With his jawline firm and his hair coiffed, Pete Hegseth was a good fit as a Fox News personality.
As the defense secretary – or Secretary of War, as his boss, Donald Trump would have it – he’s disastrous.
His most consequential test, America’s misguided war with Iran, has proven that beyond legitimate argument.
But for those who watched him for years as a rightwing cable news figure, it’s not exactly surprising.
“Hegseth’s distinguishing characteristic on Fox was his fervent support for American service members who had been accused of war crimes,” recalled Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, whose job it is to track the relationship between rightwing media and the Trump-led Maga world.
Trump, who watches Fox as if it’s his primary job, liked what he saw in Hegseth. And so, what Gertz calls “a B-level demogogue” jumped from co-host of the weekend Fox & Friends talkshow to the person sixth in line for the US presidency.
In his first term, Trump’s excesses were held back somewhat by qualified Pentagon leaders like James Mattis and Mark Esper.
But when he was elected a second time, Trump didn’t want those annoying restraints any more. Mattis and Esper, along with Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, ended up publicly warning the nation that Trump was thoroughly unfit for the presidency. Kelly – a former four-star Marine Corps general – even agreed that Trump fit the general definition of a fascist.
Hegseth, by contrast, exudes loyalty.
Ever since his confirmation early last year, we have been seeing the results, but never more so than in recent weeks.
A recent Guardian editorial offered this scathing description: “Glorying repulsively in his capacity to order death and destruction from the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth, an Evangelical Christian, has presented Operation Epic Fury as a 21st-century crusade to ‘break the teeth of the ungodly’.”
Hegseth’s public prayers for violence without mercy even earned a rare (if indirect) rebuke from Pope Leo.
Perhaps most dangerous of all, Hegseth reportedly lies about military realities – including to the president.
“Pete is not speaking truth to the president. As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information,” one administration official told the Washington Post.
Hegseth claimed at a news conference last month that Iran’s missile and drone programs were being “overwhelmingly destroyed”. But more trustworthy sources (like a US intelligence assessment reported by CNN) say otherwise.
He also regularly misleads citizens, through his preening news conferences and public statements.
Trump’s recent unhinged threat to eradicate “a whole civilization” was a terrific negotiating tactic, Hegseth tried to tell reporters this week.
“That type of threat is what brought them to the place where they effectively said: ‘OK, we want to cut this deal,’” he said.
Problem is, it’s not true. Quite the opposite.
“The Iranians were already negotiating with Trump before the war started,” wrote Greg Sargent in the New Republic. “Trump largely sabotaged those negotiations, because he was talked into believing the war would be easy and deliver a quick burst of glory.”
There’s nothing in Hegseth’s background to suggest he could effectively oversee America’s huge military operation with its almost 3 million employees and its trillion-dollar budget – especially in wartime.
He was an infantry officer in the army national guard, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but that hardly measures up to the usual credentials of the Pentagon’s top leader.
Senator Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat, a retired Navy captain who flew dozens of combat missions during the 1991 Gulf War before becoming an astronaut, has called him “totally unqualified”.
Hegseth’s lack of high-level military experience added to the cringe factor when he ordered top military officials to gather at Quantico, Virginia, last fall. He proceeded to lecture them, as they sat in stony silence, on fitness (no more “fat generals”) and supposed wokeness in the military.
His performance, which included promoting his own book, was widely regarded as not only inappropriately partisan but also crude.
“To our enemies, FAFO,” he proclaimed, using an expression that means “fuck around and find out.”
Then there’s his unceasing effort to control the Pentagon’s image, as well as his own. Despite – or maybe because of – his own background as a media figure at Fox, Hegseth has proved a fierce enemy of the legitimate press.
His draconian rules for repressing reporters’ access directly oppose first amendment principles and have been successfully challenged in court.
A few weeks ago, his staff even temporarily barred access to wartime news briefings after photographers filed images that showed him at what they considered unflattering angles. To put it mildly, this is not a serious military leader.
“We are seeing what happens when someone with a Fox News skillset is put in a position of massive power and influence,” Gertz told me.
With his bloodthirsty utterances, his fierce loyalty to Trump and his appalling inability to manage this huge moment in world history, Hegseth is every bit the disaster that anybody sensible could have seen coming.
But, hey, at least every hair is in place.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
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