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WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT PETE HEGSETH, TRUMP’S PICK FOR DEFENSE SECRETARY
 
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Helene Cooper
November 13, 2024
New York Times
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_ The choice of the Fox News host and veteran was outside the norm.
But he was a dedicated supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump
during his first term. _

"Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Pete Hegseth interviews
then-President Donald Trump at the White House in 2017., Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters

 

President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked Pete Hegseth, a Fox News
host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to lead the
Pentagon and the 1.3 million active-duty men and women of the American
military.

The choice of Mr. Hegseth, 44, was outside the norm of the traditional
defense secretary. But he was a dedicated supporter of Mr. Trump
during his first term.

“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Mr.
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.”

But several Pentagon officials questioned Mr. Hegseth’s lack of
experience — other than serving in the military — and raised
concerns about his ability to win Senate confirmation, even with
Republicans winning control of the chamber.

A Minnesota native, Mr. Hegseth graduated from Princeton University
and has a master’s degree from Harvard. He has been married three
times.

Here are other things to know about Mr. Hegseth.

He is a New York Times best-selling author.

Mr. Hegseth’s book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of
the Men Who Keep Us Free,” was published in June.

“Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at
Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’s John McClane in
‘Die Hard,’” Mr. Hegseth wrote in the New York Times best
seller. “But there will come a day when they realize they need John
McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity
has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and
deadly.”

He has suggested that Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be fired.

During a recent podcast interview, Mr. Hegseth said that General
Brown
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who is by law the senior military adviser to the president and the
most senior American military general, should be fired for being too
“woke,” a term for those who support diversity and inclusion.

[Pete Hegseth wearing an American flag cowboy hat and a T-shirt with
an American flag on it.]

Mr. Hegseth graduated from Princeton and is the author of a
best-selling book that published in June.Credit...James Devaney/GC
Images

Mr. Hegseth also asked in his book whether General Brown, an African
American Air Force fighter pilot with 130 combat flying hours and 40
years of service, would have gotten the job as Joint Chiefs chairman
if he were not Black.

“We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems
unfair to C.Q.,” he wrote, using General Brown’s nickname. “But
since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it
really doesn’t much matter.”

He has challenged the idea of women in combat.

Mr. Hegseth expressed surprise that he had not received “more
blowback” to his book because, he said on the “Shawn Ryan Show”
podcast, “I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in
combat roles.”

Mr. Hegseth said that he was happy to serve with women but that he did
not think they should have certain roles in the military, particularly
ones that include “physical, labor-intensive-type jobs,” like
Special Operations forces and infantry artillery positions.

He vocally supported Mr. Trump in 2017 after the racial storm in
Charlottesville, Va., during which a white nationalist killed a
protester when he crashed his car into the crowd.

Image[Pete Hegseth speaking from behind a lectern at the Value Voters
Summit in Washington, D.C., in 2009.]

“I’m straight up just saying,” Mr. Hegseth said in a recent
podcast appearance, “we should not have women in combat
roles.”Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Republicans and Democrats alike criticized Mr. Trump for saying that
those who resisted the neo-Nazis and white supremacists during
protests in Charlottesville were as much to blame as the far-right
crowds who marched on the college town.

But Mr. Hegseth took up the mantle for Mr. Trump.

“I think the president nailed it,” Mr. Hegseth said on “Fox &
Friends” after the protests. “He condemned in the strongest
possible terms hatred and bigotry on all sides as opposed to
immediately picking a side out the gate.”

He doesn’t like the military’s diversity programs.

Any “general, admiral, whatever” involved in diversity and
inclusion in the military, including General Brown, “has got to
go,” Mr. Hegseth said in the same episode of the Shawn Ryan podcast,
using a profanity to describe such programs.

During another podcast, with the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt,
Mr. Hegseth said that the military’s recruitment challenges were
caused by advertising that featured diverse service members.

“There are not enough lesbians in San Francisco, Hugh, to man the
82nd Airborne,” he said. “You’re going to need to go to guys in
Kentucky and Colorado and Ohio, who love the country, and pretty soon
you will need ads that reflect that.”

He championed service members accused of war crimes.

After joining Fox News as a commentator, Mr. Hegseth repeatedly
supported service members accused of war crimes, including
Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn
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the Army Special Forces, First Lt. Clint Lorance
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the Army and Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher
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the Navy SEALs.

In Fox appearances and in interviews with family members of the
accused, Mr. Hegseth portrayed the men as heroes and victims, wrongly
prosecuted by stateside bureaucrats who did not understand the
complexities of combat.

Notably absent from those interviews were the troops who served with
the men.

Multiple platoon members serving under Lieutenant Lorance
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Gallagher
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contradicted Mr. Hegseth’s characterizations in court, describing
the killings by their leaders as coldblooded, unnecessary and in no
way related to the confusion of combat.

“War is hard; there is collateral damage,” Staff Sgt. Daniel
Williams said in an interview. “I get that. I’ve got my own
stories,” But Sergeant Williams, who was on his third tour in
Afghanistan and was a squad leader in the platoon, added, “That’s
not what this was; this was straight murder.”

Mr. Hegseth often appealed directly to Mr. Trump to intervene. In
2019, the president dropped charges against Major Golsteyn, pardoned
Lieutenant Lorance
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serving a lengthy sentence for murder, and reversed a demotion for
Chief Gallagher, who had been acquitted of murder at trial, but
stripped of his rank for other crimes.

Mr. Trump made clear who had influenced his thinking, posting on
Twitter a month before the pardons, “We train our boys to be killing
machines, then prosecute them when they kill! @PeteHegseth.”

He served at Guantánamo Bay.

Mr. Hegseth served as a second lieutenant
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the prison operation at Guantánamo Bay in 2004 and 2005 with an
infantry unit of the New Jersey Army National Guard. He later visited
there, in 2016, as a member of the media for a report about life at
the base and prison on Fox News.

He has called for the expansion of the detention operation,
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now, down from around 600 when he served there. He has also suggested
“expediting military commissions,” the war crimes court where the
men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and others are
charged.

_Helene Cooper [[link removed]] is a
Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic
correspondent and White House correspondent._

_Carol Rosenberg, Ernesto Londoño, Eric Schmitt and Dave
Philipps contributed reporting._

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