WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement on Tuesday night that he had chosen Fox News television host Pete Hegseth to be the next US secretary of defense sent a wave of disbelief throughout Washington national security circles.
The longtime “Fox n’ Friends” host, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who reached the rank of major in the Minnesota National Guard, has long been a vocal supporter of Trump.
A prominent voice in right-wing media, Hegseth has advocated eliminating diversity and inclusion programs within the US military and called for the dismissal of top generals associated with such efforts, which he and others have labeled “woke.”
Hegseth, 44, reportedly earned two Bronze Stars during his tenure in the Army, with deployments to Guantanamo Bay; Samarra, Iraq and Kabul, Afghanistan. He holds no noteworthy background in national security, raising questions as whether the pick will pass confirmation by Senate lawmakers once Trump takes office in January.
“Needless to say, the Bronze Star does not qualify one to be SECDEF,” a former senior US defense official told Al-Monitor. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter because they were not authorized to comment on the matter in their current role.
Trump’s victory in last week’s presidential election brought with it Republican control of the Senate and expected control of the House of Representatives, albeit by a relatively small majority.
“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Trump said in a statement announcing his pick on Tuesday night.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our [m]ilitary will be Great Again, and America will [n]ever [b]ack [d]own,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s Thursday night statement came on the heels of rapid-fire announcements of right-wing partisan loyalists to key national security positions. On Monday, Trump named Republican Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida — a frequent guest on Fox News — to be his national security adviser.
“The Pentagon is in need of real reform, and they’re getting a leader who has the grit to make it happen,” Waltz tweeted in response to the news about Trump’s selection of Hegseth. “Let’s re-establish deterrence through America’s strength!”
Surprise choice
Beyond the Pentagon, the last-minute pick came as a surprise to several people at Fox News, Al-Monitor has learned. President-elect Trump was widely rumored to be considering House Armed Services Committee chairman Mike Rodgers (R-Ala.) to lead the Pentagon.
“This looks like a Don Jr. thing,” a second former senior US military official close to the network told Al-Monitor.
Hegseth joins a roster of partisan ideologues selected to lead Trump’s foreign policy at a time of precariously shifting alliances, provocative challenges to US strategic influence by Russia and China and a new era of instability in the global balance of rival nuclear-armed powers.
On Tuesday, Trump named another Fox News host, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, to be Washington’s ambassador to Israel, setting off a wave of hope among right-wing Israeli settlers seeking a US green light to expand illegal encroachments into militarily occupied Palestinian territories.
Like Huckabee and others named by Trump, Hegseth has been a trenchant supporter of Israel throughout the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023. He has also advocated using US military strikes to disrupt Iran’s nuclear enrichment — plans the Pentagon has drawn up and rehearsed but that previous administrations have avoided putting into action.
“This is like if ISIS controlled a state — just Shia-version,” Hegseth told Fox News in the aftermath of Trump’s assassination of the Islamic Republic Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
“I happen to believe that we can’t kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb,” he said. “What better time than now to say, we’re starting the clock? You’ve got a week, you’ve got x amount of time before we take out your energy production facilities, we take out key infrastructure, we take out your missile sites, we take out nuclear development, we take out port capabilities … or you know what? Take out a Quds [Force] headquarters while you’re at it if you want.”
“I don’t want boots on the ground. I don’t want occupation. I don’t want endless war. But Iran has been in an endless war with us for 40 years,” Hegseth added. “Either we put up and shut up now and stop it, or we wait, go back to the table and let them dither while they attempt to develop the capabilities to do precisely what they’ve said they want to do.”
Iran’s leaders have repeatedly said they hold nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden by their brand of Shiite Islam, but its government has continued to enrich uranium in a bid to pressure the US back into negotiations on a 2015 agreement to cap Tehran’s enrichment in exchange for economic sanctions relief. Trump abandoned the multinational agreement in 2018, leading Iran to enrich its stockpiles to purity levels of around 60%, just shy of the estimated 90% believed to be needed for weaponization.
The US intelligence community has said Iranian leaders have not yet issued a decision on whether to weaponize the country’s nuclear technology.
However the Fox n’ Friends host has more recently been focused on criticizing cultural reform efforts within the US military, which the Pentagon says are aimed at making the force more inclusive for minorities and women at a time of declining recruitment.
Hegseth, who joined the National Guard in 2003, has claimed he voluntarily separated from the Army after President Joe Biden was sworn-in in January 2021.
In his memoir and manifesto published earlier this year, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men who Keep Us Free,” Hegseth attributed that decision to leave the force to incident in which he claimed his commander excluded him from participating in Biden’s inauguration ceremony because of a tattoo he bears, which he alleged had led the Army to label him an “extremist.”
“I could have stayed in, which would have required renewing my top security clearance,” the introduction of Hegseth’s book reads. “But, to put it plainly, I don’t trust this government, this commander in chief, or this Pentagon.”