Sullivan should take his own advice and 'Read the bio' of Trump's defense pick
Sen. Dan Sullivan instantly assumed that tough-talking Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old weekend co-host on Fox & Friends, is qualified to lead the Department of Defense because Donald Trump likes the way he looks and sounds on TV.
Rep. Mike Waltz as national security adviser and Hegseth as defense secretary will be a powerful combination, according to Sullivan.
“Read his bio,” Sullivan told the right-wing Washington Examiner about Hegseth. “Look, these guys are focused on lethality and peace through strength, and you know, going after our real adversaries. Read his bio, it’s going to be a good combo.”
It’s clear that Hegseth does not have the bio, the temperament, the skills or the experience to lead the largest department in the U.S. government, contrary to Sullivan’s assumptions.
There is no evidence that Hegseth is “focused on lethality and peace through strength” or any of the other cliches that roll off Sullivan’s tongue.
There is a mountain of evidence that Hegseth’s focus is whining about the Pentagon and fighting culture wars on TV. His main qualification is his penchant for praising Trump, while attacking Biden and Obama.
He presents himself as a victim, complains about anti-Christian bigotry, claims that whites face racial discrimination, charges that he was persecuted by the military because of his tattoos, and objects to women in combat. His adversaries are woke generals and politicians not named Trump.
Had he been vetted for the Trump cabinet, a 2017 incident in Monterey, California that led a woman to file a sexual assault complaint against Hegseth would have come to light sooner.
His attorney says he was drunk at the time and the woman was the aggressor. He also claimed the sex was consensual. Police reported bruises on the woman’s thigh.
She filed a complaint with the police and alleged she was raped, the Washington Post reported Saturday. No charges were filed, but Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed sum and had her sign a nondisclosure agreement.
In his writing and his TV talking, Hegseth labels whatever he finds objectionable as woke and claims that “the Left” has infected the military with anti-masculine attitudes.
“Just because the rest of our culture has gone soft, and effeminate, and apologetic—doesn’t mean our military can afford to. Staying tough, manly, and unapologetically lethal is the lifeblood of the fighting man,” he wrote this year in his book, “The War on Warriors.”
One of Hegseth’s main targets is the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the nation’s highest ranking military officer. Brown is an F-16 pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours. He is the second African American to serve as chairman of the joint chiefs.
“C.Q. happens to be black, which doesn’t matter to me one way or another, but means a lot to him,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth attacks Brown as a racist and an incompetent who should be fired. He claims Brown is one of those “emotionally stunted, angry, race-based people” who will promote black troops based on race, regardless of qualifications.
Hegseth’s book is an emotionally-stunted, angry, race-based screed with grievances on every page.
It’s not the work of someone who can manage a budget of nearly $900 billion, deal with a complex world and lead 2 million employees. It’s the work of someone who screams on TV for a living.
“With the Pentagon now run by, and fully staffed by, so-called ‘leaders’ like C.Q. Brown, we can assume that 17 percent of all black officers in the Air Force are promoted simply because of how they look—and not because of how they lead,” Hegseth wrote.
He said “we’ll never know” whether Brown became chairman of the joint chiefs because of the color of his skin, “but since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t much matter.”
Hegseth claimed Brown “built his generalship dutifully pursuing the radical positions of left-wing politicians, who in turn rewarded him with promotions.”
While Hegseth attacks Brown and other military generals, as “cowards hiding under stars,” Sullivan has spoken highly of Brown’s record.
Sullivan voted for Brown on June 9, 2020 to lead the U.S. Air Force: “I will be certainly voting for General Brown because he's the right man at the right time for this very important job. Let me explain why General Brown has an impressive academic record and a sterling record of service to our great nation and, of course, to the United States Air Force.”
“I've had many, many good conversations with him on strategy, strategic basing, including in the Asia-Pacific region. And I am very, very confident that, again, he is the right person for the right job at this moment,” Sullivan said of Brown.
The junior senator is trying to have it both ways. He praises Brown as a leader and then praises the Fox News personality who says Brown is a racist and a coward.
Sullivan and 82 other senators voted for Brown a year ago to become the head of the joint chiefs of staff, which makes Sullivan’s instant embrace of Hegseth all the more hypocritical.
Hegseth concludes “The War on Warriors” with a letter to his sons, in which he says they “grew up in a covenant Christian home, which is the most important part of who you—and we—are.”
What Hegseth did not include in his letter is his history of divorces and extramarital affairs with co-workers.
In 2018, when Trump considered giving Hegseth a job in veteran’s affairs, an American Public Media investigation found that Hegseth’s words did not match his deeds.
At the time, Hegseth was “in the process of divorcing his second wife after having an extramarital affair and a child with a producer at Fox News. Hegseth's second wife filed for divorce roughly a month after the girl was born. His divorce filings show the couple is working to keep details of his contract with Fox News private.”
His first marriage also ended after an affair with a co-worker.
In a 2016 book, he wrote that conservatives should be creating good citizens by “preventing divorce of parents with kids.”
In the revised 2017 version of his book, he changed the line to say conservatives should be creating good citizens by “preventing wanton divorce.”
Sullivan should take his own advice about Hegseth: “Read his bio.” Not just the Trump press release.
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