Pete Hegseth has carved out a lucrative career as a rightwing television personality revealing what he says is the secret flaw behind the US military’s stumbles in Iraq and Afghanistan: wokeness.
Now, as Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defence, the Princeton-educated Fox News host and military veteran is a vote away from managing the world’s largest, most powerful and probably most bureaucratic military.
His journey from a suburban Midwestern childhood to the helm of the US armed forces traces the twin arcs of America’s military misadventures and the country’s subsequent lurch towards Trump’s vision of the US as a nation weakened by the left.
In his 20s, he worked at the US military detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, and then in Iraq, in both cases as a member of the Minnesota National Guard. In his early 30s, he was deployed to Afghanistan. And from his late 30s until this week, he became a dominant voice and then a co-host on Fox News, the television channel Trump watches most.
At some point, he had the word Jesus, spelled in biblical Hebrew, tattooed on his forearm. Other tattoos include the Jerusalem Cross, an image closely tied to the Crusades, on his chest, a US flag with an M16 rifle replacing the bottom stripes, and the words “We The People”, among others.
He has previously said his unit of the National Guard withdrew him from guarding Biden’s inauguration because of the Jerusalem Cross tattoo, an emblem that has been linked with white nationalist groups.
In his broadcasts, Hegseth, 44, has outlined an alternate vision of the US military that aligns almost perfectly with Trump’s view of America. A once-vaunted fighting force, he has argued — referencing the mid-1990s as a turning point — has been reduced to ineffectiveness by trying to be more inclusive and, in one famous incident, by prosecuting its own soldiers for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For a glimpse of how he intends to reform the US military, his answer last week to a podcaster signals the path ahead: an “ethos change” to root out “socially correct garbage” at a time of war in Ukraine, the prospect of all-out conflict between Israel and Iran, and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the coming years.
“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth told the “Shawn Ryan Show”, describing the potential ouster of General CQ Brown as a “course correction”. “Any general, any admiral . . . that was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programmes or woke shit has got to go,” he said.
What he sees as a distinction between servicemen who fight with valour and officers who weigh the military down with their so-called “woke agenda” propelled Hegseth as far as the margins of Trump’s first presidency, where he was reportedly considered for a job in charge of Veteran’s Affairs.
That view of the military is distilled in the title of his bestselling book published earlier this year, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” in which he warns of a coming conflict in which “red-blooded American men will have to save” the liberal elite’s “candy asses”.
“No wonder there is a massive recruiting crisis in our military today — especially with young white men,” he writes in the book. “Why would God-fearing, traditional, patriotic kids be excited about dodging accusations of racism and then deciding on pronouns, before walking patrol with a ‘man’ who is more concerned about becoming a woman than being a warrior?”
In the event, during Trump’s first administration Hegseth remained at Fox News, where he once appeared to injure a nearby band member by missing his target at axe-throwing, the rapidly growing macho sport, on live television.
Fox News was also where conservative American politicians and TV personalities spent Trump’s years out of power sharpening their criticism of the US military’s efforts on diversity and inclusiveness under the first Black secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin.
Austin became a lightning rod for rightwing criticism after he ordered a review of “extremism” in the military after nearly two dozen of those charged with violence in the January 6 riots at the Capitol were found to be formerly or currently associated with the force.
Hegseth’s nomination has shocked America’s European allies, who were already bracing for a potential U-turn from the US on Ukraine — where Trump has made clear he intends to overhaul outgoing President Joe Biden’s strategy — and a sharply changed approach to Nato.
“I woke up this morning in Vienna to the news, and thought: whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad,” said a former senior western military leader deeply involved with Nato.
Based on his broadcasts, Hegseth’s views on the war in Ukraine have been inconsistent. Four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, he said fellow conservatives and young people had told him the war was “important, but it pales in comparison to the crime I see in my streets, to the wokeness I see in my culture, to the inflation I see in my pocketbook”. But soon afterwards, he criticised Biden for not arming Ukraine fast enough.
In last week’s podcast, he described the conflict as “Putin’s give-me-my-shit-back war”, evoking the Kremlin’s position that Ukrainian nationhood was a temporary diversion from its historical place within Russia’s orbit.
Hegseth summarised Putin’s position as “we used to have the former Soviet Union and we’re pretty proud of that. And Ukraine was a part of it and all these other countries, and I want my shit back”.
At the same time he blamed Biden for “being Awol” and giving Putin a chance to claw back once-Soviet territory.
Hegseth did not respond to a request for comment.
The nomination has already sparked a backlash in the US, with people expressing their surprise in private and on social media that Trump would appoint someone that many believe would have very little credibility to lead the Pentagon.
Former Trump administration officials who have been supportive of the president-elect’s other picks for top national security roles have also expressed disdain, with one saying the choice was “crazy”.
How Hegseth’s view of the war will shape US military policy is unclear, but an initial hurdle will be his “very limited military background and no experience of government”, warned General Lord Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army.
“The US Joint Chiefs of Staff will have their work cut out to argue their case to continue to support Ukraine and Nato, but I think we can assume that Hegseth will do Trump’s bidding with loyalty,” Dannatt added.
Others were less circumspect. “A total clown show,” said John Foreman, former UK defence attaché in Moscow. “The guy seems interested in fighting culture wars within the Department of Defense and purging enemies.”
But culture wars and a drive to purge enemies have helped Trump win the presidency, and Hegseth propel himself into the president-elect’s inner circle. In his book, he portrays himself as an apostate, opting not to renew his security clearance as he no longer wished to be involved with the military, and then as an outsider on a vital mission to save the force from wokeness.
“My trust in this army is irrevocably broken,” he wrote. “The so-called elites directing the military today aren’t just lowering standards and focusing on the wrong enemy — they believe power is bad, merit is unfair [and] white people are yesterday.”