What’s behind defense secretary pick Hegseth’s war on ’woke’

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and former National Guard soldier, for Secretary of Defense, is being met with disbelief and outrage among members of Congress and former military officers.

If confirmed, he would be the least experienced defense secretary in the history of the republic, going back to Henry Knox, the first secretary of war who was a key officer in Washington’s army. Those who rise to that post often come from Capitol Hill, industry or the highest ranks of the officer corps.

He served in Iraq and Afghanistan and left the Army National Guard as a major in 2021. Beyond his inexperience, Trump’s selection of Hegseth has also renewed scrutiny of his political and religious views, his advocacy for soldiers accused of war crimes, and his aggressive criticism of the military he would be leading. Many people with experience in defense and foreign policy fear that, if confirmed, Hegseth would politicize the officer corps.

Reaction to the news was swift and cutting. One former senior military official said that the only qualifying quality for Hegseth seemed to be loyalty to Trump, and that the pick was embarrassing, although the language used was more colorful. Another official on the Hill said he had to Google Hegseth’s name.

“The job of Secretary of Defense should not be an entry-level position, and I question President-elect Trump’s choice of a television news host to take on this immensely important role,“ House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith, D-Wash., said in a statement. “While I respect and admire Mr. Hegseth’s military service, I am concerned about his inexperience given the security challenges we face around the world.“

Still, others approved of the choice. Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who will chair the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “delighted at the prospect“ of working with Hegseth.

Trump praised Hegseth as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First“ in a statement announcing his pick. “Our military will be great again, and America will never back down.“

Hegseth did not respond to NPR’s request for an interview.

The war on ’woke’

Hegseth and other conservatives have long complained the military cares more about diversity and equity than meritocracy and preparing for war, though there is scant evidence to back up those claims.

“The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is ’our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth said in a recent appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast.

He went on to laud the integration of the military in 1948, saying it allowed Blacks and Hispanics to serve along “white guys.“ Echoing a familiar theme in right-wing circles, he said an obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion, including transgender rights, has eroded military values. He also decried the role of women in combat.

“I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles,“ Hegseth said on that same podcast. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.“

Claims that the military is succumbing to pressure from social justice activists has long been a mantra on the right and within the military itself. Many in the Marine Corps were long against gays and lesbians serving openly and also opposed women serving in combat.

There is scant indication that any changes in the ranks have fundamentally disrupted the military but there are always complaints, particularly amongst the military old guard.

Hegseth has also spoken forcefully against the military’s efforts to address domestic extremism, which he labeled a “purge.“ In the podcast interview, he said he had been removed from National Guard duty at President Joe Biden’s inauguration because he had been “deemed an extremist“ by his leadership due to a tattoo on his chest.

A fixation on ’Crusade’

According to Hegseth’s account, the tattoo in question was identified by his superiors as “white nationalist.“ In fact, the symbol — a large cross with four smaller ones in the corners — is a Christian one known as the Jerusalem Cross. It is one of at least two tattoos that Hegseth sports whose origins date back to the Crusades, when Christians defeated Muslims to take the Holy Land.

Hegseth has said that the tattoo is simply a symbol of Christianity. Nonetheless, some far-right extremists have co-opted Crusade symbols. And according to some scholars, they are more precisely correlated with Islamophobia.

“They are far-right Christian symbols that signal a very, very deep antipathy towards Islam,“ said Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. “[Hegseth] literally wrote a book called ’The American Crusade,’ drawing parallels between the Crusades and the present moment in the United States and Europe and pushing back on Muslim immigration to those areas.“

Taylor noted that Hegseth has also spoken about the possibility of reconstructing the so-called “Third Temple“ in Jerusalem, a project that would require the destruction of Islam’s third-holiest site. Such an effort would almost certainly trigger a major international war, Taylor said.

“Many far-right Christians have adopted the Crusades as a model, as a template for how they want to remake society for their own kind of militant expressions of Christianity,“ he said. “And Hegseth seems very much to be in that current.“

Faith first

Hegseth often highlights his faith as the first concern in his life. On an episode of the Reformation Redpill podcast, he said he moved his family to Tennessee in 2022 to be close to a Christian private school for his children, despite the fact that Hegseth is required to be in New York City weekly to host his Fox show.

“He seems to have gravitated…fairly recently, into a circle of pretty extreme Christian theology,“ Taylor said. “This is the very militant end of the Christian nationalist spectrum, and it is one of the very active forces theologically in bolstering and endorsing this sort of MAGA Christianity.“

A day after Hegseth was announced for the Cabinet position, Brooks Potteiger, a pastor within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) posted on X that Hegseth is a member of the church in good standing. The CREC, a denomination of Christian Reconstructionism, is considered by some academics to be an extremist, Christian supremacist movement.

