Who is Pete Hegseth, Minnesotan picked to be Trump's secretary of defense?
In picking Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, President-elect Donald Trump has selected a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following of his own.
Hegseth, 44, has developed a close rapport with Trump, who also reportedly considered him for a post in his first administration. Hegseth has lobbied Trump to release service members accused of war crimes.
Hegseth was valedictorian at Forest Lake High School in Minnesota and attended Princeton University, where he played basketball. From there, he joined the Minnesota National Guard and later the Army National Guard. He was sent abroad three times, as part of a security platoon at Guantanamo Bay, an infantryman in Iraq and counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. Hegseth does not have senior military or national security experience.
Between his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he served in a $110,000-a-year role as executive director of Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy group that advocated for then-President George W. Bush's Iraq surge.
Just weeks after returning to Minnesota from Afghanistan in 2012, he entered the GOP race to unseat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, though his bid was ultimately unsuccessful.
Hegseth is an active member of the American Legion in Forest Lake. The people who know him and his family expressed their surprise on Wednesday morning, mostly that someone from a small Twin Cities suburb could make it to a high position.
"One of our own. Forest Lake kid. His family was very involved in the community. His dad actually taught me when I was in high school," said Volunteer Manager at the American Legion Greg Weiss. "It's possible for anybody. Regardless of your political beliefs, if Pete can do it from Forest Lake, anybody can do it. It's not the president, but it's right next to him."
In Washington, the reaction to choosing Hegseth has been a mix of shock and surprise.
"He does not seem to have much of a detailed background in DOD policy," said Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, who is a ranking member of the armed services committee. "The lack of experience is concerning."
Hegseth has pushed for making the military more lethal and said that allowing women to serve in combat roles hurts that effort.
"Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse," Hegseth said during an interview last week on "The Shawn Ryan Show" podcast to promote his new book. "I'm straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles — it hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated."
While he said that diversity in the military is a strength, Hegseth also said it was because minority and white men can perform similarly, something he said isn't true for women.
By opening combat slots to women, "we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit," Hegseth said in the podcast interview.
Since then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in 2016, women have successfully passed the military's grueling tests to become Green Berets and Army Rangers, and the Naval Special Warfare's test to serve as a combatant-craft crewman — the boat operators who transport Navy SEALs and conduct their own classified missions at sea.
In 2019, Hegseth urged Trump to pardon U.S. service members who had been accused of war crimes. He advocated for the servicemen's cases on his show and online, interviewing relatives on Fox News. He posted on social media that pardons from Trump "would be amazing," and added hashtags with the names of those accused to reporting mentioning his private lobbying of the then-president.
The effort was successful, with Trump that year pardoning a former U.S. Army commando set to stand trial in the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, as well as a former Army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire upon three Afghans, killing two. Trump also ordered a promotion for a decorated Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State captive in Iraq.
As Trump formulated his first Cabinet following his 2016 win, he reportedly considered Hegseth to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. He again considered Hegseth when Secretary David Shulkin faced criticism before his ouster in 2018.
Co-host of Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends Weekend," Hegseth has been a contributor to the network for a decade. He developed a friendship with Trump through the president-elect's regular appearances on the show. In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson complimented Hegseth's military knowledge, saying his "insights and analysis especially about the military resonated deeply with our viewers."
He's also written a number of books, several for the network's publishing imprint, including "The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free." In announcing Hegseth as his pick, Trump complimented that book, noting its "nine weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list, including two weeks at NUMBER ONE."
Hegseth would lead the Pentagon with burgeoning conflicts on multiple fronts, including Russia's war in Ukraine, the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies, the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea.
While the Pentagon is considered a key job in any administration, defense secretary was a tumultuous post during Trump's first term. Five men held the job during Trump's four years.
Trump's relationship with his civilian and military leaders during those years was fraught with tension, confusion and frustration, as they struggled to temper or even simply interpret presidential tweets and pronouncements that blindsided them with abrupt policy decisions they weren't prepared to explain or defend.
Many of the generals who worked in his first administration — both on active duty and retired — have slammed him as unfit to serve in the Oval Office. He has condemned them in return.
The Senate will still need to confirm Hegseth as defense secretary.
