U.S. soldiers at an American forward operating base in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to lead the Pentagon, Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has forcefully argued that steps to incorporate women and transgender personnel across the military are eroding U.S. security and that Islam is a violent force threatening to overtake America and should be countered by a new “crusade,” his past writings and commentary reveal.
Such views will come under scrutiny as lawmakers examine his record ahead of his Senate confirmation process to become defense secretary, a position in which he would oversee more than 3 million military and civilian personnel, an immense global network of bases, and the United States’ massive nuclear arsenal. As Pentagon chief, he would lead one of the nation’s most diverse institutions, comprising men and women from a range of races, ethnicities, birthplaces and religions.
Hegseth did not respond to requests for comment. As of Thursday evening, he has made no public statements since Trump announced his nomination.
Trump’s choice of the telegenic Hegseth, 44, signals the incoming administration’s intent to elevate long-standing attacks by the president-elect and his allies on what they describe “wokeism” in the military, which they blame for recruiting woes, poor morale and America’s battlefield failures. It also underscores the possibility that a second Trump presidency will again herald policies, including the then-president’s travel ban, that many American Muslims viewed as hostile to their faith.
Hegseth’s recent writings include scathing critiques of steps taken over the past decade to eliminate barriers for female service members, support the service and medical care of transgender troops, and call attention to discrimination in the ranks, offering little proof for his conclusion that they weaken the military. Democrats have argued that to retain a strong, vibrant force, the military must reflect the nation at large and provide opportunities for advancement regardless of troops’ race, gender and sexual orientation.
In his latest book, published this summer ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Hegseth called on America’s next commander in chief to shift the military’s focus — beginning by reverting the Department of Defense to its pre-1947 name, the Department of War.
“The problem is that a more empathetic and effeminate military isn’t a more efficient one‚” he wrote in “The War on Warriors.” He added: “It’s a more inefficient one. That puts everyone at risk. Which, again, is a really bad thing in the business of killing.”
In another passage, Hegseth decries what he says is liberals’ rejection of “simple realities” affecting the military, including what he identifies as greater male strength and aggressiveness. While he praises women’s historical service in noncombat roles, he pans the Pentagon’s 2015 decision, under then-President Barack Obama, to allow women to serve in all combat roles.
In his book, Hegseth cites biological differences between men and women, including greater muscle mass among men, which he said made women less apt for the demands of combat. “Men are, gasp, biologically stronger, faster and bigger. Dare I say, physically superior,” he wrote.
He also rejected arguments put forward by Pentagon leaders when they announced the combat integration decision, which was controversial within the military and opposed by some uniformed leaders: that women deserved the opportunity to serve in any unit if they could meet its standards. Rather, Hegseth said, the move would result in high casualties should those units see combat.
“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”
In another suggestion that President Joe Biden’s focus on diversifying the military’s senior leadership would erode the armed forces’ overall effectiveness, Hegseth singles out Adm. Lisa Franchetti, whom Biden selected in 2023 to become the Navy’s first female chief of staff, overruling a recommendation from his Pentagon chief who favored a male officer.
“If naval operations suffer, at least we can hold our heads high,” Hegseth writes.
In his 2024 book, Hegseth also calls out Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he accuses of supporting lowered readiness standards as Air Force chief of staff. He cites a memo that Brown, who is African American, signed in that role seeking to increase diversity among officer candidates, which Hegseth said was “racist” and “illegal.” In a podcast last week, Hegseth urged Trump to fire Brown and other officers involved in diversity initiatives.
“The tragedy of these emotionally stunted, angry, race-based people is that they have an ax to grind — and will grind it,” he wrote in a section on Brown. “Take it to the racist bank: black troops, at all levels, will be promoted simply based on their race. Some will be qualified; some will not be.”
While Hegseth says he had no problem with the 2010 decision to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allowed gay troops to serve openly, he came to see the decision as just one waypoint on the road to what he sees as a fully “woke” military.
