President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has chosen Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran Pete Hegseth as his Secretary of Defense, bringing in an outsider known for his strong views on reducing diversity initiatives within the military.
“Pete is tough, smart, and a true believer in America First,” Trump said in his statement. “With Pete leading the charge, America’s enemies are on notice—our military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.”
Hegseth’s military background includes deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to his personal accounts, he left the Army in 2021, claiming he was deemed an “extremist” by a military he no longer felt aligned with. “The feeling was mutual—I didn’t want this Army anymore either,” he wrote in his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.
Trump’s choice of Hegseth has stirred concerns within the Pentagon, where some worry about a potential purge of military officers and civil servants Trump considers disloyal. Cultural tensions over “woke” policies may be a particular flashpoint. In a Fox News interview in June, Trump hinted that he might dismiss generals he deemed too focused on social justice initiatives, a stance echoed by Hegseth, who has questioned the military’s focus on diversity under the Biden administration.
In The War on Warriors, Hegseth criticized these policies, writing, “Do we really want only the woke ‘diverse’ recruits that the Biden administration is curating to be the ones with the guns and the guidons?” He further argued that such recruits are “pumped full of vaccines and even more poisonous ideologies.”
Trump has often clashed with former military leaders, including some of his own appointees, many of whom have openly criticized his leadership. Most notably, Trump has gone as far as suggesting that former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley could be charged with treason.
