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In his first few picks for Cabinet secretaries, President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear—even clearer than many had predicted—that his main criterion for selection is blind loyalty. Qualities such as competence or experience have no bearing whatsoever.
One of the nominees, a combat veteran and Fox News host named Pete Hegseth, is so blatantly unqualified—a caricature of MAGA fidelity—that some insiders say even the Senate sworn in this January, with its 53 Republicans, may vote not to confirm him as leader of the Defense Department.
The same might be true (one can always hope) of Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, the far-right Democrat turned MAGA Republican, who has no relevant experience except, perhaps, that she has avidly parroted Russian propaganda lines to explain a wide variety of international developments.
Only somewhat less jaw-dropping is Trump’s choice of former Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe to be CIA director. An even slightly less lopsided Senate would likely reject Ratcliffe out of fear that he’d politicize intelligence—as indeed he did during the brief spell, at the end of Trump’s first term, when he was director of national intelligence, the office that oversees and coordinates the 18 U.S. intel agencies. But especially if enough Republicans feel they can’t stomach Hegseth or Gabbard in high offices, they’ll probably let Ratcliffe go through.
Other beneficiaries of political payback include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, nominated to be secretary of homeland security, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is slated to be United Nations ambassador. Neither has any experience remotely related to the job they’ll be handling. Both, however, have been ardent supporters and defenders of Trump; Stefanik enjoys the special distinction of rising to become chair of the House Republican Conference after Rep. Liz Cheney was ousted for criticizing Trump over the Jan. 6 riots.
The oddball of them all, the nominee who emerged out of nowhere, is Hegseth, a complete unknown to anyone who doesn’t watch Fox & Friends Weekend, which he has co-hosted for a decade. Of course, Trump is one of that show’s regular viewers, and, to the surprise of his advisers, he picked Hegseth to run the Department of Defense—the country’s largest bureaucracy, with 2.8 million employees and a budget this year of $841 billion—because he liked a lot of what the rugged-looking co-host was saying.
Hegseth fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but his rank—a major in the Army National Guard—wasn’t exactly a leadership slot. He has written some bestselling books, notably The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In it, as well as on several Fox broadcasts, he decried the introduction of diversity requirements in the military, saying that they brought on the rise of “woke generals,” who in turn weakened the Army’s fighting spirit. He has also said that lowering admission requirements, in order to let women join combat units, has had the same deleterious effect. (Many Army officers say that critics such as Hegseth exaggerate the amount of time spent on diversity training and that the women serving in combat—in some cases in elite units like the Rangers and Green Berets—have had to pass the same grueling tests as the men.)
The anti-woke attitude may be what appealed most to Trump, who wants to fire generals who display insufficient loyalty to him. Hegseth has said he would appoint a board of retired officers, no doubt of like mind, to draw up lists of active officers who should be dismissed.
On his Fox show, Hegseth also vigorously protested the prosecutions of soldiers for war crimes, even to the point of persuading Trump, while he was president, to pardon two perpetrators of particularly heinous murders of civilians.
But when it comes to a defense secretary’s main jobs—forming budgets, assessing weapons systems, managing interservice rivalries, engaging in interagency policymaking, conducting diplomacy with foreign counterparts, and so forth—Hegseth has no apparent qualifications whatever.
Even some MAGA Republicans see the merits of having someone with at least a bit of political acumen and organizational talent run an enterprise as large, complex, and vital as the Defense Department. It would take four Republican senators to reject his nomination. Some on Capitol Hill think four could be rallied to vote their conscience. If not, and if Hegseth is sworn in, others doubt he would last more than six months on the job. The Pentagon bureaucracy is deeply entrenched; it can wear out far more agile players than Hegseth.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pete-hegseth-tulsi-gabbard-bananas-225320901.html
One of the nominees, a combat veteran and Fox News host named Pete Hegseth, is so blatantly unqualified—a caricature of MAGA fidelity—that some insiders say even the Senate sworn in this January, with its 53 Republicans, may vote not to confirm him as leader of the Defense Department.
The same might be true (one can always hope) of Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, the far-right Democrat turned MAGA Republican, who has no relevant experience except, perhaps, that she has avidly parroted Russian propaganda lines to explain a wide variety of international developments.
Only somewhat less jaw-dropping is Trump’s choice of former Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe to be CIA director. An even slightly less lopsided Senate would likely reject Ratcliffe out of fear that he’d politicize intelligence—as indeed he did during the brief spell, at the end of Trump’s first term, when he was director of national intelligence, the office that oversees and coordinates the 18 U.S. intel agencies. But especially if enough Republicans feel they can’t stomach Hegseth or Gabbard in high offices, they’ll probably let Ratcliffe go through.
Other beneficiaries of political payback include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, nominated to be secretary of homeland security, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is slated to be United Nations ambassador. Neither has any experience remotely related to the job they’ll be handling. Both, however, have been ardent supporters and defenders of Trump; Stefanik enjoys the special distinction of rising to become chair of the House Republican Conference after Rep. Liz Cheney was ousted for criticizing Trump over the Jan. 6 riots.
The oddball of them all, the nominee who emerged out of nowhere, is Hegseth, a complete unknown to anyone who doesn’t watch Fox & Friends Weekend, which he has co-hosted for a decade. Of course, Trump is one of that show’s regular viewers, and, to the surprise of his advisers, he picked Hegseth to run the Department of Defense—the country’s largest bureaucracy, with 2.8 million employees and a budget this year of $841 billion—because he liked a lot of what the rugged-looking co-host was saying.
Hegseth fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but his rank—a major in the Army National Guard—wasn’t exactly a leadership slot. He has written some bestselling books, notably The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In it, as well as on several Fox broadcasts, he decried the introduction of diversity requirements in the military, saying that they brought on the rise of “woke generals,” who in turn weakened the Army’s fighting spirit. He has also said that lowering admission requirements, in order to let women join combat units, has had the same deleterious effect. (Many Army officers say that critics such as Hegseth exaggerate the amount of time spent on diversity training and that the women serving in combat—in some cases in elite units like the Rangers and Green Berets—have had to pass the same grueling tests as the men.)
The anti-woke attitude may be what appealed most to Trump, who wants to fire generals who display insufficient loyalty to him. Hegseth has said he would appoint a board of retired officers, no doubt of like mind, to draw up lists of active officers who should be dismissed.
On his Fox show, Hegseth also vigorously protested the prosecutions of soldiers for war crimes, even to the point of persuading Trump, while he was president, to pardon two perpetrators of particularly heinous murders of civilians.
But when it comes to a defense secretary’s main jobs—forming budgets, assessing weapons systems, managing interservice rivalries, engaging in interagency policymaking, conducting diplomacy with foreign counterparts, and so forth—Hegseth has no apparent qualifications whatever.
Even some MAGA Republicans see the merits of having someone with at least a bit of political acumen and organizational talent run an enterprise as large, complex, and vital as the Defense Department. It would take four Republican senators to reject his nomination. Some on Capitol Hill think four could be rallied to vote their conscience. If not, and if Hegseth is sworn in, others doubt he would last more than six months on the job. The Pentagon bureaucracy is deeply entrenched; it can wear out far more agile players than Hegseth.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pete-hegseth-tulsi-gabbard-bananas-225320901.html
