Pete Hegseth: Bada** For SecDef

On Tuesday, President-elect Trump rolled out Pete Hegseth, the author, Army veteran, and Fox News host, as his choice for secretary of defense.

And the usual suspects are going absolutely insane.

My favorite response came courtesy of Politico, which lost it over the fact that Hegseth is an outsider. They published a piece saying defense industry lobbyists were very upset. They wrote:

One assessment was more blunt. “Who the fuck is this guy?” said a defense industry lobbyist who was granted anonymity to offer candid views. The lobbyist said they had hoped for “someone who actually has an extensive background in defense. That would be a good start.”

Here’s the problem: The people who have been running our defense apparatus for nigh on two decades at this point have done a horrendous job. The Department of Defense has been signally responsible for the worst botched pullout in American history in Afghanistan, a completely failed response to terrorism by the Houthis in the Red Sea, and an unbelievably weak response to Russian invasion of Europe.

That’s what the Department of Defense has done. They’ve burdened the Department of Defense with a bunch of woke nonsense. Additionally, they have not actually built to spec, meaning that they are not interested in preparing for the next war. They just keep building for the last war.

There needs to be a tremendous overhaul inside the Pentagon, and Pete Hegseth is the guy to do it. You can sense it from all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from all the right people.

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Elizabeth Warren, who is super upset, tweeted, “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense. I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our servicemembers. Donald Trump’s pick will make us less safe and must be rejected.” 

I would like to point out that Warren says that her qualification to lead the Senate military personnel panel is that she has siblings who served in the military.

To Ms. Warren might it be said: Hegseth is an Army major and was in the National Guard. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star twice.

I know Pete Hegseth. He’s awesome. He’s going to break all the right brains. He’s going to go in and clean house. Pete is a young 44-year-old go-getter. He is obviously very bright. He went to Harvard and Princeton. Plus, there’s his military record. He’s literally writing the book on how to clear the military of all the deadwood.

I interviewed him just a few months ago about his brand-new book, which is all about cleansing the military of woke ideology.

He explained what he thought America’s foreign policy should be like:

It goes all the way back to we’re not even declaring wars anymore because no one wants, they’re so politically untenable as to what way they’ll go. So no one actually wants to invest in them or is willing to. And so you get these forever wars, which is a bad phrase because they’re not forever wars, but it’s the way it ends up being described because there is no actual end state.

Tell me what the end state is in Ukraine. I could tell you what the end state is in Israel. And what’s the only thing the American military and the American diplomats are doing right now? Trying to stop Israel from finishing the fight. There’s one thing that Israel could do: kill every last one of those Hamas mother***ers now and then the war stops. And by the way, Israel didn’t start it.

That’s how wars end. That’s how peace breaks out for thousands of years, somebody actually wins the war. And when they win the war, then there’s a new reality, a new geopolitical reality. We don’t fight that way. We let the lawyers lead. We let international institutions have too much say and it percolates.

I tell stories directly as a platoon leader down to: Can you shoot? Can you not shoot? Our guys being criminalized after the fact, put in jail. Donald Trump pardoned a bunch of guys I advocated for in his last couple of years in office. They killed the right guys in the wrong way, according to somebody. I’m done with that. We need to fight total war against our enemies when we do.

You don’t kill civilians on purpose, but you kill bad guys, all of them: You stack bodies. And when it’s over and you let the dust settle, you figure out who’s ahead. It turns out we’re the ones with the big guns right now. 

I am all in on this. All in. I like this. This is great.

In regards to reforming U.S. military leadership, Hegseth said:

Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s*** has got to go. … That’s the only litmus test we care about. You got to get DEI and CRT out of military academies. … Whatever the combat standards were, say, and, I don’t know, 1995, let’s just make those the standards. And as far as recruiting to hire the guy that, you know, did Top Gun Maverick and create some real ads that motivate people to want to serve.

That is right. That is correct. More young men will join the military with Hegseth as secretary of defense. Why? Because people who are joining the military look at that and think, that dude is a bad***. And that’s somebody who I want heading up the Department of Defense.

It’s hilarious because the entire Left is bringing out clips of Hegseth, and every time they do, supposedly showing him as terrible, all I can think is, “Stop. I’m already supporting him. You can’t make me support him any more than I already do. It’s not possible.”

Some of them brought out a clip of him talking about how women should not serve in frontline combat positions.

What’s controversial about that? Is their idea here that women should be in frontline combat positions next to the big bulky Navy SEALs and guys like that? That’s their proposition?

Keep bringing out more clips of Hegseth. Every new clip makes me more adamant on my support.

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Trump is deliberately going outside the system of the military structure. He’s apparently pursuing a draft executive order that would create a board to purge the woke generals.

I know a lot of people who are serving in America’s military. Everyone will say the biggest obstacle to military success in the United States military is the political generals, the people who’ve kissed enough a** to make their way to the top of the heap. That’s not every general, but there are some who have made their way to the top of the heap by playing the game.

That military bureaucracy is what prevents the United States military from adapting, from innovating, from being quick and responsive. Wiping all of that out would be great.

Am I supposed to listen to people who think that Rachel Levine ought to be an admiral? They’re the people I’m going to listen to about military policy? These are  people who believe the way that you recruit people to the United States military is by waving rainbow flags.

That is not how you recruit people to the military. We have a massive shortfall in the number of people who want to join the military. We have a massive shortfall in terms of the military technology we actually have to develop.

It’s a rough world out there.

And Pete Hegseth knows that better than anyone who is being looked at for this position.