A former aide to President-elect Donald Trump said that Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was nominated for secretary of defense this week, would get “outmaneuvered” by top leaders at the Pentagon.
Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin described Hegseth, an Army National Guard combat veteran, as “a nice guy,” adding that she was “grateful for his service.”
“But this is not a person who’s prepared to lead a 3 million person workforce at the Pentagon,” Griffin said on CNN‘s Anderson Cooper 360. “And I would just say this: Donald Trump does have a mandate. He was elected … but if he’s trying to actually ruffle feathers and get some change at the Pentagon, you don’t send someone in who’s never stepped foot in the Pentagon, never worked there.”
Griffin, who also served as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson in 2019, added that Hegseth would be “outmaneuvered by top brass” and that “the joint chiefs are going to run the place. And it’s just—this is not a qualified person for this role.”
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Trump tapped Hegseth for defense secretary on Tuesday, describing the cable news host 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,” the statement said.
Hegseth, 44, served in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving the National Guard in 2021 after he was labeled an “extremist,” he said, according to Reuters. Hegseth added that the Army did not want him, and he later wrote in his book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, that the feeling was “mutual” and that he no longer wanted “this Army.”
The Fox News host, who has no leadership experience in Washington, D.C., or in the military, also criticized “woke s—” in the military in an interview on The Shawn Ryan Show last week and laid out his plan to clean house at the Pentagon.
“Well, first of all, you gotta fire—you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs and obviously, you’re going to bring in a new secretary of defense,” he said. “By any general that was involved—general, admiral, whatever, that was involved—in any of the [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] woke s— has got to go.”
Hegseth is among Trump’s more controversial Cabinet picks. On Wednesday, the president-elect rattled congressional lawmakers when he tapped former Hawaii U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and now-former Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general (Gaetz resigned from his position, effective immediately, shortly after being nominated).