Why We Ask: Our mission and operations are funded 100% by conservatives like you. Please help us continue to extend Liberty to the next generation and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today.

November 13, 2024

Trump’s Hegseth Pick Is Unconventional

One of the president-elect’s core beliefs is that things at the Pentagon need to change in a big way.

Donald Trump said in his three-hour “weave” with Joe Rogan that one of the things he knows now that he didn’t know when entering the Oval Office the first time in 2017 is what people to hire for what posts. It was all new to him; he relied on advisors to help fill out positions, and he made some mistakes. It may turn out to be his most important lesson.

Our Douglas Andrews thoroughly covered Trump’s first cabinet picks yesterday, so I won’t unnecessarily retread any of that ground other than to say his early choices are encouraging.

One of the most exciting announcements in I don’t remember when is that Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, an acronym that echoes Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin). They’ll be tasked with actually doing something about Trump’s favorite bugaboo — waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s a whole lot more to it, and we’ll have further analysis tomorrow.

Which brings me to a few more significant Trump picks. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, will lead the CIA. New York businessman Steven Witkoff will be special envoy to the Middle East. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

But the real splash came last night when Trump picked 44-year-old Pete Hegseth to serve as defense secretary and lead the nation’s largest federal department. The Pentagon’s budget last year was $850 billion.

“Who the f**k is this guy?” read Politico’s classy headline.

Well, he’s a decorated Army veteran with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. He has degrees from Princeton and Harvard. He’s still an officer in the Individual Ready Reserve, and he’s the former executive director of Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. Oh, and he’s a Fox News host, which is, naturally, how most media stories present him.

Yes, Hegseth is certainly unconventional and an outsider. He doesn’t have the high rank or private defense industry credentials of previous secretaries of defense, and he’s taking predictable heat for being what some consider less than qualified. Then again, one of Trump’s core arguments is that the way things have been done needs to change. That includes picking guys like General James Mattis to head the Pentagon and General John Kelly to serve as White House chief of staff.

Hegseth will almost certainly be an upgrade over woke, vax-mandating, and AWOL Lloyd Austin.

Hegseth has made no bones about his view that the injection of left-wing ideology in the form of critical race theory and its manifestation in diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates is the primary problem with America’s war-fighting apparatus today. He’s right.

“The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is our diversity is our strength,” he declared earlier this month. He didn’t stop there.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said, referring to General Charles Brown. “Any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s**t has gotta go,” he continued. “Either you’re in for war-fighting, and that’s it — that’s the only litmus test we care about. You gotta get DEI and CRT out of military academies so you’re not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking.” There needs to be “an ethos change,” he explained. “There’s a reason people don’t want to serve — because they don’t trust that their senior leaders are going to have their best interests in mind in combat.”

Bingo.

In fact, speaking of firing generals, The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a ‘warrior board’ of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.”

When you sign up to serve in the Armed Forces, you write a blank check made payable to “The People of the United States of America” for an amount up to and including your life. Patriots aren’t going to do that just so left-wingers who hate the military can feel good about some dude in uniform wearing long hair and earrings and using the wrong pronouns. Mental illness disqualifies one from service because it undermines readiness. Left-wing social experimentation on the military has caused a recruitment and morale crisis.

If confirmed by the Republican Senate, Hegseth won’t have time to focus only on wokeness. He’ll immediately be confronted with the foreign policy disasters caused by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, from wars in Ukraine and Israel to belligerence from Iran and China — the latter of which poses the most significant national security threat to the U.S. since the Soviet Union.

Projecting strength, though, is a key part of Trump’s strategy. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

Refocusing the military on war-fighting and ditching the woke, er, crap is core to the strategy of projecting strength. Our global adversaries laugh at us for caring more about military abortions and guys getting their nails done than winning or, better yet, preventing wars. Time will tell if Hegseth is the right guy for the job or if he is in over his head. I, for one, certainly don’t fault Trump for thinking outside the Beltway with his pick.

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.