President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday night appointed Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and author with robust military experience to serve as his secretary of Defense. Hegseth, an Evangelical Christian, called the two-state solution “lip service” and “effectively dead.”
Here is Trump’s announcement:
In 2016, Hegseth told Jewish journalists that his time in the army turned him into a supporter of Israel. “After being in the army and serving in Iraq, I saw different worldviews, and I began to understand Israel’s place in the world and where antisemitism comes from,” he said.
He said his visit to Israel as a journalist “reaffirmed the ties the Jewish people have with this land,” and explained, “This is not some mystical land that can be undone, this is the story of the chosen people. This story did not end in 1776 or in 1948.”
In March, Hegseth interviewed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and criticized Qatar for playing a double game. He called the ceasefire negotiations “blackmail by Hamas.” He also told the PM “There is no doubt that this is a struggle that Israel needs to end,” and lamented the calls in the media for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The NY Times on Tuesday night explained that “The choice of Mr. Hegseth was outside the norm of the traditional defense secretary. But he was a dedicated supporter of Mr. Trump during his first term, defending his interactions with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, embracing his ‘America First’ agenda of trying to withdraw US troops from abroad and energetically taking up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.”
The last point was a reference to Hegseth’s heavy lobbying on behalf of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a member of the Navy SEALs who was acquitted of serious war crimes in Iraq in 2019. President Trump reversed a demotion ordered as punishment, then fired the Navy secretary, whom Hegseth had aggressively criticized.
No doubt, Hegseth is the best possible secretary of defense we could hope for, a true friend of Israel and a no-nonsense conservative. One of his aims is to liberate the US military from the yoke of wokeism.
Meet Trump’s New Sec. of Defense @PeteHegseth
Say goodbye to wokeness in the military pic.twitter.com/r6qszWKWuT
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 13, 2024
Hegseth has been involved in conservative and Republican politics since his undergraduate years at Princeton University. In 2016, he became a vocal supporter and ally of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and occasionally advised Trump during his first term in office. Hegseth served as a platoon leader at Guantanamo Bay and defended the treatment of detainees held there.
In 2018, an argument broke out between Hegseth and another Fox presenter about Arabs who were killed by IDF fire during demonstrations near the Gaza Strip fence. “If the terrorist sends the child to the front, the terrorist is guilty,” said Hegseth. “The innocent blood is on the hands of the terrorist who sent the child out to storm the fence with no chance of crossing it. We use vague words like ‘Palestinians’ and ‘innocent’ and it’s as if Hamas doesn’t want to wipe Israel off the map.”
In 2020, Hegseth called for US military action against Iran. “There’s no better time than now,” he said on Fox News. “We need to tell Iran it has a week before we start taking out its energy facilities and missile sites. Iran has been at war with us for 40 years, and we either stand by and shut up now or we get back to the table while they continue to develop the capability to do exactly what they said they wanted to do.”
