President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense, the former president announced Tuesday evening.
Hegseth, 44, is an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He holds an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard.
“I am honored to announce that I have nominated Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense in my Cabinet,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening. “Pete has spent his entire life as a warrior for the troops and for the country. Pete is tough, smart and a staunch supporter of America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are at current: our army will be great again, and America will never go back.
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Hegseth joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014 and became co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekends.”
He is the author of the recent book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” a New York Times bestseller, in which he denounces what he calls “distorted, woke politics and caustics of our country. current military. »
He previously headed Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.
In 2012, Hegseth ran for Senate as a Republican in his home state of Minnesota, but withdrew from the race following the state convention. Kurt Bills, a state representative, won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election to Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Hegseth has “excellent experience as a junior officer but lacks the high-level national security experience that secretaries need,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. , to the Associated Press, adding that lack of experience could make it more difficult for Hegseth to cope Senate confirmation.
Asked about the choice Tuesday night, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told CBS News that Hegseth “is going to be a very strong secretary.”
But the initial reactions of other Republican senators varied.
Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was asked what he thought and he replied: “I should think about it.” »
Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina called the choice “interesting,” while Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said he didn’t have “a sense of his past.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was informed of the selection by a reporter and responded, “Wow.” When asked if it was a good choice, she replied: “I’m just surprised. I’m not going to say if it’s good, bad or indifferent. I’m just surprised because the names I “I heard for the position of Secretary of Defense and did not include it.”
As for whether it would be difficult to confirm, Mukowski said, “I don’t know.”
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