President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Washington, D.C., national security establishment with his announcement that he would be nominating Pete Hegseth to serve as his secretary of defense.
Hegseth’s selection quickly led to questions about his resume and qualifications to be the top civilian leader of the U.S. military. While his current role is as a Fox News host, the 44-year-old was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay during his time as an Army National Guardsman, and he was awarded two Bronze Stars.
“Pete is tough, smart, and a true believer in America First,” Trump said in his announcement on Tuesday night. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — our military will be great again, and America will never back down.”
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Following his time in the Army, the Princeton and Harvard graduate worked for two conservative veteran groups that advocated for better healthcare and access for the veteran community and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012. He is also an author, recently publishing a New York Times bestseller, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, which was released in June.
But, he hasn’t served in a senior defense position — unlike current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was the commander of U.S. Central Command, Mark Esper, who served as the Secretary of the Army, or Gen. James Mattis, who has led CENTCOM — the last three individuals to be confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Defense, and the first two were nominated by Trump himself.
“The job of Secretary of Defense should not be an entry-level position, and I question President-elect Trump’s choice of a television news host to take on this immensely important role. While I respect and admire Mr. Hegseth’s military service, I am concerned about his inexperience given the security challenges we face around the world,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA) said. “If his nomination goes forward, I hope the Senate gives it the utmost scrutiny before voting on confirmation.”
Smith’s sentiment was echoed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who said, “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense. I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our service members. Donald Trump’s pick will make us less safe and must be rejected.”
Hegseth is the co-host of Fox News’s Fox & Friends Weekend, and he has been a contributor to the network for about a decade. He is already one of Trump’s more scrutinized Cabinet nominees and will likely lead to one of the most contentious confirmation hearings, even though the GOP will be in the majority in the Senate.
Over the last couple of years, Hegseth has become a vocal supporter of the former president and they share the same policy viewpoints for the Pentagon in Trump’s second term. If he manages to get confirmed, Hegseth will try to rid the Pentagon of its diversity and inclusion programs and the leaders who have implemented them.
During Trump’s first administration, Hegseth emerged as one of his biggest defenders, expressing his support frequently on-air. In fact, the Fox News host went as far as to try to persuade the former president to pardon some United States servicemen accused of war crimes. Trump ultimately did pardon the relevant service members.
He recently revealed on a podcast that he was set to help guard President Joe Biden’s 2020 inauguration but was removed because he was “deemed an extremist” because of a tattoo.
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In 2010, while Hegseth was the executive director of Vets for Freedom, he testified against then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearing over her treatment of military recruiters while she was the dean at Harvard years earlier. Hegseth contended that her attempt to stop military recruiters from coming to the university had “unapologetically obstructed the military in a time of war.”
Vets for Freedom, a conservative advocacy group for veterans, was founded in 2006 and advocates on behalf of Iraq and Afghan war vets. In his role with the advocacy group, he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and people in the Bush administration.
Hegseth also led Concerned Veterans of America, another conservative-leaning veterans advocacy group, and he worked at two think tanks, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the Center of the American Experiment prior to his failed senate bid in his home state of Minnesota in 2012.