‘The least qualified nominee in American history’: Why Trump picked Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense
The second in command to the nation’s military could end up being a Fox News pundit who wants to launch a “frontal assault” against top brass, kick women out of combat, and implement Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda for the world’s third-largest standing fighting force.
The president-elect has nominated Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense, overseeing a budget of roughly $850 billion and roughly 3 million service members and personnel serving in the nation’s oldest-running agency while the US is embroiled in global conflicts in a period of escalating tensions.
The office was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to centralize governance of the newly renamed Department of War and the various branches of the military.
Most of the more than 30 secretaries in the department’s history have some combination of military records, history in elected office and roles within national defense programs — a mix of decorated veterans, Pentagon officials, scientists and long-serving bureaucrats.
“The best thing one could say” about Hegseth, according to Veterans for Responsible Leadership founder Dan Barkhuff, is that he is “wholly unqualified to lead the [Department of Defense] on merit.”
Veterans advocacy groups are sounding alarms. Republicans in Congress are scratching their heads. Military service members on Reddit’s r/Military are dragging his “beyond stupid” nomination. “The greatest military machine in the history of mankind to be under the thumb of a TV show host,” one user wrote.
Hegseth’s nomination, which came as a shock to members of Congress who will ultimately be asked to vote to confirm him, reflects a broader trend among Trump’s Cabinet-level nominations and White House appointments — grievance-fueled loyalists whose disdain for a perceived establishment matches Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to governing and disregard for expertise and experience in a government that tens of millions of Americans depend on.
Hegseths’s nomination is “the most hilariously predictably stupid thing” that Trump could do, according to former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a former lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard.
Hegseth “is a highly effective and ferocious media, culture and political warrior for MAGA. And beyond loyal to and trusted by Trump,” according to Paul Rieckhoff, an Army veteran of the Iraq War and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
He is “undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for [defense secretary] in American history. And the most overtly political,” Rieckhoff said. “Brace yourself, America.”
Hegseth graduated from Princeton University in 2003 and received his master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University. While serving with the Minnesota Army National Guard, he was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. He attained the rank of major and has several service awards, including two Bronze Stars.
He has also worked for several right-wing think tanks and political advocacy groups, including a political action committee that came under scrutiny for alleged misuse of funds before closing in 2018.
Hegseth launched an aborted campaign for a US Senate seat in Minnesota in 2012, and in 2014 he became a contributor to Fox News, where he now co-hosts a weekend edition of the network’s flagship morning show Fox & Friends.
Current defense secretary Lloyd Austin, by contrast, is a retired US Army four-star general, a previous US Central Command chief, a former Army vice chief of staff, and a former commander of the US Armed Forces in Iraq. He is also the first African American to hold those titles.