Hegseth’s newest book also takes aim at policies accommodating transgender service members, an issue that has been a subject of dispute under Democratic and Republican administrations. In 2021, shortly after taking office, Biden reversed Trump-era policies making it harder for transgender personnel to serve in the military.
In his book, Hegseth suggests medical care for transgender troops is an extravagance and that focusing on policies affecting a small number of personnel is a distraction from the military’s core mission, citing what he calls “‘trans’ lunacy.”
“Men who are pretending to be women, or vice versa, are a distraction,” he wrote. “It might be your thing, but it’s weird and does not add substantive value to anyone.”
Hegseth’s writings have also voiced a belief that liberals are highlighting “differences rather than forging a shared identity.” If left alone, he contends, troops serving in uniform would get along just fine.
“Strong, skilled, dedicated men come in all shapes, sizes and colors,” he wrote. “Men don’t give a s--- what your skin color is, as long as you get the job done.”
Hegseth objects especially to efforts by the Biden administration to address a perceived problem with domestic extremism in the ranks after a mob of Trump’s supporters, including a group of military veterans, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent, failed bid to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. He cites a one-day “stand-down” ordered in the wake of the attack to discuss the issue of extremism within the ranks.
“These performative self-flagellations signal to average men and women in the military that leaders care more about media attention than actual problems and people,” he writes. “Worse, by peddling the lie of racism in the military — which they knowingly did — they sully the reputation of an institution they purport to lead.”
Earlier writings from publications Hegseth was involved with during his college days suggest he held even more raw social views. As a student at Princeton, where he obtained a degree in 2003, Hegseth served as publisher of the campus conservative journal, the Princeton Tory.
In the April 2002 issue, the publication expressed concern, in an unsigned essay called “The Rant,” the momentum gaining toward legalization of same-sex marriage.
“Homosexuals themselves should not be demonized; however, their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status,” the publication wrote. In an another issue, an unsigned essay called homosexuality “abnormal and immoral.”
Hegseth later attempted to distance himself from such views. In 2012, during a failed bid for a Minnesota Senate seat, he said the “phraseology or terms or language … was maybe too sharp,” according to a Politico story from the time.
Some of Hegseth’s writing also appears to echo the virulent rhetoric of white nationalists and Great Replacement theorists, taking particular aim at Islam. During Trump’s campaign to return to office, his team courted Muslim voters, many of whom were angry with the Biden administration over its handling of the war in Gaza.
In his 2020 book “American Crusade,” Hegseth fulminates against Muslim birth rates and what he characterizes as the infiltration of American communities by refugees and migrants whom he accuses of leeching off government support. He writes that Islam “is not a religion of peace, and it never has been” and claims that “all modern Muslim countries are either formal or de facto no-go zones for practicing Christians and Jews.”
Islam, he writes, has been “almost entirely captured and leveraged by Islamists.” The book also makes the unsubstantiated claim that Islamists account for 25 percent of the global Muslim population with a mission to force the rest of the world to submit or be killed.
Supported by open-borders leftists and “squish” Republicans, he says, Islamists plan to “conquer” Europe and America demographically, culturally and politically, allying with secularism to tear down “our nation’s Judeo-Christian institutions.”
They will “seed the West with as many Muslims as possible” and then, “thanks to their very high birth rates relative to native populations and their strategically insular culture — the sons and daughters of those migrants and refugees multiply in greater numbers than do native citizens.”
Looking toward Europe, Hegseth points in “American Crusade” to elected Muslim officials in the United Kingdom and the rise in the European Muslim population over the past three decades to argue that the United States will end up with a similar future absent an intervention.
Though insulated by distance and its “traditional Christian fabric,” the United States, Hegseth writes, is under a cultural invasion “not just at our shore, it’s in your community and schools.” In November 2019, his book states, 26 Muslim candidates won elected office in the country, and “Muhammad is now a top ten boys’ name in America.”
“Our present moment is much like the 11th Century. We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he writes. “Arm yourself — metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”
Aaron Schaffer and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
