By admin 
Pete Hegseth walks to an elevator to meet Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York after Trump’s first election. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
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 and complained that he was ordered to resign from his job as security guard of Biden’s inauguration because top brass called 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 myself from an army that no longer wanted me. The feeling was mutual: I didn’t want to this Neither does the army anymore.”
The man who didn’t want that “this Army” could soon control it.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Hegseth as defense secretary, a move that would put a combat veteran who has complained about “woke” troops — and called for the firing of top generals — in charge of the Pentagon.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true supporter of America First,” Trump said Tuesday as he announced the nomination Truth social. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – our military will be great again, and America will never give in again.”
Hegseth, a 44-year-old Princeton graduate and avid Trump supporter, has co-hosted the weekend edition of the morning show “Fox & Friends,” on which Trump has appeared, since 2017. He joined the network as a contributor in 2014.
Trump’s appointment of a TV host without senior military or government experience did just that caused disbelief among some veterans and defense experts. The Department of Defense, with a budget of more than $800 billion, includes about 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 will certainly make sweeping changes to the military. He is also likely to put it in the public crosshairs of the culture wars as it faces global crises, including wars around the world. Middle East And Ukraine.
Read more:Trump chooses Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary
“There is a concern that this is not someone who is serious enough as a policymaker, serious enough as a policy implementer, to do a successful job,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
“Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified SecDef nominee in American history,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, said about X. “And the most openly political. Brace yourself, America.”
“Wow,” former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger posted on X. “Trump picking Pete Hegseth is the most hilariously predictably stupid thing.”
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who was ousted in 2019, said his former boss likely selected Hegseth because he saw him as accommodating.
“I really think this is a loyalty choice — the better word we should use is loyalty 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 carry out illegal acts.
“Give him a chance to the point where Trump starts ordering the military to do illegal, immoral and 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 on the streets of Portland, Oregon?”
Hegseth has already advocated purging the military of top officials, such as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. – or anyone who has advocated for diversity and inclusion programs.
“First of all, you have to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said on the channel Shawn Ryan show podcast when asked how he would reform the military. “Every general that was involved, every general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI wokeness needs to go.”
In recent years, many conservatives have criticized the military under the Biden administration. Shortly after taking office, Biden revoked a Trump-era executive order that restricted diversity training on systemic racism within the federal government, including the military.
Read more:Trump’s choice for defense secretary baffles the Pentagon and raises questions about the Fox News host’s experiences
Within months, two Republican combat veterans in Congress – Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas – launched an online “whistleblowing form” that encouraged military personnel to report examples of “woke ideology” in the military. Republican lawmakers also held a House Armed Services Committee hearing and questioned senior military leaders, including Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, about his decision to add Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” to soldiers’ reading lists.
On television and podcasts, Hegseth has repeatedly railed against military leaders. “The so-called elites who run the military today… believe that power is evil, merit is dishonest, ideology is more important than zeal, that white people are yesterday, and safety! is better than taking risks,” 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 putting together to be the ones with the weapons and guides?” he asks.
Hegseth writes in the book that he was relieved of his duties to monitor Biden’s inauguration because soldiers scrolled through his social media and saw a tattoo on his chest of a Jerusalem or Deus Vul cross, a historic Christian symbol representing the appropriated by the government in recent years. far right.
Hegseth claims the image — which appeared on flags waved by some who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — is a religious symbol that “represents the sacrifices of Christ and the mission to spread his gospel to the four corners of the world.” ” He got the tattoo, he said, after seeing it at a church while walking through Jerusalem.
In his statement announcing Hegseth as his chosen secretary of defense, the president-elect said the book “exposes the leftist betrayal of our fighters, and how we must return the military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability and excellence.”
Hegseth, who questions whether women should be allowed to serve in combat, rails in the book against “diverse recruits, pumped full of vaccines and even more toxic ideologies.” If real conflict breaks out, he writes, “red-blooded American men will have to save their elite sweethearts.”
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, 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.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.