How Right Wingers Rushed to DEI Hire Pete Hegseth [View all]
Pete Hegseth is wildly unqualified to run DOD. He described yesterday the most people he had ever supervised was 100. The non-profit budgets that went broke under his stewardship were in the $10 million range. He has never supervised an audit yet claims he’ll be the guy who finally ensures the Pentagon passes one.
Roger Wicker seemed certain that Hegseth wasn’t man enough to withstand a second round of questioning — a concession that Hegseth is weaker than Hillary Clinton, I guess, since she once sat for 11 hours of questioning.
As such a manifestly unqualified candidate, his increasingly certain confirmation to be Defense Secretary is the quintessential DEI hire, someone hired for his culture and identity rather than his qualifications. The hiring of someone for who he is and not any qualifications he might have is precisely what right wingers have been leading jihads against for years. And yet the entire MAGA world is rushing headlong to install a guy with no qualifications to run DOD.
To be sure, Hegseth is qualified for a few things Trump wants from him. He made it clear yesterday he’ll implement unlawful orders from Trump, including to use the military to support Trump’s mass deportations or to shoot protestors. And he’ll defend those service members who implement those unlawful orders loudly and shamelessly. That’s what Trump saw Hegseth doing on Fox News. That’s why he got hired.
The how of all this — which Rebecca Traitster laid out here — matters.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/01/15/how-right-wingers-rushed-to-dei-hire-pete-hegseth/
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