In selecting Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to guide the Department of Defense, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen a army veteran and a preferred conservative media character with a big following.
Hegseth, 44, developed an in depth relationship with Trump, who additionally reportedly thought of him for a publish in his first administration. Hegseth lobbied Trump to launch service members accused of warfare crimes.
Here are some issues to find out about Hegseth.
It went viral – with an axe
Hegseth went viral and was later sued after hitting a U.S. Army sergeant main within the arm with an errant ax throw throughout a 2015 “Fox & Friends” phase.
Video of the incident exhibits the ax flying over a goal and placing Jeffrey Prosperie, a drummer for West Point’s Hellcats discipline band, who had been invited to the Army’s 240th anniversary present.
Records present the lawsuit was discontinued in 2019, and Brandon Cotter, Prosperie’s lawyer, mentioned in an e-mail Wednesday that “The events have resolved this matter and can have no additional remark.” Prosperie didn’t instantly reply to a message searching for remark.
Fox News, additionally named within the lawsuit, referred to as the incident “unlucky and utterly unintentional,” mentioned it instantly apologized to him and supplied medical assist, which he refused.
Prosperie has since returned to the community to carry out with the West Point band.
She questioned the position of ladies in fight
Hegseth has pushed to make the Army extra deadly and mentioned permitting girls to serve in fight roles hurts that effort.
“Everything about women and men serving collectively makes the scenario extra sophisticated, and the complication in fight means the casualties are worse,” Hegseth mentioned throughout an interview final week on the podcast “The Shawn Ryan Show ” to advertise his new e-book. “I’m simply saying we should not have girls in fight roles: It hasn’t made us more practical, it hasn’t made us extra deadly, it is made fight extra sophisticated.”
While he mentioned range within the army is a power, Hegseth additionally mentioned that is as a result of minorities and white males can behave equally, one thing he mentioned is not true of ladies.
By opening fight slots to girls, “we have modified the requirements of placing them there, which implies you have modified the potential of that unit,” Hegseth mentioned within the podcast interview.
Since then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all fight roles to girls in 2016, girls have efficiently handed the grueling army assessments to turn out to be Green Berets and Army Rangers, and the Naval Special Warfare check to function crew members of fight boats: the operators of the boat. which transport Navy SEALs and conduct their very own labeled missions at sea.
He has defended service members accused of warfare crimes
In 2019, Hegseth urged Trump to pardon US service members who had been accused of warfare crimes. He supported the army’s circumstances on his present and on-line, interviewing family on Fox News. He posted on social media {that a} pardon from Trump “can be wonderful” and added hashtags with the names of the accused to studies that talked about his non-public lobbying of the then-president.
The initiative was profitable, with Trump that 12 months pardoning a former U.S. Army commando set to face trial for the killing of a suspected Afghan bombmaker, in addition to a former Army lieutenant convicted of homicide for ordering the his males to shoot three Afghans. killing two. Trump additionally ordered a promotion for a adorned Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a useless Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.
He is a army veteran
Hegseth served within the army, though he has no army or nationwide safety expertise.
After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer within the Army National Guard, serving abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to at Guantanamo Bay.
He beforehand headed Concerned Veterans for America, a gaggle backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Minnesota in 2012. According to his Fox News bio, he has a grasp’s diploma in public coverage at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
As Trump formulated his first Cabinet after his 2016 victory, he reportedly thought of Hegseth to guide the Department of Veterans Affairs. He once more thought of Hegseth when Secretary David Shulkin confronted criticism earlier than his ouster in 2018.
He is a Fox News character and writer
Co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Hegseth has been with the community for ten years. He developed a friendship with Trump by way of the president-elect’s common appearances on the present. In an announcement, a Fox News spokesperson complimented Hegseth’s army information, saying his “insights and evaluation, significantly on the army, resonated deeply with our viewers.”
He additionally wrote quite a few books, lots of them for the community’s publishing firm, together with “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.” In saying Hegseth’s nomination, Trump complimented that e-book, noting its “9 weeks on the New York Times best-seller checklist, together with two weeks at NUMBER ONE.”
He would come to the job throughout a sequence of world crises
Hegseth would lead the Pentagon with escalating conflicts on a number of fronts, together with Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, ongoing assaults within the Middle East by Iranian proxies, the push for a ceasefire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, and rising issues on the rising alliance. between Russia and North Korea.
While the Pentagon is taken into account a key job in any administration, secretary of Defense was a tumultuous place throughout Trump’s first time period. Five males held the place throughout Trump’s 4 years.
Trump’s relationship together with his civilian and army leaders in these years was fraught with rigidity, confusion and frustration, as they struggled to mitigate and even merely interpret presidential tweets and statements that caught them abruptly with sudden coverage selections that they weren’t ready to clarify or defend.
Many of the generals who labored in his first administration – each lively obligation and retired – declared him unfit to serve within the Oval Office. In return he condemned them.
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