Is this a joke?
President-elect Donald Trump chose Pete Hegseth, who is a combat veteran and co-host on the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends,” to be his defense secretary.
Hegseth has no defense experience—aside from having lots of opinions. He has no government experience and no experience dealing with the Pentagon bureaucracy. He's never run anything bigger than a broom closet. Even at Fox he's only junior varsity, co-hosting the weekend edition of Fox & Friends.
On the other hand, he sure looks like a cabinet secretary. And he agrees with Donald Trump a lot. I suppose that might be good enough for a press secretary, but heading up the biggest, most complex organization in the federal government? You'd think that even the most servile Republican senators might think twice before letting a Fox talking head run the Defense Department. It's considered a pretty important job in some circles.
He's not the guy at the end of the bar for sure. He might even own the bar, but man his ego must be blinding. We'll see.
He's the guy with the bar ... the bar of soap, that is, and he wants to sell it to you! He's going to make the army the best-smelling army ever.
https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1856497237263552816
Hard to believe that's for real, but with a boss like Trump he'll fit right in. Grifters one and all.
He's a modern-day Milo Minderbinder, soon to be in charge.
Great. You just confirmed my worst fears about him. If the dems can't win the midterms we are skee rood! Shoot by that time it may already be too late.
Funny thing about him hawking that soap-- he's also been widely quoted about never washing, said he doesn't believe germs really exist because he can't see them.
I've never heard his voice but the vibe I'm getting is like Colonel Flagg from MASH, or Gordon Liddy making his prison entrance, or something like that. Seems like just the right type for a job that involves running an enormous bureaucracy, rubbing shoulders with heads of other enormous bureaucracies, and being a part-time diplomat. /s
It looks as if people who hate the military (including long hair 60s rebels) love this pick.
It's all about appearances and loyalty to Trump. Those are the only two qualifications that matter. Competence is irrelevant.
Classic Trumpist F-U to the military. Oppose me will you on shooting civilian protesters? Just for that, I'm making you obey a complete moron for the next four years.
He has one job, which is to allow the US military to play an active role in Trump's mass explulsion program. He will agree that illegal immigrants constitute an "invading force" and there'll be none of that posse comitatus nonsense.
Agreed. I think trump knows that he will need the military to enact his deportation promise and blue state governors will not provide their national guard or state police. This was his number one reelection promise and his base is counting on him to fulfill it in 2025
I think that follow-through on a lot of TFG’s promises will depend on whether he thinks there’s some way he could run for a third term. If he realizes that’s out of the question, he has no incentive to do what his base expects; he’ll never need their votes, so screw ’em. That’s the case whether he thinks he’ll be a private citizen again, or President-for-Life, by January 2029.
I don't believe that the possibility that he will stop being preseident sometimes appears anywhere in Trump's thinking or feeling.
He effectively already regards himself as president-for-life, and will take steps to make it possible in 2029 if he is healthy enough. Hegseth's nomination is one of these steps.
I don't think that obvious. I think his main job would be to block promotion of, and remove, "disloyal" generals and promote "loyal" ones.
Will be interesting to see whether this guy and other Trump appointees get eaten alive by lobbyists, bureaucrats, our adversaries, our allies, or Trump. But they will surely get eaten alive.
He did too run something bigger than a broom closet - a small PAC where he hired his brother for over $100K a year and spent a quarter of the yearly budget on a Christmas party and only half the budget on candidates - before it folded.
Miller and Homan appear to be Trump's Himmler and Eichmann, respectively, but all the other cabinet picks, and especially this War Dept. Secretary, are just hacks like Trump. They can, and will do a lot of harm, but most of these picks will be unable to institute the kind of change to governance everyone fears from a fascist dictator.
IMO the chaos is the point, in areas (departments and agencies) that trump doesn't personally care about, and in some he does care about.
RFK, for example, can do incalculable damage to public health both immediately and over however long it might take to rebuild the knowledge and capacity he'll destroy. He might leave us with no ability to deal with the next pandemic, whatever/whenever it is, or even deal with the aftermaths of hurricanes and floods that destroy regional infrastructure and breed disease.
Between that and whatever numbskull ends up running FEMA, these garbage trump appointments can easily make us into Haiti when it comes to responding to this kind of stuff. (And no aspersions on Haiti, which has been both incredibly poor and incredibly looted for generations. We won't have that excuse.)
Historically, the end result of chaos and enshittification has often been strongman rule and dictatorship. I wish I could agree with you, but there isn't necessarily just one path to a fashy future.