Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Hegseth's Ax Grinders -- Digby
https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/21/hegseth-at-the-pentagon/I know it may be impossible to accept, but it turns out that a weekend news host with a long record of personal misconduct may not actually be capable of leading the most powerful military on earth after all. Unfortunately, it does appear that the Defense Secretary is not living up what the president and the entire Republican Party apparently believed was his vast potential based upon his “central casting” good looks and white supremacist tattoos. He’s in trouble again and this time it’s coming from inside the house.
Hegseth had already showed the recklessness and lack of judgment many of his former co-workers at Fox News, hardly a bastion of wokeness, said worried them when he was nominated. (He was known to have a very messy personal life with excessive drinking, affairs, baby mamas and even a rape charge.) He promised the Senators who confirmed him that he would not take a drink while Secretary of Defense and there is no evidence he’s broken it. But his judgement is even worse than his critics anticipated.
First of all, he appears to be obsessed with his Fox News culture war issues, particularly DEI, and spends an awful lot of time worrying about things like physical fitness rather than the big picture. His first acts as Defense Secretary was to fire the top women and Black leaders in the chain of command, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whose record of accomplishment was stellar. His directives to purge the military of transgender people and every reference to race, sex or ethnicity have resulted in some extremely embarrassing misfires such as removal of baseball great Jackie Robinson’s and the Navajo code-talker’s web pages.
In fairness, as odious as Hegseth’s eagerness to go about it might be, that agenda is Donald Trump’s as much as his own. The problem is that he’s so ridiculously underqualified for the real job of running the Pentagon that the whole place is starting to come apart and it’s happening at the hands of Hegseth’s own closest allies who are apparently at each others’ throats.
. . .
Hegseth had already showed the recklessness and lack of judgment many of his former co-workers at Fox News, hardly a bastion of wokeness, said worried them when he was nominated. (He was known to have a very messy personal life with excessive drinking, affairs, baby mamas and even a rape charge.) He promised the Senators who confirmed him that he would not take a drink while Secretary of Defense and there is no evidence he’s broken it. But his judgement is even worse than his critics anticipated.
First of all, he appears to be obsessed with his Fox News culture war issues, particularly DEI, and spends an awful lot of time worrying about things like physical fitness rather than the big picture. His first acts as Defense Secretary was to fire the top women and Black leaders in the chain of command, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whose record of accomplishment was stellar. His directives to purge the military of transgender people and every reference to race, sex or ethnicity have resulted in some extremely embarrassing misfires such as removal of baseball great Jackie Robinson’s and the Navajo code-talker’s web pages.
In fairness, as odious as Hegseth’s eagerness to go about it might be, that agenda is Donald Trump’s as much as his own. The problem is that he’s so ridiculously underqualified for the real job of running the Pentagon that the whole place is starting to come apart and it’s happening at the hands of Hegseth’s own closest allies who are apparently at each others’ throats.
. . .