Shaking up the Pentagon? A look at Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host Trump picked as Defense secretary

WASHINGTON ? President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary breaks longstanding tradition of Pentagon chiefs with long careers in government, industry and the military.

That appears to be Trump’s aim: a Washington outsider who will shake up what he considers a hidebound institution that didn’t always do what he wanted in his first administration, according to military experts and current and former Defense officials. Hegseth has laid down markers on his agenda for running the Pentagon: firing generals who promote “woke” military policies, eliminating combat roles for women and loosening reins on troops conduct in combat.

Yet forcing abrupt change on the Pentagon, its 2.3 million troops and civilian workers, and a $900 billion annual budget has eluded former Defense secretaries with more experience.

“The secretary of Defense job is much more difficult than people realize,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor and expert on civilian-military relations. “There are management challenges with a budget that dwarfs the GDP of many countries and a payroll that eclipses all but the largest companies in the world.”

The Defense secretary also answers to a “board” of 535 members of Congress and the president, Feaver said. The Pentagon chief needs to stay abreast of developments in military technology and deal with inevitable foreign crises.

“There are strategy-policy challenges with adversaries doing their best to thwart your efforts,” Feaver said.

Trump said Hegseth is the right man for the job.

"Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country," Trump said in a statement. "Pete is 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."

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War on the 'woke' military

Hegseth said in a podcast interview last week that the Trump administration should sack anyone in the Pentagon involved in "woke" and "DEI," diversity, equity, and inclusion, policies.

"You've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs," he said. "Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s--- has got to go."

Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is Black, spoke about racism in the military and society after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Brown, then the Air Force chief of staff, had been appointed to that position by Trump. President Joe Biden nominated Brown to be the military’s top officer.

The issues Hegseth has raised, though high profile, don’t occupy much of the military’s time, resources or effort, according to a senior military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official pointed to policies on transgender troops and funding for reproductive health care. Trump had issued a ban on service for transgender troops; Biden rescinded it soon after taking office. Trump’s ban, after court challenges, had banned from service troops who had required gender-affirming care. The Palm Center, a think tank that focuses on issues involving LGBTQ+ troops, has estimated that there are about 14,000 transgender troops in the active-duty and a reserve force of 2 million.

Another target for conservatives is the Pentagon policy that allows for time off and travel expenses for reproductive health care, including abortion. It applies to troops and their dependents in states where it is not available. The Pentagon pays for abortion only when the mother's life is in danger or when pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Dig deeper: Culture wars: House Republicans attack Defense Department for 'woke' social policies

Women in combat

Hegseth has also said women should be eliminated from combat roles in the military.

“It hasn't made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” he said.

Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who served more than 25 years, disagrees.

“He's dead wrong,” she said.

Women in service roles, Manning said, are held to the same requirements as men. Replacing the around 17.5% of active duty servicemembers who are women, as of 2022, could require extreme measures, she said.

“I don't know where he'd get enough men to replace them all,” she said. “You'd have to bring back the draft, I expect.”

More: Military sexual assaults decline for first time in almost a decade, statistics show

War crime pardons

Hegseth is credited with directly conferring with Trump to push for the pardons of several servicemembers convicted of committing war crimes and murdering innocent citizens abroad.

After Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL, was convicted by military prosecutors of posing with the body of a teenager fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq, Hegseth lobbied hard from his desk at Fox News for Gallagher’s pardon. Gallagher was also accused and found not guilty of fatally stabbing the teenager and murdering two other Iraqi civilians.

Hegseth also pushed for Trump to pardon Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, sentenced to 19 years in prison for ordering soldiers to open fire on unarmed Afghan civilians, killing two, and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, charged with murdering a man suspected of making bombs in Afghanistan after his release was ordered.

After Trump held multiple direct calls with Hegseth, according to the Washington Post, he pardoned all three in 2019. He reversed Gallagher’s demotion and reinstated his pay and rank.

When Trump pardoned four Blackwater contractors convicted of massacring 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007, Hegseth said on Fox News, "God bless the president for having the courage, which a lot of other presidents wouldn’t do, to pardon those men."

Aid to Ukraine

Amid questions from the Biden administration about whether Trump will follow through on his statements about cutting aid to Ukraine, it is unclear if Hegseth would fall in line with Trump's Ukraine policy.

Dan Rice, president of the American University Kyiv and a former U.S. military officer and advisor to the Ukrainian military who said he is a friend of Hegseth's and has appeared with him on Fox many times, said Hegseth's comments on air are "a reflection of Fox News, not of the Trump administration."

"We will have to wait to see his positions," he said.

Shaking up the military

Implementing Pentagon reform has been difficult even for experienced hands. At 44, Hegseth is a year older than the youngest-ever Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld, however, had already served in Congress, directed the Office of Economic Opportunity and been White House Chief of Staff when he became Pentagon chief for the first time in 1975. Both had graduated from Princeton University, while Hegseth has a master’s from Harvard.Rumsfeld led the Defense Department a second time under President George W. Bush beginning in 2001. Rumsfeld vowed to make the department leaner and more agile. Then the 9/11 terror attacks struck and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq pushed the reform agenda aside.

“Hegseth has an elite university pedigree and served honorably in a combat setting,” said Feaver, of Duke University. “But beyond that he does not have the kind of experience one expects to see for this most difficult of Cabinet posts. His most impactful involvement in defense policy was convincing President Trump to interfere in the Gallagher case and eventually to pardon personnel guilty of war crimes."

Feaver noted that these kinds of positions are ''the sorts of stances an outside partisan activist might take. But the secretary of Defense is supposed to be the custodian of civilian control and, along with the chairman and the chiefs, help set the tone for military professionalism. That role is very different from the ones Hegseth has played thus far.”

Ultimately, though, trust may be the key ingredient for Hegseth achieving Trump's goals."Trump trusts him, trust is the basis of any relationship, and I think trust is a really big issue and need right now for Trump," Rice said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump picks Pete Hegseth, Fox News host, to lead Pentagon