Of all the cabinet picks Donald Trump unveiled over the last few days, none has caused more consternation than Pete Hegseth’s appointment as Secretary of Defense. The announcement wasn’t five minutes old before the usual suspects started claiming that he was “unqualified” and “unserious,” gritting their teeth in quenched anger.
To his credit, conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings faced off against that narrative on Tuesday evening and made short work of it.
SEE: Scott Jennings Tears Into Critics of Pete Hegseth, Tears Into Current Pentagon Leadership
That didn’t stop the big brains in the written press from rushing out their hit pieces, though. In what turned out to be an inadvertent endorsement of Hegseth, Politico published an article entitled “Who the f–k is this guy?’: Defense world reacts to Trump’s surprise Pentagon pick.”
Politico unintentionally building grassroots support for Pete Hegseth by leading with this quote on background from a defense industry lobbyist. https://t.co/dGZk65KezN pic.twitter.com/m9mduDg8iG
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 13, 2024 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.”
The pick will do little to quell fears inside the Pentagon and beyond that Trump, who jousted with his own defense secretaries, plans this time to install a loyalist who will unquestioningly carry out his policies. Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric has primed fears that his second term could see a swift and divisive overhaul at the Pentagon.
Trump’s return is expected to bring a collective rollback of Biden administration policies, likely reinstating a ban on transgender troops, ending abortion travel policies, reigniting battles over bases named for Confederate figures, slashing diversity programs and the use of troops on U.S. soil against civil unrest and his political enemies.
Let’s take this in two parts. First, why wouldn’t Donald Trump want to “install a loyalist who will unquestionably carry out his policies?” Are members of the press aware that we have elections in this country? The Pentagon is not a fourth branch of government, though it has attempted to operate as one for far too long. The entire point of electing a president is to see his policies carried out, not to have deep-state apparatchiks calling the shots behind the scenes, making elections largely irrelevant.
The Department of Defense wants to be float above the fray, out of the clutches of accountability. They want people in their club and only their club to garner positions of power because it perpetuates the Pentagon as a self-licking ice cream cone, free of the demands of those pesky voters. “If someone hasn’t been an advisor to Hillary Clinton and sat on the board of Raytheon, how could they possibly be qualified,” they gasp while never considering their multitude of failures.
That brings me to my second point, which I’ll explain momentarily, but is perfectly illustrated by the following post.
How many “qualified” people with “strong resumes” did it take to pull this off? pic.twitter.com/KYX0wuksZp
— Lafayette Lee (@Partisan_O) November 13, 2024
I think the American people are sick and tired of having Beltway elitism shoved in their faces as the only way to run the government. The current regime of left-wing four-star generals and DoD lackeys has produced one of the most disastrous tenures in the Pentagon’s history. We’ve had spy balloons flying over the entire continental United States. We had the Afghanistan withdrawal disaster, which cost the lives of 13 American servicemembers and became a stain on the nation’s history. Russia invaded Europe during the last four years while China and Iran have seen a resurgence in power and influence. The Middle East is the most unstable it has been since the end of Trump’s first term.
But I’m supposed to believe that Pete Hegseth isn’t qualified? What exactly does being qualified mean then? He’s a 20-year Army veteran with two Ivy League degrees and a record of working for veterans advocacy groups. Part of the corruption of the bureaucratic class is the perpetuation of the idea that you must be a rocket scientist to do what they do. It’s nonsense and a narrative that has produced nothing but horrible governance.
Of course, we all know what “qualified” actually means to those in power. It means someone who will continue the status quo while undermining any changes Trump may seek to bring about. Well, those days are over, and every DoD official and lobbyist should be scared. They’ve run a once great military into the ground, and now it’s time to pay the price.