Pete Hegseth is a Fox News personality who has used his platform to defend war criminals.
Donald Trump, claiming a mandate from his narrow popular vote win, intends to purge the U.S. military from top to bottom and put a Fox News host in charge of the whole thing, hoping to root out any “woke” dissenters and install loyalists in their place who will not object to his using America’s armed forces in ways that may be ill-advised, malicious or both.
As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, the president-elect’s transition team has reviewed an executive order, which Trump could sign on day one, that would create a “warrior board” of retired MAGA military guys who would recommend or rubber stamp the firing of anyone in the chain of command who they deem lacking in “leadership qualities.”
The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is as good as gone. In 2020, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who served as commander of the Pacific Air Forces during Trump’s first term in office, spoke out about racism following the police murder of George Floyd.
“I’m thinking about my Air Force career where I was often the only African American in my squadron or, as a senior officer, the only African American in the room,” Brown said in a video address at the time. The killing and subsequent conversation about institutional racism, Brown continued, had forced him to consider how he could better promote “the value of diversity.”
Such talk will not be tolerated anymore.
“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.” So says Pete Hegseth, who at the start of the week was a Fox News morning show personality but by Tuesday afternoon was Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense and its 2.8 million employees. Speaking on a right-wing podcast before he was chosen to lead the Pentagon, the 44-year-old veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made the case for a purge, calling for the termination of “any general, any admiral, whatever,” who had promoted “woke s**t,” per The .
A former prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, Hegseth is best known for two things: Boasting that he does not believe in germs and acts accordingly — “Fox host says he ‘hasn’t washed hands in 10 years,’” the BBC reported in 2019 — and defending alleged war crimes. During Trump’s first term in office, the “Fox & Friends” alum was at the center of a to get the president to pardon soldiers who had been accused or convicted of murder.
