Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, is locked in a fierce nomination fight. Mired in accusations about his personal life, Hegseth is dug in. And a big part of his pitch to the Republicans who will control the Senate come January is that he will be a different kind of defense secretary than the country has had in recent administrations. Here’s how he put it to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Monday:
Return the Pentagon to the warfighters. Get in there and clean out all the social justice, politically correct garbage on top, and get back to lethality, war-fighting, accountability, meritocracy, and readiness. . . . Return to that and it changes the culture of the institution.
Warfighters, in fact, is the word he uses again and again in describing the kind of soldier he will work for if confirmed as defense secretary. In his recent book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, he writes, “Higher headquarters crush your soul. They are bureaucratic, political, and mind-numbingly boring. I wanted to get back out on the gun range, back on the drill floor, out with soldiers.” For Hegseth, these are the “warfighters” whose banner he claims to carry.
But as a co-host of Fox’s signature morning show, Fox & Friends, Hegseth used his platform to champion a particular kind of warfighter, one that should make even his Republican supporters nervous: service members convicted of or accused of war crimes.
