FOX News host for eight years and a strong backer of Trump. He previously led the conservative veterans advocacy groups Vets For Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, pushing for fewer restrictions on using Veterans Affairs funding for private health care.
His experience in the military came as a National
Guard soldier, serving tours in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth
earned Combat Infantryman’s Badge and two Bronze Stars, and still serves in the
Minnesota Army National Guard’s Individual Ready Reserve. His nomination may be
the most surprising in a rapid series of announcements from the incoming
administration in recent days.
The Trump team to this point had chosen more experienced candidates for key national security posts — such as Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fl., as national security adviser and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl., who is widely rumored to be the choice for secretary of state.
Several members of Congress had been rumored to be
under consideration for the top Pentagon job. Hegseth, by contrast, had not
been publicly discussed as a serious candidate before Tuesday. His experience
is also radically different from that of recent secretaries.
Sec. Lloyd Austin entered the role with more than
40 years spent in the Army, ending as head of American forces in the Middle
East. Trump’s first pick to the role in his last term was James Mattis, a
retired Marine general who also led U.S. Central Command.
In his announcement, Trump called Hegseth “a
warrior for the troops” and highlighted his recent book, “The War on Warriors,”
saying it “reveals the leftwing betrayal of our warriors, and how we must
return our military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence.”
Hegseth will need to be confirmed by the Senate
after Trump is sworn into office in January, a process that should be made
easier after Republicans won the majority in the chamber in last week’s
election.
Trump on Tuesday also announced Elon Musk and Vivek
Ramaswamy as the heads of his new “Department of Government Efficiency,”
designed to “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government
bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and
restructure federal agencies — essential to the “save America” movement.”
Pete Hegseth's plan: 'You need to fire a ton of generals'
(Peter Charalambous’s article from the ABC NEWS USA on15 November 2024)
Across hours of podcast and television interviews,
Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth has articulated his plan for a
"frontal assault" to reform the Department of Defense from the top
down, including by purging "woke" generals, limiting women from some
combat roles, eliminating diversity goals and utilizing the "real threat
of violence" to reassert the United States as a global power.
As President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for the
Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, 44, could have the chance to implement that
vision, commanding the country's more than a million active duty soldiers.
An infantry officer in the U.S. Army National
Guard, Hegseth deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving
the service with the rank of major, according to military records. Hegseth has
worked for Fox News since 2014, where he co-hosts "FOX & Friends
Weekend." Once a critic of Trump's foreign policy and military stances
during Trump's 2016 campaign, Hegseth grew to become one of Trump's fiercest
on-air defenders.
"Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America's enemies are on notice - Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down," Trump said announcing the nomination.
A New York Times best-selling author, Hegseth has
frequently commented on military policy and suggested one of his first orders
of business would be firing any generals who supported the Pentagon's
diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
"First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved -- general, admiral, whatever -- that was involved in, any of the DEI (Diversity Equality Inclusivity) woke shit, has got to go," Hegseth said during a recent interview on the "Shawn Ryan Show" podcast. "Either you're in for warfighting, and that's it. That's the only litmus test we care about."
Hegseth had preemptively defended the move, saying
it would be a return to normalcy for soldiers rather than a "MAGA
takeover."
While Hegseth has described countries like Russia
and China as threats, he has framed the military's biggest threat as an
internal one, arguing that "wokeness" divided the military internally
and created an issue that adversaries can exploit.
"I think our biggest threat is internal. I think we're committing cultural suicide, and we've lost complete focus on the basics and building blocks of what made Western civilization in America exceptional, fruitful, prosperous, strong, free," Hegseth said on the podcast.
Hegseth has proposed a wholesale purge of military
officials who have supported DEI policies, urging a "frontal assault right
back at what's been done to this military from the top and to the bottom."
"The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the
military is our diversity is our strength," Hegseth said on the podcast,
arguing that uniformity between soldiers is a key to the military's strength.
"Every time I hear a military leader say
[diversity is our strength], I throw up in my mouth a little bit more, because
if they believe it, it shows you how sideways and how indoctrinated they
are," Hegseth said on "The Right Take With Mark Tapson" podcast.
While 17.5% of active-duty military personnel are women, Hegseth has argued that military leaders should acknowledge that their main constituency is "strong, normal men," rebuffing efforts to diversify the ranks of the armed services.
"There aren't enough lesbians in San Francisco
to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and
Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin," Hegseth said on Tapson's podcast
earlier this year.
Hegseth was on the "Take It Outside with Jay Cutler and Sam Mackey" podcast and said that transgender soldiers are "not deployable" because they are "reliant on chemicals" and suggested that women should not serve in certain combat roles.
"Everything about men and women serving
together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means
casualties are worse," Hegseth said on Ryan's podcast, arguing that men
are "more capable" in combat roles because of biological factors.
An ardent defender of the president-elect, Hegseth has argued that the United States military under Trump was more effective by posing both "uncertainty" and the "real threat of violence."
"At least under Trump, there were missiles
falling on terrorists' heads," Hegseth said on the "Man of War"
podcast with Rafa Conde. "They knew he meant business. Kim Jong Un, even
though it didn't work, knew Trump meant business. Fire and fury was a real
thing. Uncertainty is a real thing. The real threat of violence is a real
thing, and none of that exists under these globalists who think they can
sanction their way."
He has also criticized international institutions
like the United Nations as a "farce" and "giant joke" while
advocating a military policy that aims to end long-term conflicts through
decisive action.
"We expect this clinically sanitized, you
know, no civilian casualties. Everything's going to be perfect. No one's going
to get hurt, everything. It's just not how war operates, and that's
unfortunate," Hegseth said on "The Way I Heard It with Mike
Rowe" podcast. "But if we try to do it with kid gloves or with
surgical gloves, we're never really going to get rid of, actually exterminate
the enemies that we need to defeat to create a peace on the other side."
