Meet Pete Hegseth: The ‘recovering neocon’ and Pentagon critic who’s been tapped for Defense secretary

President-elect Donald Trump sent shock waves through the national security establishment when he nominated Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary.

The plain-speaking former Army National Guard officer would set himself apart from other Defense secretaries with his prolific record of criticism of the institution he has been tapped to run. A culture warrior, on-air commentator and author, the paper trail of his publicly shared views will be on full display in his confirmation hearing.  

‘I’ve been a recovering neocon for six years now,’ Hegseth, a former Fox News host, told the ‘Shawn Ryan Show’ podcast. 

He said he was a huge proponent of the Iraq War ‘at the time,’ but ‘in retrospect, absolutely not.’

‘The hubris of the Pentagon is they want to now tell other countries how to do counterinsurgency based on what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trust that our political leaders and our generals would have our best interests in mind is totally broken,’ he explained. ‘At the same time. I’m fearful of what happens when the institution gets abandoned.’

In a past life, Hegseth ran Vets for Freedom, a pro-Iraq War advocacy group. He then pivoted and became CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a restraint-minded advocacy group that was heavily focused on reforming the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. 

He has not served any senior-level leadership roles at the Defense Department – leaving some hawks skeptical that he has the experience to lead the U.S.’s largest government agency and a fighting force of more than 1.3 million active duty troops. 

‘He is the least well-prepared secretary to be nominated,’ said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. 

‘He has superb military credentials as a junior officer, excellent academic credentials in Harvard, but he has no eye-level national security experience. He has no experience running a large organization, no experience working with Congress, and I mean, a good but very short relationship with the president.’

Prior to his current role, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was head of U.S. Central Command, vice chief of staff of the Army and commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. After retiring from the armed services, he joined the board of Raytheon. 

Hegseth, a 44-year-old infantry officer in the Minnesota National Guard, served as the platoon leader at Guantanamo Bay. He also led a platoon in Baghdad and later served as a civil-military operations officer in Samarra. 

‘Something that a lot of people will point to as a weakness is he’s young,’ said Steve Bucci, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration. ‘He did serve very effectively as a junior officer and a combat leader, but you know, he hasn’t been part of the institutionalized process going up to be general officer and all the staff positions in between.’ 

‘That will free him to think outside the box,’ Bucci mused. ‘Austin, a four-star, frankly, was not known for new ideas.’ 

‘It’ll drive a lot of people crazy.’ 

Hegseth has made it clear he will work to fight ‘woke’ programs in the Pentagon that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. He has also spoken out against women in combat roles. 

‘I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,’ Hegseth said on the ‘Shawn Ryan Show’ podcast. ‘It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.’

Additionally, in 2019, he successfully lobbied Trump to pardon three service members convicted or accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Trump may have looked ahead to sparing himself the headache this role caused him during his first administration – only Jim Mattis and Mark Esper lasted more than a year, three others served in an acting capacity. 

Hegseth has also called for the firing of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown. Brown has become a target of conservatives who claim he advances a ‘woke’ agenda, and Hegseth has suggested Brown, who is Black, is a DEI hire. 

‘That would be a huge problem,’ Cancian predicted. ‘He’s got a very strong military record and, you know, it would put [Hegseth] at war with the military.’

Democrats are expected to hammer him for lack of experience and his background as a co-host of ‘Fox and Friends.’

‘Hegseth is not remotely qualified to be Secretary of Defense,’ Rep. Jason Crow, a national-security-minded Colorado Democrat wrote on X. ‘The SecDef makes life-and-death decisions daily that impact our 2 million troops around the globe. This is not an entry-level job for a TV commentator.’

Hegseth would likely be the first-ever Defense secretary nominee previously barred from a presidential inauguration. Hegseth told Ryan he volunteered in his National Guard capacity to work at President Biden’s inauguration in 2020. However, he said he was one of a number of National Guard members told to ‘stand down.’ 

‘I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington D.C. and my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration.’

‘My commander called me a day before, tepidly, and was like, Major, you can just stand down. We don’t need you, we’re good. I’m like, what do you mean? Everybody’s there. He said like, no, no ,no…he couldn’t tell me.’

Hegseth said the tattoo is a Jerusalem cross rather than an extremist symbol. It was a popular symbol used during the Crusades. 

‘Twenty years in the military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out,’ Hegseth wrote in his book of the incident.