Trump taps Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defence secretary, John Ratcliffe to lead CIA
Donald Trump’s team is moving quickly to fill key roles for the incoming administration
US President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he is nominating Fox News host and US Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as defence secretary, as he aims to put a China hawk in charge of the country’s military.
Hegseth deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012 before joining Fox News. He most recently published a book called The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, in which he criticises the Pentagon for “following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness”.
Promoting the book in an interview last week, Hegseth said “China’s building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America” and that the US is “always a decade behind and fighting the last war”.
Hegseth, 44, has been a contributor with the network since 2014 and is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend. With Trump making regular appearances on the show, the two developed a rapport.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”
