Who is Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick as secretary of defence?
The decision by US President-elect Donald Trump to nominate a Fox News host as his secretary of defence has sent the public scrambling to learn more. Pete Hegseth’s nomination is certain to generate controversy after he previously expressed disdain for the so-called “woke” policies of Pentagon leaders, including its top military officer.
Pete Hegseth walks to an elevator for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in 2016.Credit: AP
Who is Pete Hegseth?
Pete Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend and has been a contributor with the network since 2014. He developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show.
Hegseth was an infantry captain in the Army National Guard and served overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was the former head of Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012.
He also championed the case of four former Blackwater contractors convicted in a 2007 Baghdad shooting rampage that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians. They were pardoned by Trump – one of his final acts in office.
Hegseth said he left the army in 2021 after being deemed an extremist by an army that no longer wanted him. “The feeling was mutual – I didn’t want this army any more either,” Hegseth said in his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.
What has he been appointed to lead?
Hegseth has been nominated to be the civilian leader of the US military and the boss at the Pentagon.
Trump’s selection of Hegseth, who lacks senior military or national security experience, was sure to draw questions about his qualifications to lead the department.
If confirmed by the Senate, Hegseth would inherit the top job in the midst of multiple global crises – Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies; the push for a ceasefire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah; and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea.
Is Hegseth anti-China?
Hegseth said, “China’s building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America” and that the US is “always a decade behind and fighting the last war”, the South China Morning Post reported.
His nomination is alongside other China hawks, such as Trump’s national security adviser nominee Mike Waltz.
What other appointments has Trump made as president-elect?
Senator Marco Rubio as the Secretary of State. Billionaire Elon Musk to oversee a new non-governmental bureaucratic reform organisation, confusingly named the “Department of Government Efficiency”, with advice from former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a news conference at Trump Tower in August.Credit: AP
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to serve as the next homeland security secretary. Trump has picked John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence during his first administration, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency in his next.
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