US President-elect Donald Trump has named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, author and military veteran, as his pick for defence secretary. Hegseth, 44, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, will be responsible for the world's most powerful military in his first political role.
Announcing his choice on Tuesday, Trump described him as "tough, smart and a true believer in America First".
The news came on the same day Trump announced another political newcomer, billionaire Elon Musk, would take a government cost-cutting role.
Trump's administration is taking shape after his win in last week's presidential election. Hegseth was one of a flurry of security appointments that also included Trump's pick of John Ratcliffe to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
If confirmed for his role by the US Senate, Hegseth will arrive at the Pentagon with decisions to make on issues such as military assistance for Israel during its campaign in Gaza, and on support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's invasion.
Trump wants the US to disentangle itself from foreign conflicts generally. During the election campaign, he criticised the Biden administration's expenditure to support Kyiv.
Also on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he wanted South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to play a significant role as homeland security secretary. Another military veteran, Michael Waltz, was chosen by Trump as national security adviser - meaning he will advise the president on foreign threats.
Senator Marco Rubio - who shares Waltz's hawkish views on China - is expected to be Trump's future secretary of state, sources have told the BBC's US partner, CBS News. But the pick is not yet confirmed.
Republicans have won back control of the Senate, the upper chamber of Congress, and are inching towards a majority in the House, the lower chamber, as vote-counting continues.
Some of the government appointments - including Hegseth's - require a vote of approval by senators, although Trump, also a Republican, has demanded that the next leader of the US Senate let him bypass this process. He can give out other jobs directly.
Senate Republicans are due to vote on a new leader on Wednesday - the day that Trump is also expected to visit the outgoing president, Joe Biden, at the White House as part of the traditional transfer of power.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ivy League graduate Hegseth has in recent years worked as a conservative commentator. He lives with his wife and seven children in Tennessee.
He has hosted programmes on Fox News, using his platform to draw attention to military and veterans' issues. He had his last day at Fox on Tuesday.
He is reported by US media to have successfully lobbied Trump during his first presidency to pardon servicemen accused of war crimes.
In his statement announcing Hegseth as his pick for defence secretary on Tuesday, Trump highlighted the former soldier's education at Princeton and Harvard universities, and his military experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice - our military will be great again, and America will never back down," Trump wrote in a post.
The president-elect also drew attention to Hegseth's work as a published author. He said the book The War on Warrior "reveals the leftwing betrayal of our warriors, and how we must return our military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence".
Hegseth has been an outspoken opponent of what he has referred to as "woke" policies within the US military and its leadership.
"The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is our diversity is our strength," Hegseth said on a podcast this month.
One of his tasks as defence secretary could be to act on Trump's campaign promises to get rid of US generals who he accuses of pursuing progressive policies in the force.
Before his selection by Trump, Hegseth was asked on the same podcast about what changes he would make in the military. He referred to "first of all" firing the US' top military officer, Gen Charles "CQ" Brown Jr, saying people involved in diversity, equality or inclusion policies had "got to go".
"Either you're in for war fighting and that's it, that's the only litmus test we care about," Hegseth told the Shawn Ryan Show, in an episode released last week.
Gen Brown is a former fighter pilot with command experience in the Pacific and Middle East, and was appointed into the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff role by President Joe Biden last year.
On the same podcast, Hegseth also said "whatever" combat standards were in 1995, "let's just make those the standards".
Hegseth's pick has been welcomed by a number of prominent Republican figures, but other reactions have been more varied.
North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told Associated Press the choice was "interesting", and Senator Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama, said he would "have to think" about what he thought of the appointment.
Incoming national security advisor Waltz said Hegseth "has the grit" to make "real reform" happen at the Pentagon. Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the job "should not be an entry-level position".
Posting on X, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the appointment of Hegseth as defence secretary would "make us less safe and must be rejected".
"A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense," she added. "I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our servicemembers."
Two years ago, Pete Hegseth relocated his family from New Jersey, near Fox News headquarters, to a small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee. The red state move was on-brand for the “Fox & Friends” co-host, who takes his kids shooting, posts pictures wearing anti-President Biden slogans, and emphasizes his Christian faith.
Now Hegseth, his wife and their seven children may have to relocate again, this time to Washington, DC. On Tuesday evening, President-elect Donald Trump said Hegseth is his pick for Defense Secretary – a decision that shocked even some of his friends at Fox.
Hegseth is a decorated Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But nothing in his biography suggests experience leading large organizations.
As one of his fellow Fox hosts said Tuesday night, in a flabbergasted tone, “You’re telling me Pete is going to oversee two million employees?”
The Department of Defense has closer to three million employees, which only serves to underscore the point. But Hegseth has something else that Trump values: television star-power.
Hegseth, who has been a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” for the better part of a decade, has used the show to highlight his views about the US military. Hegseth has railed against the Pentagon’s adoption of “social justice” messages and argued that “woke” policies have hurt military recruitment. He castigated the “warped, woke and caustic policies of our current military” in a bestselling book earlier this year. When Trump said in a Fox interview that “you can’t have ‘woke’ military,” Hegseth said, “he’s exactly right.”
