Trump taps Fox host Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary

A former Army National Guard major who has led two political advocacy organizations has been tapped for the “nearly impossible job” of U.S. defense secretary.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he intends to nominate Pete Hegseth, 44, to be the first Pentagon chief of his second term in office. Hegseth, a host on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” served in Afghanistan and Iraq, receiving the Combat Infantryman Badge. In civilian life, he has advocated for privatizing veterans’ health care and written books arguing that diversity initiatives have weakened the military.

The announcement followed a slew of others about Trump’s intended national-security team, including former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to run the Department of Homeland Security, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. Should Trump formally submit their nominations after he is inaugurated, they would require Senate confirmation.

Hegseth has “an excellent background as a junior officer but does not have the senior national security experience that secretaries need,” Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Associated Press. 

After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth took a job with the Bear Stearns investment bank and a commission in the Minnesota National Guard. He led an infantry platoon at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, then served as a platoon commander in Baghdad and a civil-military operations officer in Samarra, Iraq.

By 2007, Hegseth had joined Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy group that, as NPR put it, “supports current U.S. policy in Iraq and promotes continuing the war until ‘victory’.” He later became its executive director and served with the group until 2012, according to his LinkedIn page.

In 2011 and 2012, he deployed to Afghanistan for 10 months with the Minnesota Guard, serving as a senior instructor at Counterinsurgency Training Center Afghanistan at Camp Julien in Kabul.

In 2012, he helped found a political action committee, MN PAC, which was noted for spending one-third of its $15,000 in funds on Christmas parties for families and friends.

From 2012 to 2015, Hegseth was CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the Koch brothers’ network; among its top priorities was privatizing Veterans Administration health care.

Hegseth became a Fox contributor in 2014, and a co-host of FOX & Friends Weekend two years later. During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, he backed Marco Rubio, then Ted Cruz, and ultimately became a vocal supporter of Trump, whom he got to know during the candidate’s frequent appearances on his show. 

When reports surfaced that the new 45th president was considering Hegseth to be secretary of veterans affairs, the nation’s largest veterans groups rose in intense opposition and scuttled the idea. 

When Trump’s first VA secretary moved on in 2018, Hegseth was again considered for the job. But news of his acrimonious second divorce—two years after he argued in a book that “family policy” should focus on “preventing divorce of parents with kids”—and nepotism at his advocacy group broke just as Trump was taking fire for his own rumored infidelities and family members in White House roles.

In 2019, Hegseth successfully lobbied Trump to pardon three service members convicted or accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was also temporarily banned from Twitter after he posted the manifesto of the Saudi Air Force student who killed three and injured eight more in a terrorist attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. Hegseth said he wanted to expose the shooter’s Islamist ideology; Twitter officials said posting the manifesto violated their content standards.

This year, Hegseth—long outspoken about “woke-ness” in the military—released his fourth book: The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In an interview posted to YouTube last week, he said he was among a dozen National Guard members who had been removed from security duties related to President Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting by the FBI. He also said that putting women in combat roles “hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”

Trump’s first presidential term was noted for the turnover in the Defense Department’s top job. Only Jim Mattis and Mark Esper lasted more than a year, and three other men served as acting SecDef.

“I think Trump was tired of fighting with his secretaries of defense and picked one who would be loyal to him,” Cancian told AP, adding that Hegseth’s inexperience might hinder his path through Senate confirmation.