Cue the Democrat-media complex freakouts!
Leftist tears have been flowing mightily ever since Trump shocked the world by winning every single swing state in last Tuesday’s electoral rout.
But those tears turned into waterfalls after Trump tapped Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to clean out the Augean stables at the bloated, woke-addled Pentagon.
‘When I saw [news of Hegseth’s nomination], I thought the AP must have been hacked,’ wailed former failed CNN host Don Lemon. ‘But Pete Hegseth? The morning, weekend host on Fox News? Come on.’
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman said: ‘Being a serviceman does not make you qualified to lead the Department of Defense and to have access to our nuclear weapons.’
So says the man whose greatest credential is that he’s an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune… and a TV pundit.
Well, since you raised it, Congressman, let’s talk about those qualifications—shall we?
Hegseth received his Bachelor of Arts in politics at Princeton and earned a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
In 2003, after being commissioned into the Minnesota National Guard and then serving as a platoon leader in Guantanamo Bay, he volunteered for the U.S. Army infantry at the height of the Iraq War.
Hegseth completed tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, winning two Bronze Stars in the process.
After returning home, he served as executive director of Concerned Veterans for America, a formidable conservative organization that (correctly) opposes reckless military boondoggles and advocates for a restrained — one might say ‘America First’ — approach to foreign policy.
He has also advocated for long-overdue reform of the sclerotic Department of Veteran Affairs—an agency he would later be considered to lead during the Trump administration.
At 44 years old, he’s close to the age of many men and women who are now either serving overseas or recovering from the wounds of wars at home. And it is only someone of a younger generation, like Hegseth, who might be able to turn around our military’s anemic enlistments.
Last year was the worst on record for recruitment – with the Army, Navy and Air Force missing their goals by double-digit percentages.
Want more young men to sign up to the military?
Ditch the assigned Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo readings and make sure our young warriors once again read men like General George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, he suggests. And he’s right.
Hegseth’s attack on destructive progressive ideologies and the threat they pose to military readiness is full-on.
‘My trust in this army is irrevocably broken,’ he wrote in his bestselling book, ‘The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,’ published earlier this year.
‘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,’ he said.
Many of his critics were clutching their pearls on Tuesday over Hegseth’s public take on women serving in combat roles.
While he supports women joining the military, he doesn’t think they should be assigned to ‘physical, labor-intensive-type jobs’. That, he argues, undermines military readiness.
To many Americans, it’s also just common sense.
‘Any general, any admiral… that was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programmes or woke s*** has got to go,’ he told a podcaster last week. And, he stressed, that includes members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Most importantly, Hegseth has demonstrated an understanding of Trump’s pragmatic approach to foreign policy – that America has overextended itself in too many proxy wars.
He has identified that Communist China is, bar none, America’s foremost 21st-century civilizational threat – and that, in the Middle East, Iran is a menacing actor and Israel is our closest friend.
Perhaps the best thing going for him? His nomination has all the right people triggered.
A Politico article quoted an anonymous defense industry lobbyist—someone whose entire job is to bilk the taxpayers of billions of dollars — as emoting, ‘Who the f*** is this guy?’
Indeed, Hegseth’s number is not in any of their rolodexes. And if that means less corporate slush fund money for overinflated defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, it sounds like an endorsement to me.
At a time when America’s failed class of military generals valorize wokeism and far too often deploy our young warriors to unwinnable conflicts overseas, naming an ‘outsider’ to the Pentagon bureaucracy merits America’s enthusiastic support.
Yes, the greatest knock of Hegseth is that he lacks significant experience maneuvering around the swollen federal bureaucracy.
But such skills have failed to keep America – and its brave warfighters – from being ensnared in decades of unnecessary and futile conflicts or from being humiliated in Afghanistan.
Perhaps, it’s time to try something else?
Josh Hammer is the syndicated host of ‘The Josh Hammer Show’ and senior editor-at-large at Newsweek.