“Their goal is to reestablish biblical law as the standard for society. So when they say they believe that America should be a Christian nation, they actually believe that all nations should be Christian,“ said Julie Ingersoll, professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida.

Ingersoll said that others within this movement, such as the author Stephen Wolfe, speak openly of repealing the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

“This tradition is deeply patriarchal. Men are in charge, and women exist for the purpose of assisting their men in their exercise of dominion,“ Ingersoll said. “Their roles are very limited to home and family. The goal is to have as many children as possible so the women are also otherwise occupied. But they don’t believe that women can or should really even work outside the home.“

Taylor said that recently, this form of Christianity has held particular appeal among some young men: the “theobros.“ With the movement’s endorsement of heterosexual male dominance also comes a package of hostilities — toward LGBTQ identities, feminism and liberal democracy.

“They have tended to endorse more solitary and autocratic styles of leaders,“ Taylor said. “They are fans of people like Viktor Orban in Hungary or like Vladimir Putin in Russia, because they are these at least de facto Christian monarchs presiding over very illiberal societies.“

What’s ahead for the military

Given his past pronouncements, and those of President-elect Trump, Hegseth is expected to end any diversity programs in the U.S. military, and perhaps retire or replace senior officers he sees as “woke“ or who did not get the position through what he sees as merit alone. He has said, again without evidence, that the current Joint Chiefs Chairman General Charles Q. Brown has pursued radical positions from left-wing politicians.

“First of all you gotta fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,“ Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan podcast. “Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s***, has got to go. Either you’re in for warfighting and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.“

But perhaps the most glaring challenge for Hegseth will be running the Pentagon, a sprawling bureaucracy that encompasses 2.3 million troops and civilian workers, with an annual operating budget of some $900 billion.

“We’re talking about someone who is primarily known as a media figure who would be running really one of the largest institutions in the United States, who doesn't appear to have any sort of managerial experience of that sort, and would be one of the most prominent figures in U.S. politics,“ said Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University, who has long studied the interplay between media and the conservative movement.

Hegseth will need a strong deputy and an experienced staff given that he’s never run an organization of this size. Regardless, the center of gravity will be at the White House, like it is under the current administration, where Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was never seen as a key player. This means that the incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz will play a central role. Waltz has a lot of experience as a congressman, Green Beret — and as a former Pentagon official.

From Fox News to the Cabinet

Hegseth is far from the first cable news personality to serve in a presidential administration. Fox News in particular has had a “revolving door“ into Republican politics in recent years, Hemmer said.

Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson played informal advisory roles to Trump during his first term in office. This week, Trump tapped Fox contributors Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Homan as director of national intelligence and border czar, respectively, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who hosted his own show on the network during the Obama administration, as ambassador to Israel.

But selecting Hegseth for defense secretary “is an entirely new ballgame“ given his lack of experience and the scale of the role, Hemmer said.

Hegseth has spent years as a weekend host of the network’s morning news show “Fox & Friends,“ where he frequently aired his concerns about the U.S. military.

“One of the things that Hegseth has brought to Fox News is this criticism of the military as a liberal institution, which I think has found a real home in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which sees every institution as elite and captured by liberals,“ Hemmer said. “And so Hegseth really has been the conduit for that new belief on the right about the military.“

In a 2021 segment on “Fox News Primetime,“ Hegseth described efforts to root out extremism in the armed forces as “a purge.“ He attacked Bishop Garrison, the Army veteran and lawyer tapped by then defense secretary Austin to lead a working group on the issue as a “powerful, radical leftist.“

Not long after, amid sustained pressure from Republican politicians and other conservative media figures, the anti-extremism initiative folded.

Hegseth also used his perch at Fox News to advocate on behalf of service members accused of war crimes, like former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher. CNN reported in 2019 Hegseth privately encouraged Trump to pardon some of them; Trump went on to do so.

In a statement after Hegseth’s nomination was announced, a Fox News spokesperson said Hegseth’s “insights and analysis especially about the military resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success that it is today. We are extremely proud of his work at Fox News Media and wish him the best of luck in Washington.“

Hegseth’s persona as a telegenic veteran likely appealed to Trump, an avid Fox News watcher, said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

“[Trump] appears to respond to people who look the part in some way that he perceives. And for all those reasons you can imagine a combat veteran who’s good on TV and appears on Fox News defending Trump being an appealing person to Trump,“ Nyhan said.

Nyhan warned putting Hegseth in charge of the Pentagon could be “a step towards a more politicized military,“ given the views he has long espoused. “We don’t worry about the military being a kind of partisan arm of one side of the American political divide. But these kinds of choices could take us down that road.“

Copyright 2024, NPR