“The Pentagon likes to say ‘our diversity is our strength.’ What a bunch of garbage. In the military our diversity is not our strength, our unity is our strength,” he said on Fox.
Hegseth was initially hired as a contributor in 2014 by the right-wing network’s boss at the time, Roger Ailes, and he was promoted to a regular hosting role in the months after Ailes was forced out in a sexual harassment scandal.
Inside Fox, staffers buzzed about Hegseth’s own scandal. Multiple sources said that he cheated on his second wife, Samantha, with Jennifer Rauchet, a producer of Fox’s morning show. In an interview for my 2020 book “Hoax,” an executive confirmed the affair and said Rauchet showed favoritism toward Hegseth. “She kept putting Pete on TV,” the executive said.
Hegseth and Rauchet disclosed their relationship to Fox management when Rauchet was pregnant (and Hegseth was still married). Rauchet was moved to a different Fox show so that the couple wouldn’t be working together anymore.
In 2019, when their daughter turned two, Hegseth and Rauchet tied the knot at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey. Family members wore Trump-inspired hats that said “MAKE WEDDINGS GREAT AGAIN.”
Hegseth and Rauchet each have three children from earlier marriages. Last year, he told the publication Nashville Christian Family that they “are a family brought together by the grace of God. There are no ‘steps’ or ‘halves’ in the Hegseth clan.”
Hegseth’s worldview was shaped by the wars of the George W. Bush era. As a student at Princeton University in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Hegseth wrote a letter to the school paper in defense of military action when a fellow student urged restraint.
After graduating from college, Hegseth went to work at Bear Stearns, the ill-fated investment bank. He deployed to Guantanamo Bay with the New Jersey Army National Guard. He once told an interviewer that he watched news coverage of the Iraq war and felt “I need to find a way to be a part of this,” so he pulled a “bureaucratic hat trick” and moved from the National Guard to an active-duty role.
After returning home from Iraq in 2006, Hegseth wrote that more troops were urgently needed. “America is fighting with a hand tied behind its back,” he wrote.
In between deployments, Hegseth ran a veteran’s advocacy nonprofit group and studied at Harvard University. In 2012 he briefly ran against Amy Klobuchar for the US Senate seat in Minnesota. He got “smoked,” by his own admission. And it might have been the best thing that ever happened to him, because it steered him toward Fox. After a brief stint as a host on TheBlaze, Glenn Beck’s streaming platform, Hegseth signed with Fox.
When his predecessor on the weekend morning show, Tucker Carlson, was promoted to prime time, “they just threw me in and said, do you want to try guest-hosting, and it must have gone alright,” Hegseth told podcast host Jack Carr.
In October 2017, Trump invited Hegseth and Rauchet to dinner at the White House – a very vivid demonstration that Trump was a loyal Fox viewer and schmoozer.
Of course, Trump’s own tweets proved that he was glued to the TV. And Hegseth catered to his viewer-in-chief. I reported in “Hoax” that Hegseth would sometimes peek at his phone during commercial breaks, looking to see if Trump had picked up on something he’d said on air. His co-hosts felt like he was putting on a show specifically for Trump.
In early 2018, Hegseth was reportedly under consideration to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, but it did not come to pass. “When you don’t get the VA job, and your afternoon opens up…” he wrote on Twitter with a photo of a new tattoo of an American flag and assault rifle. He also has the words “We The People” and “Deus Vult” (Latin for “God wills it”) tattooed on his right arm.
In the years thereafter, Hegseth focused on his Fox platform, and fully transformed from a veteran’s nonprofit leader into a telegenic culture-warrior. Fox executives saw him as a homegrown star of sorts, and kept giving him more airtime accordingly, recognizing that the right-wing network’s viewers connected with his military service and pro-Trump crusade.
In 2019, he began hosting a homespun awards show for the network, the “Patriot Awards,” and last year the event was held in Nashville.
Hegseth regularly filled in on other Fox shows and co-hosted the network’s annual New Year’s Eve countdown telecast for several years. He also hosted an election night special for the Fox Nation streaming service from Nashville last week. When Fox projected Trump to be president-elect, Hegseth donned a red hat and pumped his fist in the air.
He regularly commuted from Tennessee to New York to host weekend editions of “Fox & Friends” and was on the air as recently as Monday to commemorate Veterans Day. His relationship with the network suddenly ended on Tuesday after Trump made the Defense Secretary announcement.
Hegseth, however, may face some opposition in the coming weeks, as his selection caught senators and other officials off guard.
Trump’s announcement also highlighted Hegseth’s status as an author. Hegseth wrote “Modern Warriors” in 2020 and “War on Warriors” earlier this year, both for Fox’s book imprint.
In a statement Tuesday night, Fox said Hegseth’s “insights and analysis especially about the military resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success that it is today. We are extremely proud of his work at FOX News Media and wish him the best of luck in Washington.”
In the podcast interview with Carr, Hegseth said his work ethic has set him apart over the years. He alluded to his time playing basketball for Princeton and, more recently, running a summer basketball camp.
“I will stay up late enough to get it all done,” he said. “I will prepare for this mission more than anybody else is prepared for an air assault. I will – you just do the work. Build the plan, work the plan.”
