Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, has said that he believes women should not serve in combat and that he wants to see the military purged of “woke” officials who support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Hegseth, 44, a Fox News host, has an extensive history of eyebrow-raising commentary, especially when it comes to military matters he’d oversee should he be confirmed to join Trump’s second Cabinet and become sixth in line to the presidency.
Hegseth has long maintained a close relationship with Trump. The pair have frequently appeared together in photographs on social media and on Fox’s airwaves. Hegseth started at Fox News in 2014 as an on-air pundit, working his way up to co-hosting the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends,” the network’s flagship morning show.
Trump described Hegseth on Tuesday evening as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First.”
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” he said.
Neither Fox News nor Trump’s transition team immediately responded to requests for comment about Hegseth’s on-air remarks about the military. Hegseth was an Army National Guard infantry officer, serving tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Hegseth has already given clues about how he’d like to remake the Defense Department, the largest and oldest U.S. government agency, with a budget of about $850 billion. Appearing last week on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast, Hegseth said that in Trump’s second term, “any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI, woke s–t has got to go.”
The first order of business, he said, would be to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who he said has pushed a “woke” agenda.
He also declared that female soldiers should not be allowed to fight on the front lines.
“I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said on the podcast. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
The Pentagon first opened all combat roles to women in 2015, a historic policy shift meant to reflect the changing attitudes of gender-based barriers within the military. Women are more than 17% of the military’s active duty force, according to the Defense Department, and they have proven themselves in training, excelled as fighter pilots in overseas combat and broken ground in top roles throughout the armed forces.
Pentagon officials do not expect the next administration will change the policy and restrict women from serving in combat, but they are concerned that this could have a negative effect on women wanting to serve or those who are currently in uniform.
“At a time when recruiting continues to be a challenge this will have a chilling effect on women wanting to join,” one defense official said, in part because they will see that “the most senior civilian in the Pentagon does not value their service.”
